Robert Lee Willie was 22 when he and a friend, Joseph Jesse Vaccaro, offered a ride to Faith Hathaway outside a disco in Mandeville, Louisiana, in the early hours of May 28, 1980. She was 18, a few weeks out of high school, and due to leave for the Army that morning. They drove her north to a wooded ravine in Washington Parish, where she was raped and stabbed to death. Within days the two men had abducted a teenage couple from a parked car near Madisonville and taken them across state lines; the young man was left for dead in Alabama and the young woman was raped before she was released. Willie and Vaccaro were arrested in Arkansas on June 3, 1980.
Willie was convicted of first-degree murder for Faith Hathaway's death and sentenced to death. Vaccaro, tried at the same time in the same courthouse, received life. After his murder conviction Willie also pleaded guilty to second-degree murder for a 1978 killing near Covington, in which, by his own account, he and a cousin beat and drowned a man named Dennis Buford Hemby and took his marijuana. He was electrocuted at the Louisiana State Penitentiary at Angola on December 28, 1984.
The case would be remembered for more than its crimes. In his last months Willie's spiritual adviser was Sister Helen Prejean, a Catholic nun from New Orleans who had walked with Elmo Patrick Sonnier to the electric chair eight months earlier. Her 1993 book, Dead Man Walking, told both stories, and the 1995 film drawn from it built its condemned man out of the two of them. Faith Hathaway's mother and stepfather, Elizabeth and Vernon Harvey, spent the years after her death as public supporters of capital punishment and stood at the gates of Angola on execution nights, often across the road from Prejean.
Willie was born about 1958; a pre-sentence report described him as 25 in mid-1983, and he was 26 when he died. He grew up in St. Tammany Parish, on the north shore of Lake Pontchartrain. His father, John Willie, spent 27 of his 53 years in prison, on sentences for cattle theft, aggravated battery and manslaughter, and began serving time when Robert was about two years old, the Times-Picayune reported in 1984. With his father at Angola, Robert was raised by his mother and a stepfather and spent long periods living with relatives. He rejected the idea that his family was to blame. "I was brought up in a good family," he told the paper shortly before his execution.
By his own description to the Times-Picayune, his boyhood mischief turned into crime early. He said he was smoking marijuana at about 13 and was sent to reform school at that age for stealing horses. He left school at 16, a ninth-grade dropout, and said he moved on to heavier drugs around the same time and left home. He spent his late teens with older men, supporting himself by driving a truck, working on river boats, selling drugs and stealing. The pre-sentence report prepared for the Louisiana Supreme Court in 1983 recorded an IQ of 81, a minimal employment record, no marriage and no children, and a criminal history that included simple burglary, criminal damage and aggravated escape.
A St. Tammany Parish sheriff's deputy showed the PBS program Frontline his rap sheet in 1996: four single-spaced pages, beginning with a shoplifting arrest at 14 and including burglary, assaulting a police officer and breaking out of jail. Frontline's associate producer recorded that Willie had a local reputation as a "knife man."
Willie told the Times-Picayune that he served about six months for a St. Tammany burglary. Soon after his release, deputies found him in a bar and arrested him for violating probation. He escaped by jumping from the roof of the jail, was caught again after a day, and served a year on the escape charge. He was released on Christmas Eve, 1979. That night, he said, he ran into Joseph Jesse Vaccaro, a man he knew from jail, about five years older and from Pearl River. For the next five months, Willie said, the two of them drank and used drugs almost without a break and lived on the money from selling marijuana.
The first killing to which Willie admitted took place in 1978. The Times-Picayune reported in December 1984 that Willie had pleaded guilty to the 1978 killing of Dennis Hemby near Covington, and that Willie said he and his cousin, Perry Wayne Taylor, had beaten and drowned Hemby and stolen about $10,000 worth of marijuana from him. Taylor pleaded guilty to manslaughter and was serving a 21-year sentence. The Baton Rouge Advocate, reporting the same week, gave the victim's full name as Dennis Buford Hemby and described the crime as a robbery and killing in St. Tammany Parish. In Dead Man Walking, Prejean describes the killing as a drowning in 1978 in a scuffle over drugs and says Hemby was from Missouri.
Very little else about Dennis Hemby appears in the sources available for this account: not his age, his work or his family. The killing went unsolved for years. Willie confessed to it only after he had been convicted of Faith Hathaway's murder, and the Louisiana Supreme Court noted in June 1983 that although the Hemby killing came first, Willie had not been convicted of it until after the proceedings in the Hathaway case. His guilty plea to second-degree murder brought a life sentence.
Faith Colleen Hathaway was 18 and lived in Mandeville. She graduated from Mandeville High School in May 1980. Her mother, Elizabeth Harvey, told Frontline that Faith loved animals and had kept rabbits, horses, squirrels and dogs; she belonged to the Mandeville Saddle Club. "She didn't meet a stranger," her mother said. Her stepfather, Vernon Harvey, a World War II Navy veteran and later a carpenter, was close to her. "I'd hear her talking things over with him that she didn't think of coming to me with," her mother told the Times-Picayune in 1984. She had a younger sister, Lizabeth, who was nine in 1980.
Faith had signed up for the Army through the delayed entry program the summer before her senior year. Her mother remembered that the recruiter called on July 18, 1979, Elizabeth's birthday, to have her sign, and Faith refused to go that day because she wanted to spend the birthday with her mother. Mike Varnado, the Washington Parish investigator who worked the case, told Frontline that Faith had traveled widely while her stepfather was in the Navy, had learned some foreign languages, and wanted to join the Army partly to learn more. Her mother said Faith hoped to use languages to help people in trouble.
On May 27, 1980, her last day as a civilian, she worked a shift at a restaurant to repay a co-worker who had covered for her during her senior trip, then went to say goodbye to friends at the Lakefront disco in Mandeville, where a classmate was working the sound system for a fashion show. According to the Louisiana Supreme Court, she was celebrating her last night before entering the Army. A recruiter was due to collect her early the next morning.
The courts set out the core facts in the same words in 1982 and 1983. At about 4:30 a.m. on May 28, 1980, Willie and Vaccaro offered Faith Hathaway a ride outside the Lakefront Theatre, a disco in Mandeville. She asked to be taken home. Instead they drove her to Fricke's Cave, a heavily wooded, secluded gorge south of Franklinton in Washington Parish. Willie or Vaccaro, or both, raped her there. One man then repeatedly stabbed her in the throat while the other held her hands.
Willie gave his own version to the Times-Picayune in December 1984. He said the two of them were "loaded" and had planned to rob a convenience store in Mandeville but found too many people there, and that he had a sawed-off shotgun. He said they saw her walking by the road and he asked if she wanted a ride. They blindfolded her, he said, and drove her to the woods. He said she kept telling them she would not identify them and asking them not to hurt her. He said Vaccaro stabbed her and that he held her hands when Vaccaro told him to. Vaccaro's account, given at trial, was that Willie did the stabbing.
The pathologist's evidence, as summarized by the Louisiana Supreme Court, showed that she had been raped, that she had fought and was wounded in the hand defending herself, and that her death from the throat wounds would have taken some minutes. Contemporary reports gave the number of stab wounds as 17. Her mother later said the prosecutor, Herb Alexander, told the jury in his opening statement that Faith had begged to be left to die alone.
Willie told the newspaper that afterward he went home and drank a six-pack of beer, and that by that evening he and Vaccaro were out driving again. He said the two of them were drinking heavily and taking LSD in the days that followed, and that, armed with a shotgun and a pistol, they robbed a traveler at an interstate rest area.
Faith did not come home. Her clothes and purse were found on June 1, about 150 yards from where her body lay, according to the court record; Varnado recalled that picnickers turned in her purse, driver's license and an overnight bag to the Washington Parish sheriff's office. Because she lived in St. Tammany Parish, St. Tammany deputies, Mandeville police, the FBI and members of her family joined Washington Parish officers in searching the ravine. They searched for about four days without finding her, Varnado told Frontline.
Varnado, then about 25, had grown up near the gorge, which had been a local picnic spot. He thought it unlikely that a search there had been thorough and went back on his own. A deputy showed him where the clothes had been found, and within about half an hour, on June 4, 1980, he found her body further down the ravine toward the swamp. He called the sheriff's office and the Louisiana State Police crime laboratory and stayed with her for several hours while the scene was processed. Her uncle, Dr. Donald Trewick, a dentist, compared her dental records and confirmed her identity; a medallion found on her matched a photograph of her wearing it.
On the day between the finding of the clothes and the finding of the body, three private volunteers in the search found a crumpled, printed note at the bottom of an embankment near the cave that read "you never find her." It carried no fingerprints, and nothing ever linked it to the crime. The note became an issue on appeal.
Varnado told Frontline that the case changed the county. Washington Parish, he said, was a small rural community, and this was "the crime that caused everybody to start locking their doors."
The second abduction happened before Faith Hathaway's body was found. Willie and Vaccaro came upon a young couple parked on a wooded lovers' lane near Madisonville in St. Tammany Parish: Mark Brewster, 20, and his 16-year-old girlfriend. They kidnapped both and drove them out of Louisiana, through Mississippi and into Alabama. The young woman was raped on the way. She was a minor and a victim of sexual assault, and she is not named here.
In Alabama, Willie led Brewster into the woods. He told the Times-Picayune in 1984 that he meant only to tie him up but cut his throat and stabbed him with a pocket knife when Brewster demanded to be released, and that Vaccaro then shot him. They left him tied to a tree for dead. He survived. The 1984 newspaper reports said he was paralyzed from the waist down; Frontline reported in 1996 that his throat injury had left him unable to speak five months later, and that he had since recovered enough to hold a steady job.
The two men drove the young woman back to Louisiana, kept her overnight and raped her again before letting her go. Frontline reported that she was held for about 30 hours. Willie later told a jailer that he decided not to kill her, according to Frontline's associate producer, who also reported that in court Willie blew kisses at her. Her careful memory of details made her a strong witness at the trials that followed.
The date of this abduction is reported differently. Frontline's 1996 reporting put it three days after Faith Hathaway's murder, which would be May 31, 1980. The Times-Picayune wrote in 1984 that it came "eight days later," but that cannot be squared with the arrest on June 3; Prejean's book describes the whole sequence as an "eight-day rampage." This account follows the three-day figure, which fits the court record.
On June 3, 1980, Willie and Vaccaro were arrested in Hope, Arkansas, on charges of aggravated rape, aggravated kidnapping and attempted murder arising from the abduction of the couple. Special Agent Lambert of the FBI and Lieutenant Duvall of the Arkansas State Police read Willie his rights that day. He refused to answer questions without a lawyer, and the FBI agent did not question him. On June 4 he was taken to Texarkana, Arkansas, where a United States magistrate read him the federal charges, offered to appoint counsel and set bond; Willie said he had a lawyer in Louisiana but did not ask for him.
On June 9, Willie told a jailer he wanted to speak with Agent Lambert. On June 10, Investigator Michael Varnado of the Washington Parish District Attorney's Office and Sergeant Donald Sharp of the St. Tammany Parish Sheriff's Office interviewed him in the Texarkana jail about Faith Hathaway. Sharp testified that he advised Willie of his rights and that Willie said he did not want a lawyer. The officers told Willie that Vaccaro had just given them a statement. Varnado also told him that his mother had been arrested for harboring him and that, in Varnado's opinion, the charge would be dropped if it proved to have no merit; the officers testified that they made no promises. Willie gave an oral statement and then a tape-recorded statement, which he signed after it was transcribed. Both men admitted seizing Faith Hathaway, and each said the other had raped her and cut her throat.
Varnado's own recollection, given to Frontline in 1996, was that Willie seemed pleased by the attention his case was getting in the Louisiana papers, that Varnado told him he could be like Jesse James, and that Willie then agreed to talk. Varnado said Willie showed no remorse and spoke as if discussing a football game, but would not admit to being the one who used the knife. He also said Willie gave different versions of the killing to him and to a cellmate.
Washington Parish indicted both men for first-degree murder. Because the federal government had custody of them on the kidnapping charges, Willie was held before trial in a federal facility in New Orleans and driven about two hours each way to the courthouse in Franklinton under the guard of federal marshals.
The two trials ran at the same time in the same courthouse in October 1980, Willie's in a small basement courtroom and Vaccaro's in a larger one upstairs, according to Frontline and to Prejean's lawyer, Millard Farmer, as quoted in her book. Of 52 prospective jurors questioned in Willie's case, 47 had read or heard about it and ten said they had formed an opinion; six of those who could not set their opinion aside were excused. The jury that heard the case was made up of five women and seven men. The district attorney had been quoted before trial saying he would prosecute personally to make sure "these two animals" never walked the streets again, a remark the Louisiana Supreme Court later called prejudicial but brief.
The state's case rested on the confession, the physical evidence and the pathologist. Willie did not testify at the trial or at the hearing on his motion to suppress. Jo Anne Smith, who worked in the criminal division of the Washington Parish clerk of court's office and attended almost every hour of the trial, told Frontline in 1996 that Willie made a throat-cutting gesture at the young man he had left for dead and then grinned.
Both men were convicted of first-degree murder. In the penalty phase, Willie's jury recommended death. Vaccaro's jury did not. Frontline's associate producer reported in 1996 that one prospective juror who had said in Willie's case that she could not vote for death was excused, then was questioned again for Vaccaro's jury upstairs and was seated; when the verdicts came in, 11 of Vaccaro's 12 jurors voted for death and she was the lone holdout. Because a Louisiana death sentence requires a unanimous jury, Vaccaro received life imprisonment without parole. The Louisiana Supreme Court noted in 1982 that Vaccaro's complicity, as reported in the press, was equal to Willie's.
Vaccaro's lawyers argued that Willie had done the stabbing, and Vaccaro testified to that. Frontline's associate producer heard two explanations for the different sentences: that the jury believed Willie was the leader, a view the surviving young woman later shared, or that the outcome came down to the one juror.
In November 1980, Frontline reported, the two men stood trial in a state court in Baton Rouge on the kidnapping and rape charges involving the couple. After the young woman had testified again, both men admitted their guilt, and each received four consecutive life sentences, according to that report. Because the abduction crossed state lines, they also faced federal kidnapping conspiracy charges and pleaded guilty. The Louisiana Supreme Court recorded in 1983 that Willie was serving three consecutive life sentences in federal prison; Prejean's book gives the same figure for each man. The reported number of state sentences varies between sources.
Willie was sent to the federal penitentiary at Marion, Illinois, then the country's highest-security prison. He boasted later that he had "established myself as a man and as a convict" there. The essayist Garry Wills, reviewing Prejean's book in 1993, wrote that Willie had joined the Aryan Brotherhood while in prison in another state and called him a racist and an admirer of Hitler; Prejean herself told Frontline that the film's character drew on Willie's press interviews in which he said he admired Hitler.
Willie's lawyers argued that, because federal time is served first, the Louisiana death sentence could not be carried out until about 2030. The Louisiana Supreme Court rejected the argument in 1983, noting that nothing prevented federal authorities from returning him to state custody early. Elizabeth Harvey told Frontline that she and her husband asked their congressman, Bob Livingston, for help and that Livingston's office called the White House; her account was that President Ronald Reagan then signed the papers releasing Willie to Louisiana. That chain of events is her recollection and was not confirmed by any document found for this account. On November 7, 1983, Willie was driven back to Louisiana by a deputy who was Mike Varnado's father, according to Frontline.
Willie's direct appeal raised 15 assignments of error. On January 25, 1982, the Louisiana Supreme Court, in an opinion by Justice Dennis, rejected the challenges to the trial itself, including the claims about pretrial publicity, the refusal to move him to a parish jail, the judge's remarks during jury selection, and the confession. On the confession, the court held that Willie had been advised of his rights at least three times, had himself signaled his willingness to talk, and had expressly waived counsel before the state officers questioned him about a different crime.
The court did not, however, let the death sentence stand. In his closing argument at the penalty phase, the prosecutor had told the jury that a future governor could pardon Willie or commute his sentence, so that "life really ever means life" was untrue, and he had told them that "the buck" did not stop with them because every appeals court would review a death sentence. The court held that both arguments created a reasonable possibility that the death sentence had been imposed under passion, prejudice or an arbitrary factor. It vacated the sentence. It also sent the case back for the trial judge to decide whether the "you never find her" note, which the defense had never been allowed to examine, created a reasonable doubt about guilt. If it did not, the conviction would stand and a new jury would decide only the penalty.
On remand, the trial court held a hearing on the note. Willie denied writing it; Vaccaro could not read or write. There was no evidence of who wrote it or when, and the judge found it had no significance. A new penalty jury was then empaneled. Willie testified at that hearing, and his taped confession and the pathologist's evidence were heard again. The jury found two aggravating circumstances, that the murder was committed during an aggravated rape and that it was committed in an especially cruel manner, and again recommended death.
On June 27, 1983, the Louisiana Supreme Court, in an opinion by Justice Watson, affirmed the conviction and the new sentence. It rejected the argument that the sentence was excessive because Vaccaro had received life: co-defendants need not receive identical sentences, and while Willie "may have been less culpable than his criminal partner," the court found nothing to show that his role had been a subsidiary one. Its proportionality review found only two other death sentences among 31 first-degree murder cases from St. Tammany and Washington Parishes. The court's opinion also recorded that Willie was then under indictment for killing a police officer in 1978. The United States Supreme Court denied review in 1984.
Willie's state habeas petitions were denied without opinion. In federal court in New Orleans he raised nine more claims, among them that four of his jurors had sat in on part of jury selection in Vaccaro's trial, where Vaccaro's lawyer had suggested that Willie did the stabbing; that his confession violated Edwards v. Arizona; that publicity had made a fair resentencing impossible; that the prosecutor's second closing argument, telling the jurors they would have been justified in shooting the attackers themselves, was so prejudicial as to deny due process; and that his lawyer at the second penalty hearing had been ineffective. The district court denied relief from the bench on March 29, 1984. The next day the Fifth Circuit granted a certificate of probable cause and stayed the scheduled execution.
On August 6, 1984, a Fifth Circuit panel of Judges Reavley, Randall and Williams affirmed the denial of relief in Willie v. Maggio, with Judge Randall writing. The court called the prosecutor's argument at the second hearing "unquestionably" improper and a misstatement of Louisiana law, but held that, with two aggravating circumstances found and little mitigation, it did not make the hearing fundamentally unfair. It rejected the other claims and criticized the district court for ruling without written findings in a capital case. Rehearing was denied on September 7, 1984.
After the Supreme Court declined to hear the case, an execution date of November 13, 1984 was set. Governor Edwin Edwards granted a temporary reprieve so that Willie could go before the state Pardon Board, which refused clemency in November, UPI reported. Prejean recalled that before the Pardon Board hearing Willie told her he would not beg anyone for anything.
Prejean had begun writing to Patrick Sonnier on death row after moving into the St. Thomas housing project in New Orleans in 1982, according to her official biography. She was with Sonnier when he was electrocuted on April 5, 1984. In Dead Man Walking she describes how the lawyer Millard Farmer then told her about Willie's case, and how she wrote to offer herself as his spiritual adviser. Willie wrote back within a week that he had never been much inclined to church but would not mind the visits. Before she could see him she had to persuade Angola's new warden, Frank Blackburn, to approve her; prison chaplains had objected to her after the Sonnier execution.
She knew Willie for about two months, she told Frontline. She described a man who prized toughness above everything and who told her he did not believe in "jailhouse religion." She called him "the Marlboro Man" and pressed him to show feeling. When she asked what he would want done to someone who killed his own mother, he said he would want to kill them. In the Times-Picayune's interviews that December, Willie said that if he could live his life again he would join a terrorist organization, and that he was not afraid of the chair. "People say I'm an animal," he said. "But they wouldn't say it to my face."
On his last day, Prejean said, Willie insisted on taking a polygraph test so that his mother would know he had not killed Faith Hathaway. He did not pass it. Prejean told Frontline that she tended to believe his distress about the result but would never know which man did what. She was also clear that, by his own account, holding Faith's hands made him a participant in her death.
Willie was moved to the death house on December 24. On his last day he saw his mother, Elizabeth Oalman of Covington, four brothers and Prejean. Warden Blackburn said he was served the last meal he asked for, fried fish, oysters and shrimp. Prejean said that around 10:30 p.m. he telephoned his mother to tell her he loved her and cried.
There were eight witnesses, among them Vernon and Elizabeth Harvey and Mike Varnado. Just after midnight Willie walked into the death chamber in jeans, a white sweatshirt and white slippers, escorted by six guards. His last words were addressed to the Harveys. According to the Times-Picayune, he said: "I would just like to say Mr. and Mrs. Harvey that I hope you get some relief from my death. Killing people is wrong. That's why you've put me to death. It makes no difference whether it's citizens, countries, or governments. Killing is wrong."
He was strapped into the chair and hooded, then asked Blackburn to lift the hood, and winked at Prejean. She later said he had told her he would wink as a sign that he was at peace. As the current was applied at 12:07 a.m., Prejean prayed aloud, asking forgiveness for all who took part in the execution; she told Frontline in 1996 that the prayer was spontaneous and that she would not do it again. West Feliciana Parish Coroner Alfred Gould pronounced Willie dead at 12:15 a.m. He was the sixth man executed in Louisiana in 13 months and, by the Times-Picayune's count, the 32nd in the United States since executions resumed in 1977.
The Harveys did not show emotion during the execution. Outside the gates, Vernon Harvey told reporters he wished the death had been slower and more painful, and he poured drinks in the family's van. Faith's sister Lizabeth, then 14, was too young to be a witness and stood at the gates with family friends and members of Parents of Murdered Children to support the execution; some in the group carried signs reading "justice at last." "I wish this day could come for all the victims out there," Elizabeth Harvey said.
About 70 mourners attended Willie's funeral in Covington on December 29, and he was buried in the family plot at Folsom. Prejean told them it was "a tragedy that society felt Robert's life was not redeemable." His mother asked that his name now be left in peace.
Vaccaro, 31 at the time of Willie's execution and from Pearl River, served life sentences for Faith Hathaway's murder and for the crimes against the couple. Frontline reported in 1996 that he was alive and serving multiple life sentences in a federal penitentiary. Later reports of his death in prison were not confirmed by a reliable source for this account (see NOTES).
Vernon and Elizabeth Harvey became two of the best-known voices for victims' families in Louisiana. According to the Times-Picayune, they joined the victims' rights movement in 1982, after Willie's trial, and traveled widely to speak for victims and for capital punishment. They kept vigil at Angola's front gates on execution nights. In 1984 Vernon Harvey told the paper that he had twice thought of killing Willie himself, once in the courtroom and once on the Lake Pontchartrain Causeway, and had decided against it. He also said he and his wife had visited Willie's father, and that he did not blame John Willie for what his son had done.
Elizabeth Harvey explained to Frontline in 1996 why she kept going back to Angola. She said she stood there because the victim could not, and because the public no longer remembered who the victim had been. She said she had never seen any remorse from either man. Prejean has said she let the Harveys read the manuscript of her book before it was published, but that Elizabeth Harvey later told her the film "crucified" the family.
Vernon Harvey died of complications from a heart attack in April 1996, at 69. His obituary in the Times-Picayune recalled that in October 1994 the Harveys had claimed from the morgue an unidentified newborn found on the shore of Lake Pontchartrain, whom they named Baby Hope, and buried her beside Faith in Mandeville, with Prejean standing with them. It also said that, although neither side changed its position, Prejean had credited the Harveys with making her more aware of what victims' families go through.
Prejean's book, Dead Man Walking, was published in 1993 and told the stories of Sonnier and Willie through her own experience. Frontline's associate producer, Christopher Buchanan, summarized the film adaptation this way in 1996: the movie, directed by Tim Robbins, combined the stories of the first two men she counseled, and "in rather broad strokes" it captured Sonnier's crime and Willie's character. Sean Penn's condemned man, Matthew Poncelet, is a composite and does not correspond to either man. Prejean said Penn reminded her of Willie, that details such as the tattoos, the press interviews and the last family visit came from him, but that Poncelet was harder than anyone she had known. She also said Willie never took full responsibility in the way the film's character does. Susan Sarandon won the Academy Award for best actress for playing Prejean, and Penn, Robbins and Bruce Springsteen's title song were also nominated.
The book and film drew criticism from people close to the case. Varnado and the prosecutor, Bill Alford, considered writing to a local paper accusing Prejean of "propagating the lies of two murderers," Frontline reported. Varnado said she had relied on Willie's account and a defense file rather than the investigative record; Prejean answered that she had read the trial transcripts and newspaper coverage. Varnado later co-wrote a book about the case focused on Faith Hathaway and her family, Victims of Dead Man Walking (2003).
The young woman who survived the 1980 abduction gave her first interview to Frontline in 1996. She told Prejean that she had been hurt that the nun never sought her out, and Prejean told Frontline that this was a failure on her part. Prejean also said that probably the best thing she had done for murder victims' families was to start Survive, a support group in which families could help each other. The Harveys, who supported the death penalty, were not part of that group in any source found for this account. Prejean's papers, including Willie's letters to her from December 1984, are held by DePaul University's Special Collections in Chicago.
Who wielded the knife. Willie said Vaccaro stabbed Faith Hathaway and that he held her hands; Vaccaro said Willie did it. Both confessions put both men at the scene, and the Louisiana Supreme Court held that a principal with intent to kill could be sentenced to death whichever man used the knife. Willie failed a polygraph on his last day, according to Prejean.
The Wagner killing. St. Tammany Parish Deputy Sergeant Louis Henry Wagner II, 25, was shot and killed in an ambush on June 3, 1978, as he drove home from the sheriff's office, according to the Officer Down Memorial Page. Willie confessed to taking part, and UPI reported in May 1984 that he was "already sentenced to life for that slaying." He then recanted, saying he had confessed so he would be held in the St. Tammany jail, where he thought escape would be easier. St. Tammany Chief Deputy Wallace Laird said Willie recanted after learning that Henry Lee Lucas and Ottis Toole had given statements about the case; the memorial page says authorities concluded Lucas could not have done it, and that three other men Willie had implicated were never tried. Prejean's book states that Willie took part in a robbery that led to the confrontation but that officials agreed he did not fire the fatal shot, and dates the killing to 1979. No court finding on Willie's role was found. The Wagner killing is not counted here as one of his proven killings.
Other boasts. Willie told the Times-Picayune that he had taken $8,000 in a bank robbery, and the paper reported that he claimed involvement in at least one other murder. Neither claim was tied to any charge in the sources found.
The note. The "you never find her" note was examined on remand and found to be unconnected to anyone; the courts treated it as insignificant.
The second abduction's timing and the young man's testimony. Sources differ on whether the couple was taken three or eight days after the murder (see above). The Times-Picayune wrote in 1984 that Willie made a throat-cutting gesture "when Brewster took the stand," while Frontline reported in 1996 that he did not testify at any of the trials; the clerk's employee who saw the gesture described it as made when Willie "saw" him in court.
The jury for the murder trial. One Times-Picayune article in 1984 called it a St. Tammany Parish jury; the court records show the trial was held in Washington Parish.
The transfer from federal custody. Elizabeth Harvey's account of a congressman's call leading to a presidential order is her own recollection.
The electric chair. On the eve of the execution, John Willie told the Times-Picayune he had helped wire Angola's electric chair as an inmate electrician in 1982. He retracted the claim the next day after Warden Blackburn said no inmate worked on the chair.
1958 (about): Robert Lee Willie born; grows up around Covington, St. Tammany Parish.
About 1960: His father, John Willie, begins the first of the prison terms that will total 27 years.
About 1971: Sent to reform school, by his own account, for stealing horses.
About 1974: Leaves school after the ninth grade.
1978: With his cousin Perry Wayne Taylor, beats and drowns Dennis Buford Hemby near Covington, by his own later admission.
June 3, 1978: Deputy Sergeant Louis Henry Wagner II is shot and killed near Covington (Willie later confesses, pleads guilty and then recants).
December 24, 1979: Released after serving a year for escape; meets Joseph Jesse Vaccaro that night.
May 27, 1980: Faith Hathaway says goodbye to friends at the Lakefront disco in Mandeville on the eve of entering the Army.
May 28, 1980: About 4:30 a.m., Willie and Vaccaro offer her a ride; she is raped and killed at Fricke's Cave, Washington Parish.
About May 31, 1980: The two men abduct a Madisonville couple and drive them to Alabama; the young man is left for dead and the young woman is raped and later released.
June 1, 1980: Faith Hathaway's clothes and purse are found.
June 3, 1980: Willie and Vaccaro are arrested in Hope, Arkansas.
June 4, 1980: Mike Varnado finds Faith Hathaway's body; Willie appears before a federal magistrate in Texarkana.
June 10, 1980: Willie and Vaccaro confess to the abduction, each blaming the other for the killing.
October 1980: Simultaneous trials in Franklinton; Willie is sentenced to death, Vaccaro to life.
November 1980: State kidnapping and rape trial in Baton Rouge ends in guilty admissions; federal guilty pleas follow, with three consecutive federal life terms for Willie.
Until November 1983: Willie serves federal time, latterly at the penitentiary in Marion, Illinois.
January 25, 1982: Louisiana Supreme Court conditionally affirms the conviction and vacates the death sentence.
1982: The Harveys join the victims' rights movement.
1982 or 1983: On remand the note is found insignificant and a new penalty jury again recommends death; Willie pleads guilty to second-degree murder for the Hemby killing.
June 27, 1983: Louisiana Supreme Court affirms the conviction and death sentence.
November 7, 1983: Willie is returned from federal custody to Louisiana.
March 29 and 30, 1984: Federal district court denies habeas relief; the Fifth Circuit stays the execution.
April 5, 1984: Elmo Patrick Sonnier is executed with Prejean present; she soon writes to Willie.
May 16, 1984: UPI reports that Willie has recanted his confession to the Wagner killing.
August 6, 1984: The Fifth Circuit affirms in Willie v. Maggio; rehearing denied September 7.
November 1984: Governor Edwards reprieves Willie from a November 13 date; the Pardon Board refuses clemency.
December 28, 1984: Willie is electrocuted at Angola and pronounced dead at 12:15 a.m.
December 29, 1984: Funeral in Covington and burial at Folsom.
1993: Dead Man Walking is published.
October 1994: The Harveys bury the infant they named Baby Hope beside Faith.
1995 to 1996: The film Dead Man Walking is released; Susan Sarandon wins the Academy Award for best actress.
April 1996: Vernon Harvey dies at 69; Frontline broadcasts Angel on Death Row.
2003: Varnado's book Victims of Dead Man Walking is published.