Prisoners, seeking shift to Death Row, kill 4 other inmates
COLUMBIA, S.C. — Guards at the Kirkland Correctional Institution rushed to Denver Simmons’ cell and made a grisly discovery: Four men from the unit for mentally ill prisoners had been beaten and strangled.
Simmons, 35, and Jacob Philip, 26, both already serving life without parole for double murders, were charged with the slayings.
In a series of phone calls, Simmons confessed to the April 7 killings. Why? They could not endure lives in prison, he said, and wanted to be executed.
“The more people (you kill), the more chance they’re gonna give it to you,” Simmons said.
Simmons said they had two main criteria for choosing their victims: “We come up with who was easiest, as far as doing it to,” he said. “And who trusted us.”
Once they had their list, they came up with a way to lure each to their deaths.
“And we did it,” Simmons said. The victims included: John King, 52. Doing 25 years for burglary, larceny and theft. Liked to “bum coffee.”
William Scruggs, 44. Doing life for murder.
Jimmy Ham, 56. Scheduled for release in November after serving nine years for assault and battery, grand larceny and burglary.
Jason Kelley, 35. Serving 15 years for stabbing his teenage stepson.
After the killings, Simmons was transferred to Lieber Correctional Institution northwest of Charleston. It is home to South Carolina’s Death Row.
Simmons now realizes that’s likely as close as he’ll get to the execution chamber.
South Carolina hasn’t carried out an execution in six years. Simmons has read stories about the state’s inability to secure the drugs necessary to do a lethal injection.
Even a recently confessed killer of seven got life without parole, he noted.
“The death penalty’s not the death penalty anymore, you know?” he said.
He imagines he’ll do the next 10 years in solitary, and probably get another four life sentences tacked onto the two he was already doing.
“Obviously, we did it all for nothing,” he said. “And I guess that makes it even worse.”