On the morning of October 3, 1999, a prisoner at the Cummins Unit of the Arkansas Department of Correction left his barracks at 7:27 for what the records called a "religious call." That gave him access to the area behind the kitchen where 500-gallon tanks were filled with slop for the prison's hogs. The usual tank had a metal grate welded over its opening. That morning a flat tire had put it out of service, and the spare tank in use had no grate. The prisoner climbed inside and was hauled out of the prison with the slop.
He was Kenneth Dewayne Williams, 20 years old, and he had arrived at Cummins 18 days earlier to serve life without parole for the murder of a 19-year-old college cheerleader. Before the next day was over, a retired prison official had been shot to death in his own yard, and a 24-year-old truck driver in Missouri had been killed in a crash at the end of a police chase. Williams later confessed to a fourth killing. He was executed on April 27, 2017, at the prison he had escaped from, the last of four men Arkansas put to death in eight days.
Most of what is known about Williams's early life comes from what his lawyers put before the courts and from what he said himself near the end. He grew up in Pine Bluff, Arkansas. In the postconviction case the Arkansas Supreme Court decided in 2007, his lawyers described a child shuffled between "a chaotic home, the violent streets, foster care, and the Division of Youth Services." The records they relied on, as the court summarized them, included meningitis and other health problems in infancy, parents who abused drugs and alcohol, a mother with a mild intellectual disability, a father often absent from the home, chronic marital conflict and domestic violence, poverty, and his own attention deficit disorder, learning disabilities and borderline intellectual functioning.
Williams told the same story in his own words. A 2017 report by Little Rock television station THV11 said he described a father who struggled with alcohol and crack cocaine and was often violent toward his mother, and said he himself was using drugs, had been sexually abused and was in a gang by the age of nine. The Arkansas Democrat-Gazette added years in foster homes, reform schools and juvenile lockup. At a clemency hearing in March 2017 he said he had grown up "angry and guilt-ridden, too ashamed to speak out" about the abuse, and he described the outlook he had as a young man: "In my world, it was get you before you can get me."
He had a daughter, Jasmine. By the spring of 2017 he had not seen her in 18 years.
The court records show a pattern that began a week before the killings. On December 5, 1998, a woman named Sharon Hence was at an ATM in Pine Bluff when a man got into her car. He held her at gunpoint with a silver revolver, made her withdraw money, and forced her to drive around town, often down dead-end streets. He yelled at her not to have a wreck and said he could not let her out because she would call the police. On a dead-end street he took her jewelry and ordered her out of the car toward some woods. When she refused, he drove off. Her car was later found burned near Southeast Arkansas College, close to where Williams lived. She picked him out of a lineup. In August 1999 a Jefferson County jury convicted Williams of aggravated robbery, theft, kidnapping and arson for that night, and the Arkansas Court of Appeals affirmed the convictions in November 2000.
Dominique Hurd, known to her family as Nikki, was 19, a student and cheerleader at the University of Arkansas at Pine Bluff. She was from Dallas. Her father, Ricardo Hurd, spoke publicly about her killing in 2017.
On the afternoon of Sunday, December 13, 1998, Hurd and her friend Peter Robertson, a fellow UAPB student from New Jersey, borrowed a friend's gold 1999 Mitsubishi Galant and went to dinner at the Bonanza Steak House on Olive Street. The account that follows is taken from the Arkansas Supreme Court's 2001 opinion, which summarized the trial testimony.
When they walked out after dinner, while it was still light, a man came up, talked with them briefly, then drew a silver revolver and forced them into the car. He sat in the back and told Robertson where to drive. He made them stop at a bank ATM, where Robertson withdrew about $70. They tried Hurd's account, but she could not remember her code, and he told Robertson to drive on. He kept telling them they would be fine. He directed them down one dead-end street after another. At one of them he humiliated Hurd and made Robertson photograph her with Robertson's own camera.
At another dead end he ordered them out of the car, over a fence and behind a shed, and made them kneel. He got back into the car and started to leave, then backed up, asked Hurd for her purse, and asked where they were from. Hurd said Dallas; Robertson said New Jersey. The man made a racial slur about people from Dallas and emptied the revolver at them. Robertson made it to the road, where a passing car picked him up and took him to a house where he called the police. Stephen Hankins and his brothers went back to the place Robertson described, found Hurd, tried CPR and flagged down a car to call an ambulance. She had been shot twice, once in the top of the head, and died of her wounds. The borrowed Galant was found burning at the end of a dead-end street about two blocks from Williams's apartment.
Jerrell Jenkins, 36, lived in Pine Bluff. Gov. Asa Hutchinson's 2017 statement described him as a father and a stepfather. He was killed on December 13, 1998, the same day as Dominique Hurd. For more than six years his death was unsolved.
In 2005, writing from death row, Williams sent a letter to the Pine Bluff Commercial. He said he had become a born-again Christian and that his faith had led him to confess, and he admitted killing Jenkins on the same day he killed Hurd. The sources opened for this bio do not describe how or where Jenkins was killed, and they do not say whether the two killings were connected beyond the date. That gap is discussed below.
Jefferson County sheriff's investigators connected the two carjackings quickly. Investigator Greg Bohn testified that the Galant was found burning about two blocks from Williams's apartment and that Williams was already a suspect in the similar carjacking in which a car had been burned in almost the same spot. Investigator Stephen Moreau testified that the two cars had been burned 50 to 75 yards apart and that Williams lived about two blocks away. Robertson reacted strongly when shown Williams's photograph and picked him from a photo lineup. A search of Williams's apartment turned up Sharon Hence's insurance card. A co-worker, Richard Gilliam, testified that Williams had taken an unusual interest in the newspaper story about the carjacking and shooting.
Williams was charged on December 18, 1998, with capital murder, attempted capital murder, two counts of kidnapping, two of aggravated robbery, two of theft of property, and arson. Jury selection began on September 9, 1999, in Jefferson County Circuit Court, and the trial ended on September 14. The prosecution called 15 witnesses. Robertson identified Williams in the courtroom. He acknowledged that he had first told police the gunman might have had a gold tooth and later decided he had not. Dr. Charles Kokes, an associate medical examiner at the State Crime Lab, described Hurd's wounds. Over the defense's objection, the judge allowed Sharon Hence to testify about the December 5 carjacking to show the same method.
The defense tried to build an alibi. Two friends said Williams had been at a house watching football until about 3:30 or 4 p.m. that day. His sister, Yolanda Williams, testified that the police composite looked more like a cousin. A Pine Bluff fire official testified that 110 cars had burned in the city in 1998, and a car salesman said his dealership had sold 20 gold Galants since 1994. In closing, the prosecutor began to pull a false gold tooth from his pocket to show the jury that a gold tooth could come and go. The defense moved for a mistrial, and the judge refused and admonished the jury.
The jury convicted Williams on every count. It did not sentence him to death; it chose life without parole. According to the Associated Press, at sentencing he turned to Hurd's family and said, "You thought I was going to die, didn't you?" The Arkansas Supreme Court later noted that at that trial he had taunted the victims and their relatives and got into an altercation with one, and officers had to carry him from the courtroom.
He was sentenced on September 15, 1999, and taken to Cummins the same day. The Arkansas Supreme Court affirmed the Hurd convictions in an opinion by Justice Jim Hannah dated February 1, 2001, rejecting his arguments about the Hence testimony and the gold-tooth episode.
Eddie Gatewood, a friend, later testified that he had visited Williams at the prison and that Williams told him he could not spend his life there and had to get out. Williams asked him to leave clothes, a dress and a wig by the highway near the prison. Gatewood refused.
Prison records showed Williams present at the 6 a.m. count on October 3, 1999. After he climbed into the gateless slop tank and was carried out, he jumped from it in transit and hid in a ditch. At about 9:42 a.m. a local farmer, Jimmy Dreher, saw a man running across Highway 65 away from the prison. The tracks the prison later found led toward the home of Cecil and Genie Boren, about five miles away. Months later Williams's white prison shirt, with his name and number on it, was found hanging on a tree limb about a mile from the Boren house. The prison did not notice he was gone until the evening. Warden Warren Dale Reed got the call at about 7:15 p.m.; by then the tracking dogs could not pick up the scent.
Cecil Boren was 57. He and Genie Boren had been married 34 years, and they had daughters, Jodie Efird and Holly King, and grandchildren. His sister, Annette Boren Knight, and his family called him Peewee. He farmed near Grady, a few miles from Cummins, and had spent much of his working life in corrections. The Pine Bluff Commercial reported that he had once been an assistant superintendent at Cummins, later worked at the federal prison in Texarkana, and returned to Cummins for a short time; other reports call him a former deputy warden. Investigators said he did not appear to have been chosen because of his old job.
That Sunday morning Genie Boren went to church and left her husband working in the yard. A neighbor, Kay McLemore, drove past between 11:30 and noon and noticed his truck was gone. When Genie came home after noon, Cecil was missing and the house had been ransacked. She called McLemore, who came over. Every gun in the house was gone except a muzzle-loader. McLemore went outside calling for him and found him near a bayou not far from the house, face down, without shoes or socks. He had been shot seven times. Scrape marks showed he had been shot nearer the house and dragged. His wallet, valuables, clothing, guns and his Ford pickup were gone. The medical examiner, Dr. Frank Peretti, testified that all seven wounds were fired from some distance.
That afternoon Williams turned up at Gatewood's house in Boren's truck and asked for a map. Gatewood testified that Williams told him he had done something to someone to get the truck.
Michael Greenwood was 24, from Springfield, Missouri. He drove a water-delivery truck. He was married to Stacey, and they had a five-year-old daughter, Kayla; according to a 2017 Cox Media Group report, his wife was pregnant with twin boys.
On the morning of October 4, 1999, police officer Dennis Mathis spotted Boren's truck in Lebanon, Missouri, and tried to pull it over. Williams stopped, then drove off. Several police units chased him for about 60 miles at speeds up to 120 miles per hour. The chase ended when Greenwood's water truck turned left in front of him and Williams struck the cab. Greenwood was thrown from the truck and killed. Williams's truck was disabled; he ran, and was caught. The Democrat-Gazette placed the crash near Urbana, Missouri, and reported that Williams spat on Greenwood's body.
Officers took more than 114 items belonging to the Borens from the truck, including the stolen guns. Williams was wearing Cecil Boren's coveralls and two of his rings, along with clothing that belonged to Genie Boren. A magazine for a Ruger .22 pistol was in the truck. Boren had owned a Ruger .22 semi-automatic, which was never found, and the bullet fragments from his body could not be matched to any recovered gun.
"On October 4th 1999 I became a widow and a single mother of three," Stacey Yaw wrote to the governor 18 years later.
Williams was tried in Lincoln County, where Cummins is, in August 2000. He was charged with capital-felony murder based on two underlying felonies, aggravated robbery and first-degree escape, along with theft and escape. He was tried in prison clothes and in shackles. The judge allowed the restraints, and the Arkansas Supreme Court later called him a defendant who could hardly better "fit the definition of a high-risk defendant."
The judge allowed the jury to hear about the chase and Greenwood's death. The defense called the psychologist Mark Cunningham, who testified for about an hour and a half on Williams's upbringing, exposure to violence and drugs, and developmental problems. The defense also wanted a corrections expert to testify that the prison had been negligent in letting a known violent man escape; the judge refused funds for that witness. Boren's sister, Annette Boren Knight, gave victim-impact testimony, asking the jurors what they would do "if it was your brother or your sister or your baby that someone stole away from you."
The jury convicted Williams of capital murder, finding both underlying felonies proved, and of theft. It found four aggravating circumstances and one mitigating one, inter-generational family dysfunction, and unanimously chose death. One juror was replaced by an alternate before the penalty phase after her sister fell gravely ill. Circuit Judge Fred Davis III imposed the death sentence; Williams also received 40 years for theft as a habitual offender. He was 21.
On February 21, 2002, the Arkansas Supreme Court affirmed, in an opinion again written by Justice Hannah (Williams v. State, 347 Ark. 728). The court agreed with Williams on one point: first-degree escape requires the use or threat of a deadly weapon in the escape itself, and Williams had escaped unarmed in a slop tank and killed Boren at least five miles away and at least three hours later. That felony should not have gone to the jury. But the jury had also found aggravated robbery by a separate verdict, and that was enough to sustain the capital-murder conviction. The court held that Greenwood's death could count toward the multiple-deaths aggravating circumstance because the escape, the robbery and murder in Lincoln County and the crash in Missouri were one criminal episode. It rejected his claims about prison clothes, shackles, the victim-impact testimony, the corrections expert, the alternate juror and the jury's treatment of the mitigating evidence. Justice Annabelle Clinton Imber concurred.
In state postconviction proceedings Williams argued that his trial lawyers had been ineffective, including for failing to put Cunningham's underlying records before the jury, and asked for money to investigate juror bias in a county where many residents had ties to the prison. The Arkansas Supreme Court affirmed the denial of relief on March 1, 2007 (Williams v. State, 369 Ark. 104).
U.S. District Judge Susan Webber Wright denied his federal habeas petition in late 2008. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit affirmed on July 15, 2010 (Williams v. Norris, 612 F.3d 941), in an opinion by Judge Roger Wollman, and the U.S. Supreme Court declined review on March 28, 2011. An execution date of January 14, 2016, was stayed by a Pulaski County circuit judge while challenges to the state's execution drugs went forward.
On death row Williams said he converted to Christianity at 26. He became a minister to other prisoners, wrote books and designed board games meant to teach at-risk young people about gangs, drugs and bullying, according to the Democrat-Gazette. He corresponded with a freelance journalist, Deborah Robinson, and in letters excerpted by Vice and The Marshall Project wrote, "God has transformed me, and even the worst of us can be reformed and renewed."
Gov. Asa Hutchinson set eight executions over 11 days in April, in pairs, because the state's supply of midazolam, the sedative used first in its three-drug method, would expire at the end of the month. Arkansas had not executed anyone since 2005. Williams was paired with Jason McGehee for April 27. Courts stopped four of the eight, including McGehee's. Ledell Lee was executed on April 20, and Jack Jones Jr. and Marcel Williams on April 24.
Kenneth Williams's clemency hearing was held on March 31, 2017, at the Varner Unit. His lawyer, Jeff Rosenzweig, asked that his sentence be commuted to life without parole. Williams apologized, took responsibility for each victim, and asked the board to judge him by his conduct since his conversion: "A good tree cannot bear bad fruit." He said that at the time of the killings he had been "beyond feelings and high as a kite." Of Hurd's death he said, "I am responsible for this." Boren's family described a beloved grandfather, and his brother, Buddy, said Williams had taken Cecil from his wife and family. The parole board did not recommend clemency.
New lawyers from the Federal Community Defender Office in Philadelphia, James Moreno and Shawn Nolan, were appointed on April 11, and Rosenzweig withdrew on April 21. They raised several claims at once. They said three experts, the neuropsychologists Daniel Martel and Ricardo Weinstein and the psychologist Mark Cunningham, had concluded Williams was intellectually disabled, which under the Supreme Court's decision in Atkins v. Virginia would bar his execution, and that no court had ever held a hearing on it; KUAR reported his lawyers' figure of an IQ of 70. They alleged juror misconduct at the 2000 trial: a juror who worked at the prison talking in deliberations about how lifers and death-row prisoners were housed, a juror leading prayer from a Bible in the jury room, and a deputy telling jurors about a false threat from Williams. They argued that his sickle cell trait, lupus and organic brain damage made a painful death likely under the state's protocol.
The state called the filings a "calculated barrage of litigation." Solicitor General Lee Rudofsky told the U.S. Supreme Court that Williams had dropped an earlier intellectual-disability claim after scoring 78 on an IQ test.
On April 27 the Arkansas Supreme Court rejected two stay requests. Pulaski County Circuit Judge Mackie Pierce dismissed the medical complaint. The Eighth Circuit denied a stay. That evening U.S. District Judge D.P. Marshall Jr. ruled on a last motion based on the Greenwood family. "The Parole Board didn't stumble by not notifying the Greenwoods about Williams's clemency hearing," he wrote; Williams "got the process the Constitution requires."
Days before the execution Kayla Greenwood learned that Williams had a daughter who was trying to raise money to fly to Arkansas to see him. Jasmine Johnson, 21, had lost her mother at 12. Kayla called her. Her mother and stepfather paid for plane tickets for Jasmine and her three-year-old daughter, picked them up in Little Rock, and on Wednesday, April 26, drove them to the prison. It was the first time Williams had seen his daughter in 18 years and the first time he had met his granddaughter. "We cried and laughed," Kayla told the CBC. "If I could see my dad one last time or have my children meet him, I would want that more than anything." Jasmine said her father told her he would be more at peace.
Kayla Greenwood and Stacey Yaw wrote to the governor asking for a reprieve. "His execution will not bring my father back or return to us what has been taken, but it will cause additional suffering," Kayla wrote. She said the family had never been told about the clemency hearing and would have spoken for commutation. "As a family of very strong faith we don't feel taking a life is up to us to decide," Yaw wrote. Hutchinson praised the "genuine spirit of forgiveness and compassion" in the letter and declined. "Kenneth Williams murdered multiple people, and actions have consequences," he said. Boren's family had asked the parole board to let the sentence stand. "We are looking forward to this happening so we can put it behind us," Genie Boren said.
Williams was scheduled to die at 7 p.m. on April 27, 2017, and his death warrant expired at midnight. The governor's office held off while the U.S. Supreme Court considered his last petitions. At about 10:12 p.m. the Court denied the stay application and the habeas petition in In re Kenneth D. Williams, No. 16-8922, with no dissent noted. He had chosen Holy Communion from his spiritual adviser instead of a special last meal.
The Associated Press reporter Kelly Kissel, one of three media witnesses with Knowles Adkisson of the Pine Bluff Commercial and Donna Terrell of KLRT, kept a timeline. At 10:50 Williams, on the gurney, was asked by Corrections Director Wendy Kelley if he had anything to say, and read a prepared statement. "I was more than wrong," he said. "The crimes I perpetrated against you all were senseless, extremely hurtful and inexcusable." He extended his "sincerest of apologies to the families I have senselessly wronged and deprived of their loved ones." He thanked the Greenwood family for their "acts of grace, forgiveness and mercy" in bringing his child and grandchild to him. "I am not the same person I was," he said. "I seek forgiveness." His statement was signed "Minister Kenneth D. Williams, Arkansas death-row preacher." At 10:52 he began speaking in tongues, as he had told Robinson he would, and his words faded as the midazolam took effect.
At about 10:55 his body lurched about 15 times in quick succession and then several more times more slowly, over 10 to 20 seconds, with coughing audible through the glass, Kissel reported. Prison spokesman Solomon Graves said he shook for about 10 seconds. He breathed heavily through his mouth until about 10:59 and was then still. He was pronounced dead at 11:05 p.m., 13 minutes after the procedure began. He was 38. Courthouse News counted him as the 200th person executed in Arkansas since 1913.
The governor's spokesman, J.R. Davis, called the movement a "known involuntary muscular reaction" to midazolam and the executions "flawless." Williams's lawyers, citing the witness accounts, demanded an investigation of what they called a "problematic execution"; the ACLU of Arkansas said the state may have violated the Eighth Amendment. Hutchinson said he saw no need for anything beyond the routine review that follows every execution. "The long path of justice ended tonight," he said in his statement. "There has never been a question of guilt."
Jodie Efird, Boren's daughter, watched through a one-way window. "Any amount of movement he had was far less than any of his victims," she said. Holly King said, "We feel justice has been served." Attorney General Leslie Rutledge said the rule of law had been upheld "as the family of Cecil Boren saw justice done."
The Arkansas Claims Commission awarded the Boren family more than $300,000, the Democrat-Gazette reported in 2017; the sources opened do not give the date or the exact grounds. Genie Boren told the paper that her home had come to feel like a fortress and that she never received a personal apology from Williams. Ricardo Hurd said he was still angry and that Williams had shown no remorse. Terri Grimes, Boren's niece, said Williams's eyes at trial "were empty like he didn't have a soul," but looked different at the clemency hearing.
Kayla Greenwood said the experience made her see the death penalty as "revenge and not closure or justice." She told the CBC she would like to tell the Borens she was sorry for their loss.
The governor's original schedule, eight executions in 11 days, was a pace not seen in Arkansas since at least 1913, the Democrat-Gazette reported; Williams was the last of the four carried out. The question of his intellectual disability was never heard on the merits by any court.
The Jenkins killing. The only sources found for it are Williams's own 2005 letter, as reported by the Pine Bluff Commercial, and later news summaries. No court record of a charge or conviction for Jenkins was located. The Pine Bluff Commercial reported in 2017 that Williams held three life-without-parole sentences, two of them for capital murder, and the Democrat-Gazette described him as convicted of three murders; either would imply a second capital-murder conviction beyond Hurd, but neither report names the case, court or date. The circumstances of Jenkins's death are not described in any source opened.
Intellectual disability. Three defense experts said he was intellectually disabled; the state pointed to an IQ score of 78 and called the claim dilatory. No court decided it after a hearing.
Juror misconduct. The 2017 allegations about the Lincoln County jury were never tested in a hearing. In 2007 the state courts had refused funds to investigate juror bias.
The execution. Witnesses and officials gave different accounts of how long and how much Williams moved; the dispute over whether he was fully sedated was not resolved.
Details that vary. The Hurd killing is dated December 13, 1998, in the court records; one 2017 broadcast report gives December 18, which was the date he was charged. Some reports spell her name Herd or Heard. Some reports say he escaped in a garbage truck; the trial evidence, as summarized by the Arkansas Supreme Court, was a hog-slop tank. One report gives Mrs. Boren's first name as Gail; the court opinion and most reports say Genie.
December 5, 1998: Williams carjacks Sharon Hence at gunpoint at a Pine Bluff ATM; her car is later found burned.
December 13, 1998: He abducts Dominique Hurd and Peter Robertson outside the Bonanza Steak House, robs them and shoots both; Hurd, 19, dies. Jerrell Jenkins, 36, is killed in Pine Bluff the same day.
December 18, 1998: Charged with capital murder and other counts in the Hurd case.
August 26, 1999: Convicted of aggravated robbery, theft, kidnapping and arson in the Hence case.
September 9 to 14, 1999: Hurd trial in Jefferson County; convicted on all counts.
September 15, 1999: Sentenced to life without parole and taken to the Cummins Unit.
October 3, 1999: Escapes in a hog-slop tank; kills Cecil Boren, 57, near Grady and takes his truck and guns.
October 4, 1999: After a 60-mile chase from Lebanon, Missouri, crashes into a water truck, killing Michael Greenwood, 24; captured.
August 2000: Lincoln County jury convicts him of Boren's capital murder and sentences him to death.
November 29, 2000: Hence-case convictions affirmed by the Arkansas Court of Appeals.
February 1, 2001: Arkansas Supreme Court affirms the Hurd convictions.
February 21, 2002: Arkansas Supreme Court affirms the Boren conviction and death sentence.
2005: Letter to the Pine Bluff Commercial confessing to killing Jerrell Jenkins.
March 1, 2007: State postconviction relief denied on appeal.
Late 2008: Federal habeas petition denied.
July 15, 2010: Eighth Circuit affirms; Supreme Court denies review March 28, 2011.
January 2016: An execution date is stayed over drug-protocol litigation.
March 31, 2017: Clemency hearing at the Varner Unit.
April 26, 2017: Meets his daughter and granddaughter, brought by the Greenwood family.
April 27, 2017: Executed at the Cummins Unit; pronounced dead at 11:05 p.m.