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For Season 3, Episode 3 there were a lot of facts that I could not include in the podcast episode. For this reason I will be offering a bulletpoint list below instead of my usual transcription.

The Death Penalty and Last Meals

Season 1 – Episode 3

• Currently 27 US states have the death penalty
• The death penalty is also legal at the federal level and in American Samoa. However, some states have moratoriums on executions, and the federal government and military are also subject to moratoriums.
• In 2023, five states executed people: Alabama, Florida, Missouri, Oklahoma, and Texas. Florida and Texas conducted almost 60% of the year’s total number of executions.
• In practice, the federal government rarely carries out executions. As a result of the Supreme Court opinion in Furman v. Georgia in 1972, the federal death penalty was suspended from law until its reinstatement by Congress in 1988. No federal executions occurred between 1972 and 2001. From 2001 to 2003, three people were executed by the federal government. No further federal executions occurred from March 18, 2003, up to July 14, 2020, when they resumed under President Donald Trump, during which 13 death row inmates were executed in the last 6 months of his presidency. Since January 16, 2021, no further executions have been performed. On July 1, 2021, U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland placed a moratorium on all federal executions pending review of policy and procedures. There are 40 offenders remaining on federal death row.
• Capital punishment has been abolished in 23 states and in the federal capital, Washington, D.C.  It is usually applied for only the most serious crimes, such as aggravated murder. Although it is a legal penalty in 27 states, 20 of them have authority to execute death sentences, with the other 7, as well as the federal government and military, subject to moratoriums.
• The existence of capital punishment in the United States can be traced to early colonial Virginia.[5] There were no executions in the United States between 1967 and 1977. In 1972, the Supreme Court of the United States struck down capital punishment statutes in Furman v. Georgia, reducing all pending death sentences to life imprisonment at the time.[6] Subsequently, a majority of states enacted new death penalty statutes, and the court affirmed the legality of the practice in the 1976 case Gregg v. Georgia. Since then, more than 8,700 defendants have been sentenced to death; of these, more than 1,550 have been executed. At least 190 people who were sentenced to death since 1972 have since been exonerated, about 2.2% or one in 46. As of April 13, 2022, about 2,400 to 2,500 convicts are still on death row.
• The first recorded death sentence in the British North American colonies was carried out in 1608 on Captain George Kendall, who was executed by firing squad at the Jamestown colony for spying on behalf of the Spanish government. Executions in colonial America were also carried out by hanging.
• Three states abolished the death penalty for murder during the 19th century: Michigan (which has never executed a prisoner and is the first government in the English-speaking world to abolish capital punishment) in 1847, Wisconsin in 1853, and Maine in 1887. Rhode Island is also a state with a long abolitionist background, having repealed the death penalty in 1852, though it was available for murder committed by a prisoner between 1872 and 1984.
• Other states which abolished the death penalty for murder before Gregg v. Georgia include Minnesota in 1911, Vermont in 1964, Iowa and West Virginia in 1965, and North Dakota in 1973. Hawaii abolished the death penalty in 1948 and Alaska in 1957, both before their statehood. Puerto Rico repealed it in 1929 and the District of Columbia in 1981. Arizona and Oregon abolished the death penalty by popular vote in 1916 and 1964 respectively, but both reinstated it, again by popular vote, some years later; Arizona reinstated the death penalty in 1918 and Oregon in 1978. In Oregon, the measure reinstating the death penalty was overturned by the Oregon Supreme Court in 1981, but Oregon voters again reinstated the death penalty in 1984. Puerto Rico and Michigan are the only two U.S. jurisdictions to have explicitly prohibited capital punishment in their constitutions: in 1952 and 1964, respectively.

Furman v. Georgia

• Furman v. Georgia, 408 U.S. 238 (1972), was a landmark criminal case in which the United States Supreme Court decided that arbitrary and inconsistent imposition of the death penalty violates the Eighth and Fourteenth Amendments, and constitutes cruel and unusual punishment. It was a per curiam decision. Five justices each wrote separately in support of the decision  467–68  Although the justices didn’t rule that the death penalty was unconstitutional, the Furman decision invalidated the death sentences of nearly 700 people.
• The decision mandated a degree of consistency in the application of the death penalty. This case resulted in a de facto moratorium of capital punishment throughout the United States. Dozens of states rewrote their death penalty laws, most of which were upheld in the 1976 case Gregg v. Georgia.

Gregg v. Georgia

• Gregg v. Georgia, Proffitt v. Florida, Jurek v. Texas, Woodson v. North Carolina, and Roberts v. Louisiana, 428 U.S. 153 (1976), is a landmark decision of the U.S. Supreme Court. It reaffirmed the Court’s acceptance of the use of the death penalty in the United States, upholding, in particular, the death sentence imposed on Troy Leon Gregg. The set of cases is referred to by a leading scholar as the July 2 Cases, and elsewhere referred to by the lead case Gregg. The court set forth the two main features that capital sentencing procedures must employ in order to comply with the Eighth Amendment ban on “cruel and unusual punishments”. The decision essentially ended the de facto moratorium on the death penalty imposed by the Court in its 1972 decision in Furman v. Georgia (1972). Justice Brennan’s dissent famously argued that “The calculated killing of a human being by the State involves, by its very nature, a denial of the executed person’s humanity … An executed person has indeed ‘lost the right to have rights.’”
• Executions resumed on January 17, 1977, when Gary Gilmore went before a firing squad in Utah. Although hundreds of individuals were sentenced to death in the United States during the 1970s and early 1980s, only ten people besides Gilmore (who had waived all of his appeal rights) were executed prior to 1984.
• In 1977, the Supreme Court’s Coker v. Georgia decision barred the death penalty for rape of an adult woman. Previously, the death penalty for rape of an adult had been gradually phased out in the United States, and at the time of the decision, Georgia and the Federal government were the only two jurisdictions to still retain the death penalty for this offense.
• In the 1980 case Godfrey v. Georgia, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that murder can be punished by death only if it involves a narrow and precise aggravating factor.
• The U.S. Supreme Court has placed two major restrictions on the use of the death penalty. First, the case of Atkins v. Virginia, decided on June 20, 2002, held that the execution of intellectually disabled inmates is unconstitutional. Second, in 2005, the court’s decision in Roper v. Simmons struck down executions for offenders under the age of 18 at the time of the crime.
• In the 2008 case Kennedy v. Louisiana, the court also held 5–4 that the death penalty is unconstitutional when applied to non-homicidal crimes against the person, including child rape. Only two death row inmates (both in Louisiana) were affected by the decision. Nevertheless, the ruling came less than five months before the 2008 presidential election and was criticized by both major party candidates Barack Obama and John McCain.
• Currently, Of the 27 states with the death penalty, 25 require the sentence to be decided by the jury, and 23 require a unanimous decision by the jury.
• Two states do not use juries in death penalty cases. In Nebraska the sentence is decided by a three-judge panel, which must unanimously agree on death, and the defendant is sentenced to life imprisonment if one of the judges is opposed. Montana is the only state where the trial judge decides the sentence alone. Two states do not require a unanimous jury decision, including Alabama and Florida. In Alabama, at least 10 jurors must concur, and a retrial happens if the jury deadlocks. In Florida, at least 8 jurors must concur, and the prosecution can pursue a retrial if a mistrial results from a jury deadlock.

Modern era

• In 1982, Texas carried out the first execution by lethal injection in world history and lethal injection subsequently became the preferred method throughout the country, displacing the electric chair.

• All 27 states with capital punishment for murder provide lethal injection as the primary method of execution.
• Some states allow secondary methods to be used at the request of the prisoner, if the medication used in lethal injection is unavailable, or due to court challenges to lethal injection’s constitutionality.
• Several states continue to use the three-drug protocol: firstly an anesthetic, secondly pancuronium bromide, a paralytic, and finally potassium chloride to stop the heart. Eight states have used a single-drug protocol, instead using a single anesthetic.
• While some state statutes specify the drugs required in executions, a majority do not.
• In the following states, death row inmates with an execution warrant may always choose to be executed by:

-Lethal injection in all states as primary method, in South Carolina as secondary method or unless the drugs to use it are unavailable

-Nitrogen hypoxia in Alabama

-Electrocution in Alabama, Florida, and South Carolina (primary method)

-Gas chamber in California and Missouri

• In four states an alternate method (firing squad in Utah, gas chamber in Arizona, and electrocution in Arkansas, Kentucky, and Tennessee) is offered only to inmates sentenced to death for crimes committed prior to a specified date (usually when the state switched from the earlier method to lethal injection). The alternate method will be used for all inmates if lethal injection is declared unconstitutional.
• In five states, an alternate method is used only if lethal injection would be declared unconstitutional (electrocution in Arkansas; nitrogen hypoxia, electrocution, or firing squad in Mississippi and Oklahoma; firing squad in Utah; gas chamber in Wyoming).
• In Alabama, Oklahoma, and Tennessee, “any constitutional method” is possible if all the other methods are declared unconstitutional. In 2024 Alabama used nitrogen gas to execute a prisoner for the first time in the country.In the state that abolished death penalty or where its statute was declared unconstitutional, people sentenced to death for a crime before the date of the abolition may retroactively be subjected to death penalty. Those states’ methods are:

-lethal injection in Colorado

              -lethal injection in Delaware unless the offense was committed before 1986, in which case the inmate could choose between lethal injection and hanging

              -lethal injection in New Hampshire, unless this method is “impractical”, in which case hanging would be the method

              -lethal injection or electrocution in Virginia

              -lethal injection or hanging in Washington

• When an offender chooses to be executed by a means different from the state’s default method, which is always lethal injection, he/she loses the right to challenge its constitutionality in court. See Stewart v. LaGrand, 526 U.S. 115 (1999).

Race and the Death Penalty

• African Americans make up 41% of death row inmates. African Americans have made up 34% of those actually executed since 1976. Twenty-one white offenders have been executed for the murder of a black person since 1976, compared to the 302 black offenders that have been executed for the murder of a white person during that same period.
• Most individuals involved in determining the verdict in death penalty cases are white. As of 1998, Chief District Attorneys in counties using the death penalty are 98% white and only 1% are African-American.
• A supporting fact discovered through examinations of racial disparities over the past twenty years concerning race and the death penalty found that in 96% of these reviews, there was “a pattern of either race-of-victim or race-of-defendant discrimination or both.”
• 80% of all capital cases involve white victims, despite white people only making up approximately 50% of murder victims.

• 63.8% of white death row inmates, 72.8% of black death row inmates, 65.4% of Latino death row inmates, and 63.8% of Native American death row inmates – or approximately 67% of death row inmates overall – have a prior felony conviction.

• Approximately 13.5% of death row inmates are of Hispanic or Latino descent. In 2019, individuals identified as Hispanic and Latino Americans accounted for 5.5% of homicides.

• The death penalty exhortation rate for Hispanic and Latino Americans is 8.6%.

• Approximately 1.81% of death row inmates are of Asian descent.

Sexes

• As of May 20, 2021, the Death Penalty Information Center reports that there are 51 women on death row. 17 women have been executed since 1976, compared to 1,516 men during the same time period.
• Since 1608, 15,391 lawful executions are confirmed to have been carried out in jurisdictions of, or now of, the United States, of these, 575, or 3.6%, were women.

LAST MEALS

• Contrary to the common belief that all last meal requests, regardless of their complexity, must be fulfilled, various restrictions are in place over what can be requested.
• In the United States, most states give the meal a day or two before execution and use the euphemism “special meal”. Alcohol and tobacco are usually, but not always, denied. Unorthodox or unavailable requests are replaced with similar substitutes. Some states place tight restrictions.
• In Florida, the food for the last meal must be purchased locally and the cost is limited to $40.[4] In Oklahoma, the cost is limited to $25. In Tennessee the meal cannot exceed $20. 
• In Texas, the tradition of customized last meals is thought to have been established around 1924.[6] However, in September 2011, the state of Texas abolished all special meal requests after condemned prisoner Lawrence Russell Brewer requested a large and expensive last meal, but did not eat any of it, stating that he was not hungry. Since then, the prisoner’s last meal is whatever is being served in the Huntsville Unit cafeteria on the day of execution.
• Of the 19 states where capital punishment is legal and practiced, a USA TODAY analysis found 12 allow special last meals – and two of those impose a price limit. Six serve only prison food, no matter what a condemned person asks for − in other words, nothing outside what is in the prison kitchen. Kansas Department of Corrections spokesperson David Thompson said the death row meal policy in that state is “under review” and noted the state has not carried out an execution since 1965.
• How the last-meal ritual originated in the United States has not been confirmed, but some researchers trace it back to historic final feasts, from the famous Last Supper that Christians believe Jesus shared with his apostles before his crucifixion to ancient Greece, where people on death row were fed before their execution out of fear that they would return as hungry ghosts.
• In the U.S., experts say the last meal represents the nation’s own ambivalence toward capital punishment, as well as a shared interest about the end of life.
• “We’re human beings – we all fear death. It’s something we’re all going to face,” Deborah Denno, law professor and founding director of the Neuroscience and Law Center at Fordham University said, noting most people won’t know how or when. “The fact that your last meal is documented in a way that, for the great majority of us, is probably not going to be, is something of fascination.”
• The special meal also is a recognition of a person’s humanity before their end, Denno said, and a means to assuage the guilt of bystanders.
• Though even the most lavish final feasts ultimately amount to a pittance when compared with the overall cost of convicting and executing a death row prisoner, the idea that taxpayer dollars could be spent on their pleasure is “horrifying to even think about” for the victims, Denno said. “There are going to be people who look at the death penalty and think that any measure beyond bread and water is too much for somebody who may have killed someone.”
• South Dakota allows condemned inmates to “request a last meal from items that are accessible to the facility food service provider,” per Department of Corrections spokesperson Michael Winder.
• Nevada limits inmates to the prison system’s menu, but it doesn’t have to be the meal of the day, a Department of Corrections spokesperson said. “For your last meal, you can choose anything from that menu,” said spokesperson Teri Vance. “You can mix and match.”
• In Wyoming, “at the discretion of the Warden, the condemned inmate may be permitted a last meal of the inmate’s choosing,” said Department of Corrections spokesperson Stephanie Kiger. But they have to choose from “food items available to the general population through the correctional facility’s food service department, although adherence to the scheduled menu and/or recommended portion sizes will not be required.”
• Florida limits prisoners to $40 for a last meal and the food must be purchased locally. Oklahoma has a $25 limit.
• Maryland abolished the death penalty in 2013. But condemned prisoners before then were given regular prison kitchen meals, the state’s former prison spokesman told USA TODAY.

It has come to my attention that some people are having issues playing the episodes through Amazon Music. This is a problem on Amazon’s end because the episodes on Amazon are pulled directly from the RSS stream. If you encounter any issues try downloading the episode to your Amazon Music library and play from your “downloads” tab and it should be fine. If that doesn’t work please let me know. I apologize for any inconvenience.

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Transcribed by TurboScribe.ai.

Hello and welcome to another episode of The Final Course. This is Stephanie Hicks and I am your host. In this episode we are going to cover the execution and last meal of Lawrence Russell Brewer II.
I want to start out this episode with a trigger warning, just because the content in this particular episode is going to be quite graphic. And there are some triggering aspects to his crimes because it was a hate crime. And I feel like it’s important to include that because we have to get a sense of the person as a whole.
And I felt like by leaving that information out, it’s not going to give us a true picture of who Lawrence Russell Brewer actually was. So if you have an issue with hearing about hate crimes or graphic descriptions of a murder, I would advise you to go ahead and stop this episode now. And you can resume with us at the next episode.
Before I start this episode, I want to say a quick thank you to all of you who tuned in and listened to my previous episode, which was about Velma Barfield. If you haven’t heard that one, be sure to go back and click play on that one next. I think you’ll enjoy it.
The reason that this particular person caught my eye was honestly simply because it was a hate crime. And while I realize that murder is murder and there are extenuating circumstances in each and every case that I look at, this one just to me seemed to be especially heinous. And I think you’ll find that it is extremely interesting just because of the last meal request and the things that were spawned from this case and this particular man.
So it’s going to be a lot of information. And again, some of it could be quite triggering. So if you have a kind of a weak stomach and you don’t want to hear this kind of thing, go ahead and press stop now before we get into it.
So when I was researching Lawrence Russell Brewer, the amount of information that I could find on him and his early life was really sparse. I couldn’t find a lot. I looked at several, several, several different sources, and it was just very limited information.
The information that was out there was just kind of thrown in as an afterthought. It seemed more of the information was about the crime itself and about what came after that when when we get to talking about his last meal and execution. So what I did find was that Lawrence Russell Brewer II was born on March 13th, 1967, in Lamar, Texas, to Lawrence Russell Brewer and Helen Gwen Gilliam Brewer.
It seems he had two sisters and a brother, although I could not find their names anywhere. I also couldn’t find the name of his son, but he did have one son by his

marriage to Sylvia Nunez, who he married on July the 16th, 1993. Now, pretty much the only thing other than those facts that I found about his early life actually came from his attorney, Doug Barlow.
So, you know, seeing as how it was his attorney, take it with a grain of salt. I don’t know how factual it is, but according to his attorney, Doug Barlow, Brewer had something of a rough life. He was kicked out of his home when he was 14 years old, and he would sneak back and stay in the camping trailer in the backyard, something that his mom would let him do.
I think it’s important to emphasize that it was something his mom let him do. Again, this is coming from the attorney, so take it with a grain of salt. But that seems to imply that it was his father who kicked him out of the home, if that was, in fact, what happened.
The reason that I said I think it’s important to note that is because his father actually made a statement at his trial that was interesting, and I’ll cover that here in just a moment when we get to that part. Now, Brewer was convicted, along with his co- defendants, Sean Barry and John King, in the murder of James Byrd Jr. The offense involved Brewer and his two co-defendants torturing and killing the 49-year-old handicapped black male in rural Jasper County, Texas. Now, Brewer and King were documented members of the Confederate Knights of America, which was a prison gang for white supremacists.
And they had a large number of Ku Klux Klan and other racial separatist organization paraphernalia that was discovered in the residence that was occupied by the three men. That was something that also came out at trial. Both Brewer and John King were passengers in a truck driven by Sean Barry.
At 1.30 a.m. on June 7, 1998, the men, all white, offered a ride to James Byrd Jr. as he was walking home from a party. The men drove to a country road outside of Jasper, Texas. As they stood by the truck smoking, the three men attacked Byrd, tied his feet with a chain, and dragged him behind the truck, eventually decapitating him.
The men left Byrd’s body on the road and went to eat barbecue. The East Texas killing touched off a national movement to strengthen punishments for crimes motivated by hate. Investigators later found Brewer’s DNA on a cigarette and beer bottle at the crime scene and Byrd’s blood on his shoes.
While Brewer blamed Barry for the killing, prosecutors said it happened because King and Brewer wanted to start a white supremacist group in Jasper, according to the Attorney General’s report. King, like Brewer, was sentenced to die for the crime and Barry was sent to prison for life. Now here’s where we get into the meat and potatoes of the crime, if you will.

And this is going to be the part that’s going to be quite graphic and quite triggering to some people. So once again, if you’re still listening and you’re on the fence and you think you probably can’t handle this, now would be a good time to go ahead and stop. So on June 7, 1998, police officers responded to a call to go to Huff Creek Road in the town of Jasper.
In the road in front of a church, they discovered the body of an African-American male missing the head, neck and right arm. The remains of pants and underwear were gathered around the victim’s ankles. About a mile and a half up the road, they discovered the head, neck and arm by a culvert in a driveway.
The trail of smeared blood and drag marks led from the victim’s torso to the detached upper portion of the victim’s body and continued another mile and a half down Huff Creek Road and a dirt logging road. A wallet found on the jogging road contained identification for James Byrd Jr. And James Byrd Jr. was actually a resident of Jasper. So this was in his town.
It wasn’t like he was traveling. This was where he lived. Along the route, police also found Byrd’s dentures, keys, shirt, undershirt and his watch.
Now at the end of the logging road, this trail ended in an area of matted down grass and it looked like there was the scene of a fight. At that site and along the logging road, the police discovered lots of items that were taken into evidence. They found a cigarette lighter engraved with the words Possum and KKK.
They also found a driver wrench inscribed with the name Barry. They found cigarette butts, a can of fix-a-flat, a CD, a woman’s watch, a can of black spray paint, a pack of Marlboro light cigarettes, beer bottles, a button from Byrd’s shirt and Byrd’s baseball cap. Chemical analysis revealed a substance on James Byrd’s shirt and cap were consistent with the black spray paint.
The following evening, police stopped Sean Barry for a traffic violation in his Primer Gray pickup truck. Behind the front seat, police discovered a set of tools matching the wrench that was found at the fight scene. They arrested Barry and confiscated the truck.
DNA testing revealed that blood spatters underneath the truck and on one of the truck’s tires matched Byrd’s DNA. In the bed of the truck, police noticed a rust stain in a chain pattern and detected blood matching Byrd’s on a spare tire. Six tires that were on or associated with Barry’s truck were examined, and three of the four tires on the truck were of different makes.
Tire casts taken at the fight scene and in front of the church where the torso was found were consistent with each of these tires. An FBI chemist detected a substance consistent with Fix-A-Flat inside one of the six tires. Now I’m giving you all that information because

all of these things were put into evidence at the trial.
So it’s not like this was a case of possible mistaken identity and things like that. There was a lot of evidence in this trial, and there’s a lot more that I’m not even going to cover because I don’t want to waste time on that. But I think it’s important to note just how much evidence there was.
And we’ll touch on that again at some point before we finish this episode. Now Sean Barry shared an apartment with Lawrence Russell Brewer and John William King. And in my research, I could not find any information about why Brewer was living with these two men.
Because as I stated, I did find that he had been married and had a son. So I’m assuming that maybe he and his wife were separated. I couldn’t find any information stating that they had gotten divorced.
So I’m going on the assumption that they were just separated and he had moved in with these two men. John William King was known to Brewer because they had served time together previously. And as I stated before, they had both joined that prison gang, the Confederate Knights of America, that was a white separatist group.
So when police and FBI agents searched that apartment, they confiscated King’s drawings and writings, as well as clothing and shoes of each of the three roommates. DNA analysis revealed that the jeans and boots that Barry had been wearing on the night of the murder were stained with blood that matched Byrd’s DNA. An analyst with the FBI lab determined that a shoe print found near a large blood stain on the logging road was made by a Rugged Outback brand sandal.
King owned a pair of Rugged Outback sandals and had been seen wearing them on the evening of the murder. Sean Barry also owned a pair of Rugged Outback sandals that were a half size different from King’s. One of the pairs of these sandals confiscated from the apartment bore a blood stain that also matched Byrd’s DNA.
A Nike tennis shoe with the initials LB in the tongue was also stained with blood matching Byrd’s. Although Sean Barry’s brother, Lewis Barry, stayed at the apartment from time to time and shared the same initials as Lawrence Brewer, Lewis Barry testified that the shoes were not his and demonstrated that his foot was significantly larger than Brewer’s. DNA analysis was also conducted on three cigarette butts taken from the fight scene and logging road.
DNA on one of the cigarette butts established King as the major contributor. Now let’s just stop here for a second because here’s where I’m going to interject a personal opinion that doesn’t have a whole lot to do with what I’m talking about right now, but I feel like it’s important to add in here simply because they actually mentioned the DNA

on the cigarette butts and I found that in several instances that was a big piece of evidence that was produced at their trials. Now my personal opinion is if I were on a jury, and this is just me, like me, hate me, feel indifferent, it’s neither here nor there.
But as for me, if I were on a jury and that was the only piece of evidence that they had was DNA on a cigarette butt, that would not be enough for me to convict someone. Now that’s not the case here because as we’ve already discussed, they had a ton of evidence. They had a lot that tied these men to this crime.
They had blood evidence that was on clothing, all kinds of things. But I just wanted to stop and point out for a second that DNA analysis done on a cigarette butt at a crime scene, in my opinion, is not enough to hold a conviction for someone. And the reason being, I myself am an ex-smoker.
I hate to admit that, but in the spirit of transparency, I smoked for many years. To those of you who don’t smoke or have never smoked, kudos to you. That’s wonderful, and I’m so proud of you for making that choice because it is a hard thing to try to get away from.
But for those of us who do smoke or have smoked, I think that we’ll all agree that at any given time, you could have possibly thrown out a cigarette butt onto the road, either by driving down the road, by standing around talking and tossing a cigarette butt. It’s not a pretty truth, but it is the truth, at least for most of us. I don’t think I could find one smoker or previous smoker that could say that they had never just thrown out a cigarette butt somewhere and littered.
So the fact that they found cigarette butts in and of itself is not particularly condemning because that could have been thrown out while they were going down the road. They could have stopped and had a flat tire or something. It’s because it’s tied in with the other evidence that I think makes it compelling.
So I just wanted to kind of throw that little disclaimer out there that I am not in any way saying that that DNA evidence on those cigarette butts was the smoking gun because it is not, not in my opinion. It’s just that in this case, there were so many other things that were presented as evidence that all of the evidence as a whole is what led to the guilty conviction. I just thought that was important to point out because I think there are a lot of people that are sitting in our prisons right now that are not guilty of the things that they have been accused of.
And that is absolutely something that I’m going to cover in a later episode. So just be prepared for that. But I did want to throw that out there because I thought that was important to note, at least for me, just my own personal convictions.
I felt like it was important to note that that was not the only piece of evidence. Now there was this guy named Tommy Falk. And he testified that Barry Brewer and King

frequented his home and they had played paintball in the woods behind his trailer.
And when police conducted a search of these woods, they found a large hole covered by plywood and debris. And underneath that cover, they discovered a 24-foot logging chain that matched the rust imprint in the bed of Barry’s truck. Now this part right here, I felt was particularly gruesome.
And it really hurt my heart when I was reading this. But the evidence revealed that Byrd’s body was severed about a mile and a half down the logging and asphalt roads, resulting in his death. But that his torso was dragged another mile and a half before it was deposited in front of the church.
So that means that not only was he alive during half of that torturous journey, but also that he was conscious for most, if not all, of that time. And the reason they came to that conclusion was because his injuries revealed that he had injuries that were consistent with him attempting to hold up his head to relieve the pain of the asphalt scraping and tearing his skin. So he was made to suffer just the most cruel and horrific pain before his body was finally torn apart, which is what killed him.
Again, I know that’s gruesome. I hated reading about it, and I’m desensitized to a lot of stuff because, as I’ve stated before, I am a true crime junkie. But that was just particularly awful to read because I can’t imagine what Mr. Byrd went through.
And the fact that these three men committed this crime and then left his, I can’t even say his body, left his body parts scattered along the roadway, and then they went to eat barbecue. It just shows a complete lack of respect for human life. And again, I know that all of that information was really gruesome, really hard to listen to, but I felt like it was important to include so that we could get a true picture of who Brewer was.
Now, at the trial, the prosecutors said that they believed that the three men killed Mr. Byrd to promote their fledgling white supremacist organization, the Confederate Knights of America, which we’ve mentioned before, and to initiate Berry into the group. So the evidence showed that it was pretty much Brewer and King, and Berry was just kind of hanging along and was wanting to join the group maybe, but was not a quote-unquote documented member. Now, when Brewer took the stand in his own defense, he blamed the other two for the killing.
He said that King had started a fight with Mr. Byrd and that Berry was the one who had slashed the victim across the throat before chaining him to the bumper of the pickup truck. And we see this a lot. He’s basically distancing himself from the other co- defendants because he’s trying to say, I was just there.
I didn’t do anything. And he actually told the jury that he had kicked Mr. Byrd, but that he, quote, had no intention of killing nobody, end quote. However, a psychiatrist testified

that Brewer did not appear repentant for his crimes.
And so he was ultimately convicted and sentenced to death. And actually, the day before his execution, he even doubled down on expressing no remorse because he told KHOU 11 News in Houston, quote, as far as any regrets, no, I have no regrets. No, I’d do it all over again to tell you the truth, end quote.
So although he was trying to distance himself in the trial, after he’d been convicted and was sentenced to death, he wanted to go ahead and make it be known that he didn’t care, he didn’t regret this, and he would do it over again. It’s important to note, just for a historical emphasis, Brewer and King were the first white men to be sentenced to death for killing a black person in the history of modern Texas. I think it’s also important to note that, again, this happened in Texas, and Texas has executed the most people in the United States since the death penalty was reinstated in 1976.
So Texas doesn’t play, but this was the first instance where there were white men that were sentenced to death for killing a black person. So now we’re going to get into the part about his last meal, and there was a lot of controversy around that. So I thought this was particularly interesting, and this was what was the primary reason for me including him in an episode was because of the historical aspect of it as to what this led to.
So before his execution, Brewer ordered this large and extensive last meal that actually prompted the end of last meal requests in Texas. As of today, which is September 2, 2024, there is no such thing as a last meal request in the state of Texas any longer. Now, of course, they do get a meal, but they are not allowed to make special requests.
They eat whatever the prison cafeteria is doling out that day. And Lawrence Russell Brewer II was the reason for that. So let’s take a look at what he requested for his last meal.
His request included two chicken fried steaks with gravy and sliced onions, a triple patty bacon cheeseburger, a cheese omelet with ground beef, tomatoes, onions, bell pepper, and jalapenos, a bowl of fried okra with ketchup, one pound of barbecued meat with half a loaf of white bread, three fully loaded fajitas, an entire meat lover’s pizza, one pint of Blue Bell vanilla ice cream, a slab of peanut butter fudge with crushed peanuts on top, and three root beers. Now, you’re probably thinking, well, he figured if he was going out, you know, he was going to indulge, he was going to be gluttonous, he was going to get everything he could get. But the thing is, when the meal was presented to him, he told officials that he was not hungry.
And as a result, he did not eat any of it. The entire meal was discarded. And that prompted State Senator John Whitmire to ask Texan prison officials to end the 87-year- old tradition of giving last meals to condemned inmates.

The prison agency’s executive director responded by stating that the practice had been terminated effective immediately. Now, not to try to make light of anything to do with the heinous crimes that this man and his co-defendants committed, because it’s truly horrible. But, you know, in a way, you can kind of look at this like one person spoiling it for everyone.
And do we feel like he did this as a statement, like a, you know, for lack of a better term, was this a big F.U. to the state of Texas for executing him? I mean, it just sounds like this guy was just, he was a tremendous douchebag. And he carried that all the way to his execution in what he did with the last meal. So then on September the 21st, 2011, Brewer, who was 44 years old at the time, was executed.
When he was asked if he had any final words, his response was, quote, no, I have no final statement, end quote. He was then executed via lethal injection and was pronounced dead at 621 p.m. Now, what does Lawrence Russell Brewer’s choice of last meals say about him as a person? In my opinion, he was a narcissist. And by him ordering this extensive last meal and then refusing to eat it, therefore wasting it, that was his way of flipping off the state as well as his victim’s family and friends.
He clearly was not remorseful for his actions. And he just didn’t care. He just wanted to basically get one last jab in before they executed him.
Ironically, it was not the state or the victim’s family that was hurt by his actions regarding his last meal. It was the prisoners that came after him because this resulted in the removal of the request for last meals for the state of Texas. Now, as I’ve told you before, different states have different laws regarding prisoners’ last meals for executions.
Some states don’t allow it at all. Other states have limits, dollar amount limits, for what their last meal can be. There are different requirements for different states.
And at one point, we’ll cover that. I’ll do an episode covering that because I think that in itself is interesting. But as far as Lawrence Russell Brewer, I think he was just a man that was filled with hate.
And I think that was obvious all the way to the end. I think his last meal request and him refusing to eat it was just his final show of how much hate was in him as a person. Now, don’t get me wrong.
I think that anyone who murders another human being, no matter what their reason is, has to have some kind of hate in their heart. But for him to help in murdering this person, this human being, just because of the color of his skin, and this was not only a hate crime, this was a crime of opportunity. They saw this man walking down the road and thought, hey, we’ll kill him.

And I would venture a guess that this was probably something that these three, or at least Brewer and King, had discussed about doing before because I think that it would be highly improbable that the three of these men came up with this idea and enacted it on the spur of the moment. I really find that hard to believe. But clearly, Brewer, with his white supremacist views and the hatred in his heart, he just decided to make a show out of his last meal as just one last act of hatred.
And who knows? Maybe he was hoping that it would lead to an end in last meal requests. Maybe he was just trying to stick it to whomever he could. And he did.
Like I said, it ruined it for the prisoners that come after him. Now, that may not matter to some of you if you feel like prisoners shouldn’t get a last meal request. But regardless, there were laws enacted that allowed these prisoners, clearly for 87 years, to have last meal requests.
And this man put an end to it by his choice. And it was just fascinating to me that this man must have just been filled with just an insane amount of hatred. And not only did he pay the price for it, but so did the prisoners who came after him.
So again, no matter what side of the fence you’re on regarding the death penalty, regarding last meals, you’ve got to admit this story was a wild ride. And I think it’s interesting because it has a lot of historical importance.

Transcribed by TurboScribe.ai.

(0:00 – 0:13) Hello and welcome to The Final Course. I’m Stephanie Hicks. I’ll be your host. (0:14 – 0:36)
And this is the inaugural episode of The Final Course. So I wanted to give you a little bit of insight into why I started this podcast before we delve into the first person that we’re going to be examining today. I started this podcast because I am a fan of true crime and have been for many, many years even before it became popular.
(0:38 – 1:18)
I love a lot of content that is put out by different creators, but I wanted to look at something a little different. I stumbled across an article about a prisoner and their last meal, and it got me to thinking and I started doing some research and found that I was fascinated by the variances between what these prisoners request for their final meals. You have some that totally reject a final meal, and then you have some that want everything under the sun.
(1:19 – 1:57)
I also found it fascinating that there are different allowances and different requirements for different states regarding the final meal. It also started me thinking about the death penalty itself, which has been something that I’ve thought about many times over the years, and I have some opinions on and we’ll get into that a little later. Probably not this episode, but I definitely want to take a look at the death penalty as a whole in a later episode.
(1:57 – 2:22)
Just so you know a little bit about me, as I said, my name is Stephanie Hicks. I am from North Carolina, born and raised, been here all my life. So you will definitely hear my southern drawl coming out at times, and there may be things that I don’t say correctly, I don’t pronounce correctly, or I may use some slang term that if you are not from North Carolina, you may not understand.
(2:22 – 2:44)
All that being said, I don’t want this to be a professional podcast because I am not a professional. I am putting this out there merely for my enjoyment and hopefully for the enjoyment of you guys that are listening. I want to talk to you the way a person talks to

a friend because I definitely want feedback from you.
(2:44 – 3:06)
I want to interact with the people that are listening. This is what I developed this podcast for. So again, the final course will be examining the life and crimes of various prisoners who were executed on death row and the last meals that they ordered and how that makes us feel, what that says about them as a person.
(3:07 – 3:42)
Does it say anything at all? And ultimately, is it even important? How do we feel about a prisoner’s final meal? There are so many things that go into this and so many different nuances, and I want to cover them all. But for now, we’re going to start in on our first prisoner that I wanted to shine a light on, and that is Velma Barfield. Velma Barfield was born Margie Velma Bullard on October 29, 1932.
(3:43 – 4:18)
Now, I did run across some sources that listed her birth date as October the 23rd, but for the sake of this episode, we’re going to go with October the 29th since that is what is listed on the Find a Grave website, findagrave.com, where it shows that she is buried in Parkton Cemetery in Parkton Robeson County, North Carolina. She was born in Eastover, North Carolina, which is a small town in Cumberland County, North Carolina, seven miles from Fayetteville. She was born to Murphy and Lillian Bullard.
(4:18 – 4:34)
She was the oldest girl and second of nine children. They were a poor family and strict Pentecostal Christians. Her father, Murphy, was allegedly physically and sexually abusive, and Lillian ignored it.
(4:35 – 5:17)
Now, anything that I say allegedly is because I could not find substantiating proof to prove that that was true. So this is something that was said by witnesses, other people who were in the know, so to speak. And she was born in a small town, and when I say that, just to give you an idea, especially if you’re not from North Carolina, Eastover, the town where she was born, as of 2022 had a population of 3,692 compared to, if you know anything about Greensboro, Greensboro population as of 2022 was 301,115.
(5:17 – 5:28)
So quite a difference. So Greensboro population is 10 times the population of Eastover. Just to give you an idea of how small the town was that she was from.

(5:30 – 5:52)
And if you know anything about rural life in North Carolina, especially back in the 30s, things were quite a bit different than they are now. She dropped out of high school and married Thomas Burke in 1949 when she was only 17 years old. And within a couple of years, she had two children, her son Ron and daughter Kim.
(5:53 – 6:15)
By all accounts, the marriage was good until around 1965 or 66. I saw both years in the material I was looking at. So around that time, 65 or 66, Thomas was in an automobile accident and suffered some severe head injuries that led to him becoming unable to work.
(6:15 – 6:40)
Velma, in turn, worked in a textile mill. And I saw that she worked at a store for a short time to help provide for the family and to make ends meet, but subsequently left due to medical issues, which resulted in an emergency hysterectomy. Now, after his automobile accident, it’s reported that Burke rapidly became an alcoholic.
(6:41 – 7:02)
And in turn, Velma started taking tranquilizers and antidepressants mainly because of the stress that she was under and how her family was falling apart and also because of having the emergency hysterectomy. She had some feelings about herself as a woman. She was very young.
(7:03 – 7:31)
And also, again, from the rural South, it just, you know, women were expected to have kids and have a family. And all of this was kind of deteriorating in front of her eyes. She eventually ended up having a mental breakdown, which led to her having an addiction to various drugs, such as tranquilizers, sleeping pills, antidepressants, and barbiturates, even going to multiple doctors to obtain these prescriptions.
(7:32 – 7:55)
Barfield’s addiction led to overdosing and subsequent hospital treatment, resulting in four admissions from 1972 to 1975. On April 4, 1969, Burke started drinking. The couple ended up having a fight, and then he passed out, at which time Barfield took her kids and ran some errands.
(7:55 – 8:14)
And when they came back, they found that the house had caught fire and Burke was

dead from smoke inhalation. A few months after the fire that killed Burke, the house caught fire again, this time burning it to the ground. So Barfield ends up moving back home with her parents, taking her two children with her.
(8:16 – 8:36)
She didn’t stay there long because in August of 1970, she ended up marrying Jennings Barfield. But that didn’t last either. Jennings ended up dying on March 22, 1971, roughly six months or so after their marriage.
(8:36 – 8:54)
He dies from either heart failure or a heart attack. I saw both being thrown out there when I was researching this. After Velma and her kids move back in with her parents again, her father dies of lung cancer and then her mother becomes ill.
(8:55 – 9:27)
In the summer of 1975, Lillian, her mother, began complaining of severe stomach pain, diarrhea, vomiting, and nausea, and was later admitted to an area hospital where her symptoms subsided and she was sent home a few days later. Velma started taking jobs around town as a caretaker, but in 1975, she was convicted of seven counts of writing bad checks and was sentenced to six months in prison. She was released after having served only three months.
(9:28 – 10:06)
Then by 1976, she was working, caring for Montgomery and Dolly Edwards in Lumberton, North Carolina. Montgomery fell ill and died on January 29, 1977, and then Dolly began experiencing symptoms that were identical to Lillian’s and died just over a month later on March 1. The following year, Barfield took on another caretaker job working for John Henry and Record Lee. I have to stop here and just say I absolutely loved this woman’s name.
(10:06 – 10:28)
I have never heard of another person called Record, R-E-C-O-R-D, Record Lee. You got to be from the South to have a name like that. Anyway, so she’s working for John Henry and Record Lee, and Record had suffered a broken leg, so that’s why they needed a caretaker.
(10:29 – 10:55)
Then on June 3, 1977, Lee’s husband, John Henry, started having similar symptoms to Dolly Edwards and Lillian Bullard and died soon afterwards. His doctors diagnosed it as a, quote, severe stomach virus. Around this time, Velma had started a new relationship

with a man named Roland Stewart Taylor.
(10:56 – 11:24)
He was a widower and a tobacco farmer, and he was also a relative of Dolly Edwards, and Velma soon moved in with him. It wasn’t long she started forging checks from Taylor’s account to pay for her addiction to prescription drugs. Then in 1978, Taylor and Barfield were at a Pentecostal revival in Cumberland County when Taylor began to complain of severe stomach pain.
(11:24 – 11:59)
Sound familiar? He was later admitted to the hospital and ended up dying a few days later on February 3, 1978, in Lumberton, North Carolina. An anonymous tip and an autopsy report showing arsenic from rat poison in Taylor’s system led to Velma being arrested and charged with his murder on May 13, 1978. Interestingly enough, one source that I found said that it was Barfield’s own sister who tearfully called police and told them that Barfield had murdered Taylor and others.
(11:59 – 12:29)
And it is alleged that when Barfield was confronted by her own son about Taylor’s murder, Barfield replied, quote, I only meant to make him sick, end quote. Barfield ultimately confessed to using arsenic to poison Taylor, Montgomery and Dolly Edwards, John Henry Lee, and her mother, Lillian Burke. Velma always attended the funerals of her victims and appeared to genuinely grieve for them.
(12:29 – 12:48)
But her motives for these murders were all the same. She had misappropriated money from her victims and then, according to her, tried to make them ill so she could nurse them while finding another job to enable her to repay the money. She had even taken out a fraudulent loan under her mother’s name.
(12:48 – 13:26)
Despite her confession, Velma continued to deny that she had anything to do with the murders of Thomas Burke or Jennings Barfield, even though Jennings was exhumed after her arrest and traces of arsenic were found in his body. Despite confessing to multiple murders, Barfield was only charged and tried for the murder of Stuart Taylor, to which she pleaded insanity. Barfield appeared cold and uncaring on the stand, it was reported, and she even gave the district attorney a round of applause when he made his closing speech.
(13:27 – 13:44)

So yeah, maybe there was a justification for the insanity plea there. You don’t root for the other team. But in December 1978, Barfield was convicted of the first-degree murder of Roland Stuart Taylor and the jury recommended the death sentence, citing aggravated circumstances.
(13:46 – 14:17)
Barfield was imprisoned at Central Prison in Raleigh, North Carolina in an area for escape-prone and mentally ill prisoners as there was no designated area for women under death sentences at the time and she was the only female death row inmate. Barfield became known as the Death Row Granny. While she was imprisoned and now that she’s off the drugs, Barfield did express remorse for the murders and became a born-again Christian while awaiting trial.
(14:17 – 14:44)
During the six years she spent at Central Prison, she counseled and ministered to other prisoners. Her final appeal was filed on October 30, 1984 in the North Carolina Supreme Court on the grounds that she was incompetent at her original trial by virtue of her drug addiction. This was rejected by the court and this was the last of many appeals and the third one that was rejected by the Supreme Court.
(14:44 – 15:10)
So Barfield began writing letters to Governor Jim Hunt in which she argued that her born- again Christian faith should be considered as a mitigating factor for commuting her sentence to life in prison. She garnered a great deal of support from many Christians across the United States including evangelists Billy and Ruth Graham. Hunt declined to grant clemency and was unimpressed by her religious conversion and good behavior on death row.
(15:11 – 16:01)
It is claimed by some that Hunt could not reprieve her without looking soft on crime during the run up to the state elections in 1984. She began to accept her death and instructed her attorney, Jimmy Little, to drop all appeals the day before she was due to be executed saying that she wanted to, quote, She had little fear of what lay ahead and is actually quoted as saying, quote, Under North Carolina law, she was allowed the choice of execution by lethal gas or lethal injection and not surprisingly, she chose the latter. Here’s where we get to the last meal.
(16:01 – 16:25)
She actually declined her last meal and instead asked a guard to get her Coca-Cola and cheese doodles. Now we’ll get into more on that here in just a moment. Velma Barfield

was executed on November 2nd, 1984 at Central Prison in Raleigh, North Carolina.
(16:25 – 16:46)
She was 52 years old at the time of her execution and she was the first woman put to death by lethal injection in the United States. Now lots of people have mixed opinions on Velma Barfield. Yes, she committed some horrible crimes.
(16:47 – 16:58)
Yes, she did it for poor reasons. She clearly made bad choices. But at the same time, she was a model prisoner and did a lot of good while she was in prison.
(16:59 – 17:19)
Now how does one relate to the other? I’m not sure. That’s something that we’ll have to delve more into in this podcast, which is one of the purposes. I want to know what you guys think about the relation to the crimes and the death penalty.
(17:20 – 17:36)
What warrants being put to death? It’s an interesting thought and one that is highly controversial. You have people on both sides of the fence and all with good arguments. Again, we’ll get more into that in some more episodes.
(17:36 – 17:56)
But for now, I want to talk about her last meal or better, the lack thereof. Instead of choosing a traditional last meal, she simply chose Coca-Cola and cheese doodles. It says that she asked a guard to get her these items.
(17:56 – 18:27)
I’ve read that on multiple sites. And so I’m taking that and making an assumption that he basically just got these things from a vending machine for her. Now what does that say? Could it be that she chose Coca-Cola and cheese doodles, two items out of a vending machine, that any of us at any given time have made a choice if we were out and about and couldn’t stop to get anything, couldn’t stop to have lunch? You know, you grab something from the vending machine.
(18:27 – 18:37)
It’s just simple, easy, and quick. However, we know that Barfield didn’t have these kind of restraints. She was not in a hurry.
(18:37 – 18:43)

She was not working. She was not needing something easy. She didn’t feel like cooking, all that.
(18:43 – 18:52)
These were not factors here. She could have had pretty much what she wanted. Instead, she just said, hey, grab me a bag of cheese doodles and a Coke.
(18:53 – 19:10)
Could it be that it was because she was nervous? You know, sometimes when we get nervous, we don’t want to eat a lot. We feel nauseated, that type of thing. So I’m going to make the assumption that that’s probably why she just wanted these two small little items.
(19:11 – 19:33)
The other option is that maybe she was trying to send a message that I don’t need anything here in this world. You know, she made the quote that said when she goes into the death chamber, that’s her gateway to heaven. So, you know, I’m not going to splurge on extravagant items here on Earth.
(19:33 – 19:49)
I’m not going to have this big, fancy feast as my last meal on Earth because I don’t need these earthly things. So that’s another option that may be the reason why she chose these items. It’s also worth noting that she was born in the rural South.
(19:50 – 20:06)
During the Depression years, she was growing up very poor. So to someone like her, cheese doodles and Coca-Cola would have been an extravagance. Maybe that’s something that she never got a lot of in her life, or at least not until she was much older.
(20:06 – 20:22)
And I’m figuring that because of her addiction problems and things like that, she didn’t really have any spare money. If she did, she wouldn’t have been stealing and murdering people for it. So maybe that was just, you know, hey, that’s a childhood want.
(20:22 – 20:27)
I’ve always wanted this when I was a kid. I can have one thing. This is what I want. (20:28 – 20:54)
That’s a possibility, right? I don’t know. I think there are so many things, so many

conclusions that can be drawn from her choice of a last meal. And it makes you think, if I had to choose one meal for my final meal here on Earth, what would I choose and why? Was there even any thought put behind it? Maybe that’s just what sounded good to her at the moment.
(20:54 – 21:22)
Maybe it really wasn’t that deep. We’ll never know because she’s no longer here to tell us why that was what she chose. What we can do is look on this and maybe try to, in some small way, understand the psyche of a person that committed these atrocities, that committed these horrible crimes, even to the people that she supposedly was supposed to love and take care of, including her own mother.
(21:22 – 21:39)
I know for me, my mother is the closest thing to God here on this Earth. I love my mother. I mean, I have many wonderful family members and friends, don’t get me wrong, but I’m just saying there’s something special about the person who brought you in this world.
(21:39 – 22:04)
So to think of killing them for financial gain especially, I mean, that just to me blows my mind. And maybe that’s what creates my fascination with these true crime stories like this. I’ve always tried to understand the psyche and the reasoning of these people who commit these crimes and why they do that.
(22:05 – 22:24)
I’ve just always wanted to try to wrap my mind around how these people could commit these horrible acts. And it’s very difficult to do. I can’t understand it because fortunately, fortunately for myself and for others, my mind doesn’t work that way.
(22:25 – 22:37)
I can’t understand why and how these people are able to do what they do. And let’s not get it twisted. These are still people.
(22:37 – 22:59)
As much as we would like to be able to separate that fact, these are still people. And a lot of times they’re people who have had tremendously horrible things happen to them in their past. Now that’s not to say that that’s an excuse for them to commit the crimes that they do.
(22:59 – 23:23)

But I think you have to look at the person as a whole to maybe gain some understanding about why their mind worked that way. There’s never going to be any excuse for them committing these crimes. Her stealing money and killing these people basically to cover it up, that’s not a reason, that’s not a justification.
(23:24 – 23:41)
But it’s the only one she could give, and that is what I try to wrap my mind around. The fact that that was her reasoning, the fact that she felt that was the only option, that’s what intrigues me. That’s what fascinates me.
(23:42 – 24:04)
And I hope that you feel the same way because I think this is a very interesting topic and I think that there are certain parts of these stories that are just not touched on. One being the mental status of the person committing the crime. And I don’t mean that they have mental illness or anything like that.
(24:04 – 24:29)
I’m just saying where their head was at at that time. What were they thinking? How did they justify that to themselves? Or did they? Did they just not have a conscience and that’s how they were able to get away with it? And these are people like Velma Barfield who not only committed this crime once, but multiple times. Maybe she enjoyed it.
(24:30 – 24:35)
Maybe she felt like, Hey, I got away with it once. I can get away with it again. And she almost did.
(24:36 – 25:02)
She could have stopped short and probably would have never been found out because it was Stuart Taylor’s death that ultimately led to her downfall. But it’s interesting to think of what goes on in their mind and try to maybe come up with some kind of scenario that we could possibly understand a little better. And their last meal plays into that because I feel like that says a lot about the person.
(25:03 – 25:21)
It still is hard to understand and we can only draw assumptions from it. But on those assumptions, we can make a conclusion that sits well in our mind and helps us to understand people a little better. I hope that you enjoyed this podcast.
(25:21 – 25:29)

I hope that you’ll tune in for the next one. I’m very excited about this series and I hope that you are too. I’m glad to have you here with me.
(25:30 – 25:35)
Like I said, we’re all friends here. So I want to interact with you. Tell me who you want to hear about next.
(25:35 – 25:54)
We’re going to be having some discussions and a few surprises along the way. So as long as you’ll stay with me, I will enjoy having you here and you can just buckle up and we can enjoy this ride together. So hold on to your napkin and fork until we meet again next time on the final course.

Transcribed by TurboScribe.ai.

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