Death Row Stories

After getting arrested for driving a stolen car under the influence of drugs and alcohol, Philadelphia native Nick Yarris tries to negotiate a deal with police, offering up information about the gruesome kidnapping and murder of a young mother of three.

After a month-long search, the body of missing nineteen-year-old Melissa Trotter is recovered in a Texas forest. Local police quickly zero in on Larry Swearingen, who was last seen with Melissa just before she disappeared.

A man is found dead in his rural Mississippi home, shot four times with his own 9mm pistol. His 19-year-old son names his hospitalized mother, Michelle Byrom, as the mastermind of the murder, claiming she hired the boy's friend to shoot her husband, and promising to pay him from the life insurance payout.

The shooting of a newspaper carrier in rural Mississippi lands 20-year-old Marlon Howell on death row. Convicted on the word of two co-defendants and the identification of an eyewitness with a checkered past, Marlon maintains his innocence.

Two men are shot at point blank range outside a public housing project on Chicago's South Side. The execution-style hit leads to the conviction of Nathson Fields, a member of the notorious El Rukn street gang.

A money order salesman is brutally murdered in broad daylight outside an East Cleveland convenience store. After a 12-year-old neighborhood paperboy tells police he witnessed the killing, two teenage brothers and their best friend are arrested.

A masked attacker shoots up an apartment in Bucyrus, Ohio, leaving three dead and two young children clinging to life. After witnesses report seeing a "large black man" near the scene, police close in on Kevin Keith, a local drug dealer who was recently busted based on information offered by a snitch.

The brutal murder of a young couple inside their secluded Florida home leaves police baffled. Months later, a woman comes forward to implicate her ex-husband, Joe Martinez, a Spanish national living the fast life.