Featured Image Credit: Alabama Department of Corrections
Topics: Alabama, Crime, Death Row, US News, True crime
Callum Jones
Topics: Alabama, Crime, Death Row, US News, True crime
Warning: This article contains discussion of sexual assault and description of violence which some readers may find distressing.
A death row inmate issued a chilling final statement to his victim's family before he was executed by lethal injection on Thursday (April 24).
James Osgood, 55, was convicted of murder for the 2010 killing of Tracy Lynn Wilemon in Chilton County.
Prosecutors said Osgood sliced Brown's throat after he and his girlfriend, Tonya Vandyke, sexually assaulted the 44-year-old recent divorcée, who was trying to get her life back on track.
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Wilemon was reportedly Vandyke's cousin, according to a report from The Associated Press.
Governor of Alabama, Kay Ivey, said in a statement: "The murder of Tracy Wilemon was premeditated, gruesome and disturbing, and tonight, the state carried out the death sentence of James Osgood.
"Both Mr. Osgood and his accomplice, who will never see the light of day, from the moment they were inspired by a Hollywood torture scene, set out to commit this heinous crime against Ms. Wilemon and are now paying the price.
"And let’s be clear: At the end of all of this, Mr. Osgood robbed Ms. Wilemon of her life, something that can never be reversed for her or her family. I pray that her loved ones can feel some sense of closure today."
Osgood was executed after receiving a lethal injection at a south Alabama prison on Thursday and was pronounced dead at 6:35pm.
Ivey, who has the power to exercise her clemency powers and announce a postponement on the execution, instructed Commissioner John Hamm to proceed with the death sentence.
Osgood did not appeal the sentence before being injected by lethal injection, and he used his final words for a chilling statement seemingly directed at Wilemon's family.
He told AP: "I’m a firm believer in, like I said in court, an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth. I took a life, so mine was forfeited. I don’t believe in sitting here and wasting everybody’s time and everybody’s money.
"I’m not going to ask their forgiveness because I know they can’t give it. I regret taking her from them. I regret cutting her life short. I regret that I took one of God’s children. And I regret the pain and suffering that I caused, not only for the victim and her family, but to mine."
If you've been affected by any of the issues in this article, you can contact The National Sexual Assault Hotline on 800.656.HOPE (4673), available 24/7. Or you can chat online via online.rainn.org