Chilling final requests made by infamous death row killers before their execution revealed
Niamh Shackleton
Featured Image Credit: Florida DOC/Getty Images/Bettmann via Getty Images
Have you ever been asked what your death row meal would be?
Mine would be a proper, Italian-style pizza with a glass (or three) of rosé wine, followed by some affogato.
Real-life death row inmates are typically given a choice of their final meals before their execution.
Last week, for example, Richard Kenneth Djerf was put to death by the state of Arizona and his final meal was a double cheeseburger with lettuce and tomato, onion rings with ketchup and a piece of cherry pie with whipped cream.
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He died after being given a lethal injection on October 17.
The option to pick a final meal is no longer a thing in the state of Texas after a certain inmate's behavior, however. The inmate? Lawrence Russell Brewer.
Brewer was executed in 2011 and on the eve of his death he requested, well, a whole banquet.
His order included two chicken fried steaks, a triple-meat bacon cheeseburger, three fajitas, a meat lover's pizza, a pint of ice cream and peanut butter fudge.
Brewer didn't eat a single bite of it though, sparking Brad Livingston, executive director of the Texas Department of Criminal Justice at the time, to take away the privilege altogether.
He said of the decision: "It is extremely inappropriate to give a person sentenced to death such a privilege. It's a privilege which the perpetrator did not provide to their victim."
Before his death in 1989, Bundy made a very unusual request for a death row inmate... that being absolutely nothing. Because he didn't make a specific request, Bundy's final meal was steak, eggs, hash browns, and toast.
While he didn't ask for anything before he died, Bundy did say he wanted his ashes be scattered in the Cascade Mountains of Washington state, says Biography.com, the same place his final four victims' remains were found.
Nelson and his brother Steven Shelton were both sentenced to death for beating a man to death following an 18-hour drinking binge in 1992.
Before he died, Nelson asked if he could donate his kidney to his sick mother. He wasn't a match, however.
Instead, Steven was the one to give a kidney to their mom.
Gardener was killed by a firing squad in Utah in 2010 after being found guilty of fatally shooting Michael Burdell in 1985.
Some convicted killers might opt to spend their last day seeing loved ones for a final time, but Gardner requested to watch The Lord of The Rings trilogy instead, says Metro, which will have taken him more than nine hours to finish.
Notorious serial killer Wuornos, like Bundy, wasn't bothered about her final meal. Instead, she only made requests for after her death.
For her final send off, she wanted her ashes to be scattered under a tree in Michigan and Natalie Merchant’s song 'Carnival' was to be played at her memorial.
Her adoptive mother, Arlene Pralle, carried out Wuornos' wishes. Wuornos was well into her 30s when she was adopted by Pralle in 1991, who was 44 years old at the time.