The Last Words of Infamous American Killers: 'It's a Good Day to Die'

While serving life in California’s Folsom Prison for the 1974 murder of his son’s girlfriend, who’d snitched on a robbery Clarence Ray Allen committed, Allen solicited hits on eight witnesses against him. A paroled fellow inmate later killed three of them, and was arrested carrying Allen’s list of names. His conviction for those added killings made Allen, age 76 when he died by lethal injection on Jan. 17, 2006, the second-oldest inmate executed by the U.S. in 30 years. 

His last words: “My last words will be, Hoka Hey, it’s a good day to die,” he said. “Thank you very much, I love you all. Good-bye.”

Dubbed the “Freeway Killer” after many of his victims’ bodies were discovered along Southern California roadsides in 1979 and 1980, William Bonin was convicted for 14 murders of boys and young men — although he is suspected in the rape and murder of many more. Bonin, 49, died Feb. 23, 1996, at San Quentin State Prison by lethal injection. 

His last words: “I would suggest that when a person has a thought of doing anything serious against the law, that before they did that they should go to a quiet place and think about it seriously.”

After a winning big in a Kansas City, Missouri, craps game on March 11, 1989, George Bernard Harris gave $500 to a man in exchange for two machine guns, then enlisted a second man to hold the guns for safekeeping. 

The second man enlisted a third — but when Harris wanted the guns back later that night, the third man couldn’t find them, and Harris shot him dead with a revolver. He later was picked up for a robbery, then charged and convicted for the murder, and executed on Sept. 13, 2000.

His last words: “Somebody needs to kill my trial attorney.”

The exact number of rapes, murders and kidnappings carried out by Ted Bundy is unknown. He was convicted for killing two Florida State University sorority sisters in January 1978, and a 12-year-old girl three weeks later, all committed after he’d escaped from jail — twice — in Colorado, where he was facing charges in the 1975 murder of a nurse. Before being executed in Florida’s electric chair on Jan. 24, 1989, he confessed to 30 homicides across seven states between 1974 and 1978. 

His last words: “I’d like you to give my love to my family and friends.”

Aileen Wournos was a sex worker along Florida’s highways and claimed she only killed in self defense. But her shooting of several men in 1989 and 1990 – Wuornos was convicted in six of the murders – landed her on the state’s death row. Before she died by lethal injection on Oct. 9, 2002, she invoked the film Independence Day. Her last words:

“I’d just like to say I’m sailing with the rock, and I’ll be back, like Independence Day, with Jesus, June 6th. Like the movie, big mothership and all. I’ll be back.”

A killer who dressed as Pogo the Clown for kids’ parties and charity events around Chicago, John Wayne Gacy was convicted of murdering at least 33 teen boys and young men between 1972 and 1978. All were killed in his suburban Norwood Park ranch house, most of them strangled or asphyxiated, and Gacy buried 26 of the bodies in the crawl space beneath his home. In 1980 he was sentenced to die for 12 of those killings, and he was executed by lethal injection on May 10, 1994. 

His last words: “Kiss my ass.”

After several arrests and court-ordered therapy for child molestation convictions, Westley Allen Dodd pleaded guilty to the 1989 sexual assault and murder in Washington state of two brothers, 11 and 10 years old, and the subsequent abduction and murder of a 4-year-old boy in Oregon. He was executed by hanging on Jan. 5, 1993 — the first legal hanging in the U.S. in 28 years. 

His last words: “I was once asked by somebody, I don’t remember who, if there was any way sex offenders could be stopped. I said no. I was wrong.”

Pretending she was borrowing sugar, Kimberly McCarthy entered the home of a 71-year-old neighbor in Lancaster, Texas, stabbing and killing her during a 1997 robbery to support a crack-cocaine addiction. (She was accused of killing two other elderly women in 1998 but never faced trial in those cases.) Her June 26, 2013 death by lethal injection became the 500th execution in modern Texas history.

Her last words: “This is not a loss, this is a win. You know where I am going. I am going home to be with Jesus. Keep the faith. I love y’all. Thank you, chaplain.”  

In 1995, Jack Jones Jr. entered a county tax office in Bald Knob, Arkansas, where Mary Phillips worked, strangled her daughter Lacy, 11, then raped and murdered Phillips, 34. Investigators who arrived to document two homicides were startled when, after the flash of a camera, Lacy opened her eyes, showing she was still alive. Jones was convicted of murder and attempted murder, and executed by lethal injection on April 24, 2017.

His last words: “I hope over time you can learn who I really am and I am not a monster. There was a reason why those things happened that day. I am so sorry Lacy, try to understand I love you like a child.”

Rosendo Rodriguez III confessed to killing a 16-year-old girl in 2004, then packing her body in a piece of luggage and dumping it at the city landfill in San Antonio, Texas. He was convicted of murder for doing the same to a 29-year-old woman in 2005, and was linked to at least five other sexual assaults, before he was executed in Texas by lethal injection on March 27, 2018.

His last words: “I have fought the good fight, I have run the good race. Warden, I’m ready to join my father.”