Alabama to execute Derrick Dearman for 2016 quintuple murder

Alabama prepares to execute Derrick Dearman, who admitted to killing five people in a 2016 drug-fueled rampage.

Alabama is preparing to execute a man who admitted to killing five people with an ax and gun during a 2016 drug-fueled rampage and dropped his appeals, so his execution go forward.

Derrick Dearman, 36, is scheduled to be executed by lethal injection at 6 p.m. Thursday at William C. Holman Correctional Facility in south Alabama.

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Dearman pleaded guilty to killing five people during a 2016 rampage that began when he broke into the home where his estranged girlfriend had taken refuge. Dearman this spring dropped his appeals so his execution could go forward. “I am guilty,” he wrote in an April letter to a judge, adding that “it's not fair to the victims or their families to keep prolonging the justice that they so rightly deserve.”

"I am willingly giving all that I can possibly give to try and repay a small portion of my debt to society for all the terrible things I've done," Dearman said in an audio recording sent this week to The Associated Press. “From this point forward, I hope that the focus will not be on me, but rather on the healing of all the people that I have hurt.”

Shannon Melissa Randall, 35; Joseph Adam Turner, 26; Robert Lee Brown, 26; Justin Kaleb Reed, 23; and Chelsea Marie Reed, 22, were killed on Aug. 20, 2016 at the home near Citronelle, about 33 miles (53km) north of Mobile. All of the victims were related.

One of the victims, Chelsea Reed, who was married to Justin Reed, was pregnant when she was killed. They had planned to name the boy Aiden Kaleb, according to her obituary. Turner, who was married to Randall, shared the home with the Reeds. Brown, who was Randall’s brother, was also staying there on the night of the murders.