Execution set for South Carolina killer who taunted police with message in victims blood: Catch me if u can
A South Carolina man on death row is scheduled to be executed next month for killing a man, burning his eyes with cigarettes and taunting police by painting “catch me if u can” on a wall with the victim’s blood more than 20 years ago.Stephen Bryant, 44, will be put to death Nov.14 after the state Supreme Court issued the death warrant Friday, rejecting a request from Bryant’s lawyers for a delay because they work with the federal court system and the US government is shut down.Bryant is scheduled for execution for one killing, but prosecutors said he also fatally shot two other men he was giving rides to as they were urinating on the side of the road in Sumter County in October 2004.He will have until Oct.
31 to choose if he wants to die by lethal injection, firing squad or the electric chair.Since the state resumed executions last year following an involuntary 13-year pause due to trouble obtaining lethal injection drugs, four inmates have selected lethal injection and two have died by firing squad.Bryant confessed to killing Willard “TJ” Tietjen after stopping by his home in rural Sumter County and saying he had car trouble.After Tietjen was shot several times, candles were lit around his body.The corner of a potholder was dipped in Tietjen’s blood and “victem 4 in 2 weeks.catch me if u can” was written on a wall, according to officials.Tietjen’s daughter, Kimberly Dees, called him several times and grew worried when he did not answer.
She testified that a strange voice answered on her sixth call to her father.She demanded that the person at the other end of the line allow her to speak to her father.“And he said, ‘You can’t, I killed him.’ And I said, ‘This isn’t funny, who are you?’ He said, ‘I’m the prowler.And I said, ‘Excuse me, who are you?’ He said, ‘I’m the prowler,’” Dees told a judge who determined Bryant’s sentence.Prosecutors said Bryant also killed two other men, one before Tietjen’s murder ...