Due to the graphic nature of this episode, listener discretion is advised.

This episode contains discussion of murder, sexual assault, and graphic childhood trauma.

Extreme caution is advised for listeners under 13.

Last words.

Ordinarily, there are somewhat morbid things to talk about.

But for this story, they play a key role.

Historians can't decide exactly when the practice started of allowing condemned prisoners

a chance to offer their final statement before their execution, but it goes back hundreds

of years.

Some use the opportunity to apologize to their victims or to those left behind.

Others use humor as a way to deflect from the horror of the situation, or else remain

stoically silent as they face their end.

And there are those who take one final chance to insist they're innocent.

Of course by the time they've gotten to the last word stage, it's likely too late for

that kind of argument.

All the same, they go to their graves with injustice on their lips.

It's easy to write those particular declarations off as the desperate ramblings of the condemned.

Maybe they just can't face the truth of what they've done.

Perhaps they don't want people to remember them badly.

In the grand scheme of things, the intention behind these kinds of last words doesn't

really matter.

If they're on death row, they must have done something terrible, right?

...