The sheer animal violence of our next crime is enough to make you heave. Sedley Alley was executed in Tennessee for kidnap, rape and murder of the most depraved kind. But did he do it?
Frenzied attack
The crime was evil incarnate – not only was the 19-year-old victim beaten viciously, but she was struck about the head with a screwdriver, strangled and raped.
A tree branch was used to violate her again, which tore upwards into her abdomen, even reaching and puncturing her lung.
While it was the screwdriver injuries that killed young army girl Suzanne Marie Collins, in a report of one of the appeals, Pathologist Dr James Bell reckoned that the Marine Lance Corporal was alive when the excruciating, tree-branch damage was inflicted.
Kin pan Alley
Apparently, Alley handed himself in the very next day, admitting to the crime in detail, even taking the police to the scene of the gruesome events. But things started to change as the trial drew nearer. Alley began to assert that he was schizophrenic and, as a result, could not be held accountable for his actions.
Despite his protestations, a jury found against him and he was sentenced to be executed for the crime. Even members of his own family became estranged, choosing to shun him for a while. His daughter wouldn’t visit him for much of his incarceration on death row.
DNA drama
However, Alley was to maintain this insanity stance for some time, before he started to profess his innocence. Indeed, he vowed there was compelling DNA evidence, which the authorities wilfully chose not to follow up on, despite all the new advancements in techniques at their disposal.
Not only that, but Collins’s own boyfriend had been with her that same night also and fitted the description of an eyewitness who saw the abduction.
Let’s face it, DNA would have given the definitive answer, so why were the authorities so adamant not to run the tests?
We’ll never know as Alley was executed on this day via a lethal injection, aged 50 – 21 years after the crimes were committed. His last words were not ones of remorse reserved for the family of his victim, but to his own kin, including his once-estranged daughter. He told his family to stay strong and with that he succumbed to the flow of toxins.
Also on this day
28 June 1497 – Lord Audley
28 June 1928 – Walter Brooks
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