A death row killer in Alabama said he no longer wishes to halt his execution.
Derrick Dearman was convicted of killing six people, one victim Chelsea Marie Reed was pregnant at the time of her death, and no longer wishes to appeal his execution. He wrote letters to key Alabama officials including Governor, Attorney General Steve Marshall and judges.
“Now it’s time for the victims and their families to get the justice they rightly deserve to start the closure,” he said according to an NBC News exclusive.
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The Alabama Supreme Court has already denied an application to appeal his sentence and has upheld Dearman's convictions.
The death row man, 36, killed his victims during a heinous spree in 2016 in which he burst into a home the small rural city of Citronelle armed with an axe and a firearm.
He had become angered by his estranged girlfriend Laneta Lester taking up refuge inside her brother’s home. Lester’s brother, 26-year-old Joseph Adam Turner, became one of the Dearman’s victims.
Dearman killed Robert Lee Brown, 26; Chelsea Marie Reed, 22; Justin Kaleb Reed, 23; Joseph Adam Turner, 26; Shannon Melissa Randall, 35.
He then drove with Lester and an infant to Mississippi.
Dearman has a drug addiction and committed his crimes under the influence of methamptetamine. He handed himself in when he came down from his high.
The baby and Lester were not harmed.
“It was like someone else had the steering wheel,” Dearman told Al.com.
“It was like being at the movie theatre or watching a movie and you want to turn your head or close your eyes because you didn’t want to see that part or that scene because it was that scary or horrible and not being able to.”
The judge in the murder case said mitigating factors regarding his mental health and drug use “were found not to exist.”
The convicted killer, from Mississippi, said he hopes that by dropping his appeals the families of the victims will have some degree of peace. He said he only pursued an appeal to appease members of his own family.
“I am guilty plain and simple, I turned myself in and I pled guilty,” said Dearman to NBC. “Once I got moved over to county and spent a week down there, sleeping every day, my mind coming back to me a little bit more, little bit more, little bit more, I was just in shock. I couldn’t comprehend the magnitude of what had happened because those people were good people.”