Idaho is set to execute a long-time death row inmate, a serial killer with a penchant for poetry

BOISE, Idaho– For nearly 50 years, Idaho prison staff have served Thomas Eugene Creech three meals a day, checking on him during rounds and taking him to medical appointments.

Next Wednesday, some prison officials in Idaho will be asked to kill him. Barring a last-minute stay, the 73-year-old, one of the country’s longest-serving death row inmates, will be executed by lethal injection for killing a fellow inmate with a battery-filled sock in 1981.

Creech’s murder of David Jensen, a young, disabled man serving a prison sentence for car theft, was his latest in a broad path of destruction that saw Creech convicted of five murders in three states. He is also suspected of at least half a dozen others.

But now, decades later, Creech is best known within the walls of the Idaho Maximum Security Institution as “Tom,” a generally well-behaved old-timer with a penchant for poetry. His failed bid for clemency even found support from a former prison director, prison staff who described how he wrote them poems of support or condolence, and the judge who sentenced Creech to death.

“Some of our correctional officers grew up with Tom Creech,” Josh Tewalt, director of the Idaho Department of Correction, said Friday. “Our director has a long-standing relationship with him. … There’s a familiarity and a bond that’s built over time.

Creech’s attorneys have filed a series of last-minute appeals in four different courts in recent months in an effort to halt the execution, which would be the first in Idaho in 12 years. They have argued that Idaho’s refusal to say where the execution drug was obtained violated his rights and that he received ineffective assistance of counsel.

A three-judge panel of the 9th US Circuit Court of Appeals on Friday rejected an argument that Creech should not be executed because he was convicted by a judge rather than a jury.

It is not clear how many people Creech, an Ohio native, killed before he was incarcerated in Idaho in 1974. At one point he claimed to have murdered as many as 50 people, but many of the confessions were made under the influence of now-discredited “truth serum” drugs and filled with bizarre tales of occult human sacrifice and contract killings for a powerful motorcycle gang.

Official estimates vary, but authorities usually focus on eleven deaths. Creech’s attorneys did not immediately return calls from The Associated Press.

In 1973, Creech was tried for the murder of 70-year-old Paul Schrader, a retiree who was stabbed to death at the motel in Tucson, Arizona, where Creech lived. Creech used Schrader’s credit cards and vehicle to leave Tucson for Portland, Oregon. A jury acquitted him, but authorities say they have no doubt he was responsible.

The following year, Creech was admitted to Oregon State Hospital for a few months. He earned a weekend pass and traveled to Sacramento, California, where he murdered Vivian Grant Robinson at her home. Creech then used Robinson’s phone to let the hospital know he would be back a day late. That crime remained unsolved until Creech later confessed while in custody in Idaho; he was not convicted until 1980.

After being released from Oregon State Hospital, Creech got a job at a church in Portland, doing maintenance work. He had a living space in the church, and that’s where he shot and killed 22-year-old William Joseph Dean in 1974. Authorities believe he then fatally shot Sandra Jane Ramsamooj at the Salem supermarket where she worked.

Creech was finally arrested in November 1974. He and a girlfriend were hitchhiking in Idaho when they were picked up by two painters, Thomas Arnold and John Bradford. Creech shot and killed both men and the girlfriend cooperated with authorities.

While in custody, Creech confessed to a number of other murders. Some seemed fabricated, but he provided information that led police to the bodies of Gordon Lee Stanton and Charles Thomas Miller near Las Vegas, and of Rick Stewart McKenzie, 22, near Baggs, Wyoming.

Creech was initially sentenced to death for murdering the painters. But after the U.S. Supreme Court banned automatic death sentences in 1976, his sentence was commuted to life in prison.

That changed after he killed Jensen, who was serving a prison sentence for car theft. Jensen’s life had not been easy: as a teenager he suffered a near-fatal gun injury that left him with severe disabilities, including partial paralysis.

Jensen’s family members opposed Creech’s request for leniency. They described Jensen as a gentle soul and a joker who loved hunting and spending time outdoors, who was “the peanut butter” to his sister’s jelly. His daughter, who was four when he was killed, said she never got to know him, and how unfair it was that Creech is still around when her father isn’t.

Creech’s supporters, meanwhile, say decades in a prison cell have changed him. An employee at the death row prison told the parole board last month that while she cannot understand the suffering Creech has caused others, he is now someone who makes a positive contribution to his community. His execution date will be difficult for everyone in prison, she said, especially those who have known him for years.

“I don’t want to be dismissive of what he did and the countless people who were significantly affected by it,” said Tewalt, the corrections director. “At the same time, you can’t be dismissive of the effect it will have on people who have built a relationship with him. Tom won’t be there on Thursday. You know he’s not coming back to that unit – that’s real. It would be very difficult not to feel any emotion about that.”