After nearly 50 years of jail, Thomas Creech,, has been ordered to be executed this Wednesday by Judge Jason D. Scott.
The serial killer is 73-years-old with one of the longest time spent in prison after being convicted of murder. His last murder was of David Jensen, a young disabled man in 1981. Creech is suspected of at least six additional murders in which he is yet to be convicted for.
Additionally, Creech had an incident where he was at the Oregon State Hospital for a few months. After his departure from the hospital, he got a job at a church in Portland doing maintenance work. He ended up shooting a 22-year-old William Joseph Dean in 1974. This was the beginning of his trial that led him to the cell. He was initially sentenced to death for killing painters, but his sentence was converted to life in prison as The Supreme Court secured automatic death sentences in 1976.
During his stay at the Idaho Maximum Security Institution, he was known as “Tom” and was generally well-behaved with a liking for poetry. He wrote poems for others at the stay, including the judge. When he failed to receive clemency, prison staffers wrote him poems of support and condolence along with the judge who sentenced him to death.
All the murders that Creech committed, he is registered to be executed through a lethal injection for killing a prisoner with a battery-filled sock in 1981. Creech claimed at one point that he had killed about 50 people, but those confessions were found to be made under the influence of “truth serum” drugs which are now discredited.
“I am surprised how people would use different drugs to lead them to say something that is true or not,” Tyler Castaño (11), a criminology enthusiast, said. “The wanted or unwanted consequence of drugs is inevitable.”
Far from the public comments on Creech, he had supporters from the prison cell where he had changed as a person to be described as a positive contribution to his community. It appears to the prison staffers that his execution date will approach them as a difficulty.
“It’s interesting to see how life at the cell may exist as a positive contribution to an individual,” Danwoo Kim (10), a criminology enthusiast, said. “I look forward to his impact on the Idaho Maximum Security Institution and their prison staffers.”
