I went to high school with this guy named Jimmy Robertson, who murdered both of his parents hoping he would get his two million dollar inheritance...He's on death row now...
Here is an article that was in one of our local papers....
SOUTH CAROLINA:
It's been a busy year on death row for James "Jimmy" Robertson.
Spending day after day in a cell not much bigger than a dog pen,
Robertson writes. He's sent a Christmas card to the man who sent him to
death row, notes to people who read his autobiography on a Web site for
inmates and letters to just about everyone he knew before he was
sentenced to death for killing his parents with a claw hammer and a
baseball bat.
Some days he wants to die. Robertson has talked about squirreling away
pills given to him for his bipolar disorder and overdosing one night
"before the state can get me."
In his most recent letter to a Herald reporter, Robertson writes, "I am
waiving my appeals and petitioning the court to execute me. For better or
worse, it will be a long process."
That may not be so, said his lawyer, Robert Dudek of the S.C. Office of
Appellate Defense.
"He has not dropped his appeals. I've talked to him numerous times "
we're appealing it to the state Supreme Court," Dudek said.
Robertson arrived at death row at the Lieber Correctional Institute in
Ridgeville shortly after a jury sentenced him to death on March 26, 1999.
Prosecutors say he bludgeoned his parents to death in their Westminster
Drive home in November 1997 because he couldn't wait for his $2 million
inheritance.
The 26-year-old is different from most of his peers on death row.
He's better educated than many, after graduating near the top of his
class at Northwestern High School and dropping out of Georgia Tech.
He had loving parents by almost all accounts. His father, Earl, got him
out of many jams, the latest right before he died. Robertson would go on
to spray Tilex in his father's eyes as he got out of the shower. As his
blinded father tried to fight back, Robertson beat him with a hammer and
a baseball bat until one witness said his head looked like "a crushed
tomato."
At his trial, friends recalled a doting mother, who may have actually
done too much for her son, keeping him from taking responsibility for his
actions. Robertson bludgeoned Terry Robertson while she was in bed
asleep. His father, in the shower, never heard her scream, "No, Jimmy,
no!"
Robertson admits he's different than most of his prison mates. But last
year he said he was fitting in nicely.
"I've learned to talk like they talk. I help them out. They know I'm in
here for the same thing they're in for. And we all know that we aren't
leaving here alive," Robertson said.
Shortly after Robertson was locked up on death row, he started writing.
Nearly everyone on the prosecution and defense witness list got a
handwritten letter, most of them on yellow legal pad paper. He apologized
to some people and thanked others for their support.
Robertson also sent Christmas cards. One of them was addressed to a
bemused 16th Circuit Solicitor Tommy Pope, who said "I knew I arrived
when I got a Christmas card from death row."
In his card, Robertson wished the solicitor and his family a Merry
Christmas. Pope wrote him back and thanked him.
"It was the strangest thing. If you didn't know better, you would have
thought it was from the neighbor's kid," Pope said.
Robertson is even on the Internet. At
www.inmate.com, he appears on a Web
page. A picture of Robertson, smirking boyishly, and a description
seemingly taken straight from a personal ad greets visitors looking for a
prison pen pal.
"I am 6-foot-1, 25-years-old (sic) with brown eyes and brown hair," is
the way Robertson describes himself on the Web site.
"I now spend my days alone in a cell now not much bigger than a walk-in
closet. I spend a considerable amount of my time thinking of my parents
and my actions that regretfully led to their deaths in November 1997 " As
you can imagine, it gets lonely here. I'd like to "meet' you and discuss
anything," according to the Web site.
Robertson doesn't have access to the Internet, but the Web site promises
to print all of his e-mails and send them to Robertson's mailing address.
Meanwhile, Robertson's co-defendant and former girlfriend, Meredith Moon,
is spending her time tutoring inmates at the Leath Correctional
Institution. She pleaded guilty to accessory after the fact in the
killings of Robertson's parents and was sentenced to 20 years in prison.
Moon, 20, has gotten her high school diploma and hopes to take college
classes. She wants to be a paralegal when she gets out, which could be as
soon as 2007.
She wrote Robertson and said she got a nasty note back in the mail.
In a letter to a Herald reporter, Moon wrote, "Basically, he attributes
him being found guilty and him getting the death penalty to me. Without
me it would have been an unsolved murder. Sure it would have."
Moon drove Robertson to see his brother in Pennsylvania. While on the
way, she watched as he dumped a garbage bag containing the hammer,
baseball bat and clothing worn during the killing in a fast-food
Dumpster. She would also be the star witness at Robertson's trial.
As long as he continues his appeals, Robertson's date with the
executioner is years away. Attorneys haven't even argued his 1st appeal
before the state Supreme Court.
After that, Robertson has so many other appeals that no one even
bothers to estimate when he could be executed.
(source: The Herald)