JASPER, Texas (AP) -- In the eight months since his arrest for the dragging death of a black man, John William King has all but admitted his guilt in letters to inmates and the media.
"Regardless of the outcome of this, we have made history and shall die proudly remembered if need be," King wrote to co-defendant Lawrence Russell Brewer in letters read in court Monday.King's case was to go to a jury Tuesday after lawyers give their final arguments. If jurors convict King of capital murder, they must then decide on a sentence of execution or life in prison.
King is the first of three white men to be tried for James Byrd Jr.'s slaying last June 7. Byrd's tortured body was torn to pieces as he was dragged by a pickup truck for nearly three miles.
A pathologist Monday testified Byrd was dragged alive and in excruciating pain along the bumpy county road. When the pickup swerved into a left-hand curve, Byrd's chained body swung to the right, where he was beheaded by a concrete culvert.
An ex-convict with dreams of starting his own racist group in Jasper, King had been waiting for an opportunity to make a name for himself and his fledgling white supremacy group, the Texas Rebel Soldiers, prosecutors said.
While imprisoned at Texas' Beto I unit near Palestine, King told one inmate he wanted to "take a black out" to prove himself as a white supremacist. He covered himself in racist tattoos, his defense attorneys contended, to defend himself against attacks from the mostly black population at Beto.
The 24-year-old unemployed laborer's fondness for writing severely jeopardized his case. Before his letters surfaced, investigators had only a cigarette lighter and his DNA on cigarette butts to tie him to the crime scene.