Man Who Killed 5 People In One Night—Derrick Dearman Has Been Executed In Alabama | Last Meal& Words
I wanted to warn all of you. If you ain’t serving the Lord, you ain’t serving the devil. This is what you get for evil in your life. Let this be a warning to somebody for a change. This don’t bring no closure to us. We’re going to suffer the rest of our lives. >> On October 17th, 2024, Derrick Dearman was executed by lethal injection at the William C.
Holman Correctional Facility in Atmore, Alabama. He was 36 years old. He did not fight it. He did not beg. He did not ask for mercy. In fact, he was the one who asked the state to kill him. >> I want to be done. Do you have any last statements? It’s not fair that I’m having this. >> Since he has been on death row, he has never stopped using drugs.
He used drugs as as recently as a week ago. Couple days ago. >> In this video, we’re going to walk through every chapter of this case. Who Derrick Dearman was. What he did on the morning of August 20th, 2016. How he was caught. How he was tried. And what happened in that execution chamber on October 17th, 2024.
We’ll find out what his last meal was. And we’ll hear, word for word, what he said before the drugs began to flow. This is not an easy story, but it is an important one. Stay with me. Derrick Ryan Dearman was born on September 14th, 1988 in Greene County, Mississippi. He grew up in Leakesville, a small, quiet town about 90 miles north of the Gulf Coast.
On the surface, it was an ordinary upbringing in an ordinary place. But underneath that surface, things were never stable. By the time he was an adult, Dearman had accumulated an extensive criminal record in Mississippi. His ex-wife described him as having, and I’m quoting here, “a temper, especially when he doesn’t get his way.
” He had two children from that marriage, and he had a habit, a serious one, methamphetamine. People who knew him said it wasn’t an occasional use. It was the central thread running through his entire adult life. His own parents would later testify under oath in a courtroom, fighting for their son’s life, that his long-term drug abuse was the central problem in his life. They weren’t wrong.
He also had a girlfriend, a woman named Lanita Lester, and their relationship was volatile in a way that should have been a warning sign to everyone around them. Acquaintances described Dearman taking Lester into the woods, the rural, isolated woods of Southeast Mississippi, and beating her, physically, repeatedly.
A man who knew Dearman for years said plainly, “He was taking her out there and beating the crap out of her.” Lester stayed, for a while anyway, but eventually she ran. In August of 2016, Lanita Lester fled to her brother’s house. Her brother was a man named Joseph Adam Turner, 26 years old, married, with a 3-month-old son.
He lived in a home in Citronelle, Alabama, about 30 miles north of Mobile. Also in that home, Joseph’s wife, Shannon Melissa Randall, 35. Shannon’s brother, Robert Lee Brown, 26. And a young married couple, Justin Caleb Reed, 23, and his wife, Chelsea Marie Reed, 22. Chelsea was 5 months pregnant. This house, full of young people, a newborn, a pregnancy, a family trying to hold itself together, is where Lanita Lester went when she needed to feel safe.
She chose her brother’s home because she thought she would be protected there. She was wrong. In the days leading up to August 20th, Dearman had actually been at the property himself. He’d been helping scrap a metal trailer, working with his hands, being civil on the surface, but his behavior made people uneasy.
Shannon Randall, the woman of the house, eventually told him he couldn’t stay there overnight. She didn’t want him near her infant. He could work there during the day, but he was not welcome to sleep under their roof. He left. He went back to Mississippi. He injected methamphetamine. Then, Lester fled. She left their shared home in George County, Mississippi, and went to her brother’s house in Citronelle.
And that’s when something shifted inside Derrick Dearman. He started driving towards Citronelle. On the evening of August 19th, 2016, Dearman showed up at the Citronelle house. He wanted to see Lanita. He was told no. He was asked to leave. He came back. He was turned away again. He came back a third time, and then a fourth.
By this point, Joseph Adam Turner, Lanita’s brother, the man whose house this was, had called the police. Officers came out. They patrolled the property. They looked around the wooded grounds. They didn’t find him. And around 3:00 a.m., when the shift changed, they left. Residents had also made a 911 call earlier that night, around 1:00 a.m.
, reporting that Deerman was on the property. Police came, found nothing, left. The house went quiet. Everyone went to sleep. Robert Lee Brown was in the living room, asleep in a recliner. Lanita Lester was on an air mattress in the living room. Joseph and Shannon were in their bedroom with their 3-month-old son.
Justin and Chelsea Reed were in their own bedroom. And somewhere outside in the dark Alabama night, Derrick Deerman was not gone. He had never left. At the time of what happened next, investigators would later determine that Deerman had been awake for six straight days. He had been hearing voices. He believed people were coming after him.
He had used a significant amount of methamphetamine. He was not in his right mind. But what he did next was methodical. It was deliberate. And it was unspeakable. In the early morning hours of August 20th, 2016, Derrick Deerman broke into the house. He came through two locked sliding glass doors.
Before he even entered, he picked up an axe from the front yard. He brought it inside with him. The first person he found was Robert Lee Brown, 26 years old, Lanita’s cousin, asleep in a recliner. Deerman struck him in the head multiple times. Then he moved through the house. He went to the bedroom where Joseph Turner and Shannon Randall were sleeping with their infant.
He struck Joseph Turner in the head multiple times with the axe. Shannon woke up. He struck her, too. Their baby lay in the bed. The baby was not touched. Then Deerman moved to the next bedroom. Justin and Chelsea Reed. Chelsea was 5 months pregnant. He struck her multiple times. Justin fought back. There was a struggle.
Justin had a gun. Dearman fought him for it and struck Justin with the axe while they wrestled. And then Dearman got the gun. With his victims severely injured, bleeding, barely clinging to life. Court records note that he then meticulously shot each one to ensure they were dead. He shot Chelsea Reed. He shot Justin Reed. He shot Joseph Turner.
He shot Shannon Randall in the back of the head as she lay in bed next to her infant son. He returned to the living room. He shot Robert Lee Brown. Then he walked past Lanita Lester still on her air mattress, still alive. He did not touch her. He grabbed the car keys and he walked out of the house. Behind him five bodies. A three-month-old infant.
A woman in shock. Investigators would later call it the worst mass killing in the history of Mobile County. The sentencing order used two words to describe it. Especially heinous. Atrocious. Dearman forced Lanita Lester into the car. He took the infant, Joseph and Shannon’s three-month-old son with them. They drove to Mississippi to his father’s house in Leakesville.
Lester and the baby were held there. Reports indicate she was beaten further during this time. A ransom was eventually demanded. The family paid. Lester and the baby were released. As soon as she was free, Lester contacted police and told them what had happened. Back in Citronelle, officers arrived at the house on that dead-end dirt road.
Five people were dead. One had never been born. Deerman, meanwhile, was still in Mississippi. His father, reportedly in a desperate attempt to do the right thing, convinced him to turn himself in. He surrendered at the Green County, Mississippi police station. As he was escorted to jail by deputies in Mobile, Deerman spoke to reporters.
He was wearing a bright yellow jail uniform. He hung his head and he said, “Drugs were making me think things that weren’t really there.” Alabama extradited him quickly. He was charged with six counts of capital murder, five for the victims and one under Alabama’s fetal homicide law for Chelsea Reed’s unborn child.
He was also charged with kidnapping. What happened inside the courtroom over the next 2 years was, in many ways, as complicated as the crime itself. Deerman was assigned two court-appointed defense attorneys. In mid-2017, the state requested a full mental evaluation covering his competency to stand trial, his mental capacity at the time of the crime, and his IQ.
Deerman objected. His own lawyers raised flags early. They warned that his probable mood disorder, suicidal thinking, and brain dysfunction were negatively affecting his thought processes and decision-making. They predicted in writing that he would likely self-sabotage and take whatever steps he deemed necessary to ensure a death verdict. They were right.
Deerman fired both of his attorneys. He represented himself. On August 31st, 2018, he pleaded guilty to five counts of capital murder committed during a burglary and five counts of murder committed as part of one scheme or course of conduct. Under Alabama law, even with a guilty plea on capital charges, a jury must still hear the evidence and determine the sentence. So, a jury was impaneled.
Dearman initially had no plans to present any mitigating evidence at all. He was going to let the jury sentence him to death without saying a word in his defense. His family stepped in. 11 family members took the stand. His parents, his relatives. They described the man who had struggled with addiction and mental illness his entire life.
They described the version of Derek Dearman they knew before the drugs or despite them. They begged the jury to spare his life. It wasn’t enough. The jury unanimously recommended death. On October 12th, 2018, Circuit Judge Rick Stout followed that recommendation. Derek Dearman was sentenced to death. A later appeals court review found a double jeopardy in the charges and vacated four of his convictions.
Leaving him with six capital murder convictions rather than 10. His death sentence was not affected. Before we get to the execution, we need to address something because this case was not without controversy. The Equal Justice Initiative, one of the most prominent criminal justice organizations in the United States, argued forcefully that Dearman’s execution was unjust.
Not because of what he did, but because of how the system handled him. Their argument centered on a disturbing pattern. Alabama courts, they said, never properly evaluated Dearman’s mental competency. Not to plead guilty, not to waive his right to counsel, and not to drop his appeals. They pointed to a lifetime of severe mental illness.
suicidal ideation that dated back to his childhood, a mood disorder, brain dysfunction, symptoms that were documented in the record, but never fully addressed by the courts. They also argued that the sentencing court failed to properly consider his history of mental illness as a reason to impose life without parole instead of death, which they said violated Supreme Court precedent.
Their final statement on his case was stark. “Derrick Dearman stopped his appeals only after a lifetime of severe mental illness and suicidal behavior that Alabama courts have repeatedly ignored.” Dearman himself was aware of how this looked. He addressed it directly in interviews. He said, “Yes, I’m confident I’m in my right mind.
If I wasn’t, I wouldn’t be trying to think about the victims’ families and their feelings.” His spiritual adviser, Reverend Dr. Jeff Hood, put it this way, “Derrick has consistently expressed this is a spiritual decision for him, not a political one.” The debate over whether a mentally ill person can meaningfully consent to their own execution is one that legal scholars, ethicists, and advocates continue to wrestle with.
It’s a question this case forces us to sit with. For almost 6 years, Dearman allowed the appeals process to continue. He says he did it for his family. They said, “Derrick, just give us a few years in this appeal process. We deserve that. It’s our right as your family to fight for your life.” He honored that request.
But in April 2024, he made a decision. He sat down and wrote nine handwritten letters. One to Alabama Governor Kay Ivey, one to Attorney General Steve Marshall, others to the judges and officials involved in his case. The message in each one was the same. He was done fighting. He was asking the state to carry out his sentence.
He gave an interview to NBC News, his first ever interview with a reporter. He said, “Now it’s time for the victims and their families to get the justice they rightly deserve to start the closure.” In a letter to the court, he wrote, “I am guilty. I plead guilty. I was found guilty. I was sentenced to death and I 100% agree with the sentencing and believe it is fair.
” He also recorded an audio message and sent it to the Associated Press. In it he said, “I’m willingly giving all that I can possibly give to try and repay a small portion of my debt to society for all the terrible things I’ve done. From this point forward, I hope that the focus will not be on me, but rather on the healing of all the people that I have hurt.
” On September 3rd, 2024, the Alabama Supreme Court approved the death warrant. The execution was scheduled for October 17th, 2024. In his final two days, Dearman received visitors. He talked to friends and relatives on the phone. He had chosen a spiritual advisor, Reverend Dr. Jeff Hood, a man who described himself as vehemently opposed to capital punishment, but who stood beside Dearman anyway out of respect for his decision.
In the end, Dearman told Hood he didn’t want him inside the execution chamber. He would face it alone. The night before his execution, he wrote letters to his family. He said goodbye. On the day of his execution, October 17th, 2024, Derrick Dearman ordered his last meal. He chose a seafood platter. That was it. No fanfare, no elaborate request, a seafood platter.
He ate, and then he waited. At 5:58 p.m., Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall cleared the execution to begin. Dearman was brought into the execution chamber at the William C. Holman Correctional Facility in Atmore, Alabama. Corrections officers strapped him to a gurney. They inserted needles into veins on each arm. The viewing room on one side held members of the victims’ families.
On the other side, media witnesses and Dearman’s father. Before the drugs were administered, Dearman was given the opportunity to speak. He turned his head toward the victims’ family section, and he said his final words. To the victim’s family, forgive me. This is not for me. This is for you. I’ve taken so much. He paused.
Then he turned toward where his own family sat. To my family, you’ll already know. I love you. From across the room, his father’s voice broke the silence. Derrick, no. And then, Derrick, don’t go. At 6:01 p.m., a corrections officer called Dearman’s name as part of a consciousness check. His arms moved slightly.
Commissioner John Hamm later told reporters that was not a sign of consciousness. It was an involuntary response to the drugs. The curtains to the viewing room closed at 6:08 p.m. Behind the curtain, Dearman’s father sobbed. He called out his son’s name over and over. At 6:14 p.m., Derrick Ryan Dearman was pronounced dead. After the execution, the families of the victims spoke.
The prison commissioner read a statement from Bryant Henry Randall, the father of Chelsea Randall Reed and the brother of both Shannon Randall and Robert Lee Brown. He lost his daughter, his sister, and his brother all in one night, 8 years earlier. He wrote, “Today, goodbye will be easy for me because we have all heard the horrific things that Derrick Dearman did.
Whether it was drugs or just pure hate and the devil in his heart, Dearman will get a final goodbye, whereas I am still waiting on mine.” Then he wrote something that will stay with you. “I so long for a final goodbye to my daughter, and I would have loved to meet my grandchild, Chelsea’s unborn baby, the one who never got a name, the one the Alabama fetal homicide law recognized as a victim, the one the family never got to hold.
” Robert Brown, the father of Robert Lee Brown, stood outside the prison after it was done. He didn’t have a prepared statement. He just said what was in his heart. “This don’t bring nothing back. I can’t get my son back or any of them back.” He was right. The execution was carried out. The sentence was fulfilled.
The law had done what the law does, but five families still go home to empty seats, still find old voicemails they can’t bring themselves to delete, still drive past places they can’t look at anymore. That doesn’t end. Alabama Governor Kay Ivey issued a statement that evening. She said, “Six lives, including an unborn baby, were gruesomely taken by Mr. Dearman in 2016.
The state has obliged and justice has been served. Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall said the execution was appropriate in the interest of justice and finality for the families. The Equal Justice Initiative mourned a different way. They released a statement calling attention to Dearman’s lifelong history of mental illness, arguing that no Alabama court ever properly evaluated whether he was competent to make the decisions he made, to plead guilty, to fire his attorneys, to drop his appeals.
They called his death the result of a system that had been ignoring his illness for years. Dearman himself, in one of his final recorded statements, had addressed his state of mind the night of the murders. He said, “It was like someone else had the steering wheel.” A couple of weeks after the murders in 2016, the house in Citronelle, the house where five people died, where a baby lay in a bed next to his dying mother, burned down. It no longer exists.
Dearman was Alabama’s fifth execution of 2024. His spiritual advisor, Reverend Hood, said afterward that Dearman had been deeply remorseful for what he had done, and that he genuinely believed volunteering to be executed was the most meaningful way he could express that remorse. “He deeply believed that volunteering was a way he could prove he was sorry,” Hood said.
“Whether you find that meaningful or empty or somewhere in between, that’s something only you can decide. What is not in dispute is this. Five people walked into a house one evening expecting to wake up in the morning. They never did. A 3-month-old boy lost his father and his mother before he was old enough to remember their faces, a grandfather never got to meet a grandchild who never drew a single breath.
And in a small execution chamber in southern Alabama on an October evening, the man who did all of it closed his eyes and did not open them again. Derrick Dhierman was 36 years old when he died. His victims ranged from 22 to 35. An unborn child never made it to any age at all. This case sits in an uncomfortable place between a crime of staggering brutality, a mental health system that may have failed someone before it ever got that bad, and a man who, at the end, seemed to genuinely want accountability.
Before I go, I want to ask you something. When someone who commits a crime this horrific voluntarily gives up their right to appeal and asks to be executed, is that justice? Is it remorse? Or is it something we don’t quite have a word for? Leave your thoughts in the comments below. If you watched this far, thank you. Until next time.
