BONUS: Witnessing More Executions Than Anyone in America

Mike Graczyk is a former reporter for the Associated Press who covered the McKay-Everett kidnapping, Hilton Crawford's trial, and Hilton's execution. And as a reporter who spent 40 years based out of Huntsville, the city that houses Texas's death row and execution chamber, he has another distinction. He's witnessed more executions than anyone else in the country.

I've watched probably 450 as we sit here.

And you said that Texas had done one before you started reporting here. So what happened there? They stopped for a while or?

The Supreme Court in the mid-60s put a moratorium on capital punishment in the whole country. And that moratorium lasted for about a decade until the mid-70s when they decided that capital punishment could resume. And then Texas carried out the first one in 82.. That was the very first lethal injection, also in the country. And since then, Texas has certainly gained the notoriety as the most active state for capital punishment.

And were you saying you kind of had an interest in this topic even before you started covering it?

No. I came from Michigan, which never had the death penalty. There has never been an execution carried out by the state of Michigan. Never. And I think the only one that ever occurred there was at the federal level.

And do you remember the first capital punishment case you covered or witnessed?

Absolutely. J.D. Cowboy, Autry. And what was notable about that one is that we went in there to cover the execution. And they used to do them at midnight here.

So that first one you witnessed, was that the second lethal injection that they'd done here in Texas?

Yes. That was the second one. James David Autry, I believe, is what his name was, but everybody called him Cowboy. And it's one of the questions I have always asked inmates when I interview them is, what do they call you around here? For Hilton Crawford, they called him the old man because at that time he was, I think, the second oldest person on death row in Texas.

Yeah. So I guess, do you remember when you did first hear about the McKay-Everett case?

I was here in Houston covering whatever goes on. And the story came in on TV or the news that there was an abduction in Conroe, Texas. Authorities were looking for a 12-year-old boy who was taken from his home in Conroe. And I remember going out to the Everett home in Conroe where they held a news conference and his parents pleaded for assistance and for the return of their son. So yeah, I remember that.

And did it turn into a national story at some point?

Yes, it did. The story became national. Certainly, when a 12-year-old gets abducted, it becomes big news, becomes bigger news when he's found, becomes bigger news when the person arrested for it is a family friend.

When you were talking about nicknames before, I thought you were going to bring up the Uncle Hilty.

Yeah, Uncle Hilty would be the name that would be forever associated with the case. But on death row, he wasn't known as Uncle Hilty. He was known as the Old Man.

I guess, what do you remember about kind of covering the case?

Story unfolded. There were the usual pretrial hearings. I remember getting subpoenaed along with other reporters. And I think it had to do with the change of venue request. They wanted the case moved out of Conroe.

So it's out there trying to figure out how much coverage the case had released, so what the likelihood that the jury would have had. Correct.

Correct. The defense is looking for jurors who would not have heard of or known of particulars of the case. And they're trying to get jurors who are totally, I don't want to say ignorant, but don't know anything about the case itself, so that they would not have a preconceived idea or notion or attitude that Hilton Crawford was guilty of this. They want somebody who has an open mind about it. And that was their goal in getting a change of venue.

Is it something where it's kind of like in the letter of the law, but not the spirit of the law?

I guess. I don't know if I'd go there, but somebody, I think, could make that sort of assessment sure. And I covered the trial that was held at Sam Houston State University in Huntsville in the ceremonial or student, whatever you want to call it, courtroom. there. It's kind of an amphitheater that is made up to look like a courtroom.

Was this a thing where, in court, they held up the sketch next to the guy to kind of show the likeness between them? Does that ring any bell?

That's probably, yeah. Probably, yeah.

Yeah, were there any kind of, when you think back about it, are there any moments from the trial that come to mind?

McKay's mother's meltdown, I mean, she just, she lost it. I remember it was very, very uncomfortable, but I do know she came back a couple weeks later to give a victim impact statement, and she was very collected and calm and did what she needed to do at that point, but I just remember her wailing. She was just beyond being comforted, and I think somebody escorted her out of the building or out of the courtroom there, but it was very, very unsettling.

Did you ever interview Paulette or Carl directly?

Certainly talked to Paulette or Carl at the news conference that they initially had. Once the case got underway, there was a gag order. I think I talked to her as the execution got close years later, and then afterwards, I think we talked with her in a group setting once the execution had taken place.

How would you describe her?

Passionate, devastating.

What about Carl?

I don't know. I didn't have much dealings with him. I know he didn't show up for the execution. I looked back and reviewed some of the stories I wrote, and I didn't see that I quoted him in the stories post-trial, so I don't think I ever talked to him. Once.

They kind of fill the same place in the story.

Yeah, yeah. And you're going to, as an editor, when you go through your material, you're going to take the best stuff, and all that stuff was really good about a bad situation, but no, I don't recall talking to Carl.

What about Hilton Crawford or his family?

Talked to Hilton Crawford a number of times on death row. I don't think I ever talked to his wife, Connie, when the story first broke and he got arrested. I don't know if I talked to them, but some of my colleagues talked to some of his former colleagues about his background as a law enforcement officer and ran a security firm of his own, I think, and then sold the company and claimed that the people who bought it, I guess, didn't pay him or something or other, there were all kinds of financial irregularities involved in that, which, if you believe, Hilton Crawford, got us to the point where we're at, with McKay being abducted and the ransom demand.

Yeah. I guess he claimed there was kind of, like other people, embezzling, but then...

He told me it was people from Chicago who were all over him to get money, but I guess he was described as being a pretty active gambler, pretty heavy gambler. He claimed that he got in over his head on credit card debt because he was trying to buy all this stuff that his kids wanted and he didn't want to be a bad father or a bad provider for his family and got into six-figure debt plus whatever. the Chicago guys were squeezing him on, if you believe all that. But that's, yeah, I talked to Hilton Crawford at least two or three times in prison. He used to send me Christmas cards, wrote me letters.

I mean, I guess you've covered a lot of cases like this, so how did he compare to kind of other people in that same situation?

Clearly, Hilton Crawford was older than the typical prisoner that you see arrive on death row. You don't get people in their 50s being sentenced to death. But soft-spoken, didn't really refuse to answer questions. He kind of dodged around them or he had an explanation that, as a reporter, you've got your skeptical ears open and if something doesn't sound right, you ask him, follow-up says, well, can you explain that for me? Or this doesn't sound right, how can this be?

Yeah, I guess it was kind of like he was saying, I did kidnap him, but I didn't murder him.

I was there, I did kidnap him, I was there when he was attacked, but I didn't do it. I wasn't involved. And I remember asking him flat out, why did you stop it if you weren't involved? And he said, well, I should have. I wish I had.

In general, was he kind of consistent with his story, or did it feel like it bounced around when you talked to him?

No, Hilton Crawford was pretty consistent. My theory on that is that these people who are locked up, I'm pretty convinced they could pass a polygraph. All they have is time. You're locked in a six by nine concrete cell and all you have is time to convince yourself that I didn't do it, I wasn't there. In so many of these cases, you can go fall back, and I would ask them, well, were you on drugs?

It almost feels like it's a plan that someone would come up with on drugs or something like that. I guess I've wondered sometimes if maybe gambling addiction is more powerful than I think and it resembles things that we'd be more familiar with or more accepting of if it was drug addiction.

Yes. Yes.

That wasn't a question. But do you know what I mean? Or do you have any thoughts about how the gambling addiction angle kind of played into it?

I don't know. I don't know. One of the things I've come up with over the years is you never get surprised by the carnage that people are able to do and either have no regrets or a few regrets or regrets if they just were caught. I have yet to meet any person that acknowledges their crime who said that I knew I was going to get caught, but I did it anyway. I think that therein lies the rub and that if you didn't think you were going to be caught, then that gives you the green light to go ahead and do it.

There was blood on his clothes.

Yeah, yeah.

After the break, Gracek discusses Hilton Crawford's execution.

No, I did not.

When Paulette was remembering it, one of the details that stuck out to her was all the leather straps. She said it looked like Frankenstein's monster or something. She wondered if that was a little bit theatrical. What is he going to do? Pop up off the table or something?

There have been a couple instances where inmates have tried to wriggle out of the restraints. So, yes, they do need to take as much precaution as possible. If those restraints are needed, I guess we can look at it in the reverse. Let's say that an inmate gets put on there and breaks off the restraints. Can you imagine the fallout that would occur?

Do a lot of people kind of panic in those final moments?

No. I credit the chaplains that the TDCJ employs for calming inmates and for keeping a pretty serene environment. There have been outbursts, but they're few and far between.

I think some people involved were wondering whether there would be kind of, he would confess to the murder itself, but he kind of maintained that R.

There have been a lot of apologies given from the death chamber. It's pretty rare for someone to completely do a 180 and decide, after years and years of saying, I didn't do it, I didn't do it, I didn't do it, then to acknowledge, yeah, I did it. That's real unusual. I bet you. I could count on my fingers the times that has happened.

Paulette, one of the things she remembers is they told her she couldn't say anything, but then, kind of next door, in the other room, there were these monks chanting the whole time.

Yeah, they tell the victims that you really shouldn't say anything. I can't remember being in there. If people say anything, I don't know that they've, it's very rare where someone will talk to an inmate on the victim's side or just burst out.

Usually it's more emotional for the perpetrator's side?

Yeah, and that surprised me. initially. Victim survivors were not always allowed in the chamber. It wasn't until the late 1990s. And I thought when they opened it up to those folks that we would see more emotion into that.

Yeah, I think they told Paulette, like, you know, if you act up, that could cost other victims this opportunity or something like that.

That's a pretty good explanation. That's probably true.

And do they stagger the witnesses coming in so they don't like bump into each other in the parking lot or something?

Yes. The timing of it is such that the two sides never are intended to see one another, just in case there's animosity or they're trying to mitigate any sort of potential problem. Reporters like me were the last people into the room. So sometimes you're stuck at the very back. It's difficult to see.

Sort of eerie? Yeah.

Yeah. I think that the prison system, with all of its faults, and there have been a lot of criticisms of it, they do a very good job of carrying out the punishments in a dignified and respectful way. I was talking to a group once and I got in all kinds of trouble by defining that such, and the people who were opposed to the capital punishment decided that there was nothing dignified about this and nothing respectful about this. And for me to characterize it in that fashion was just flat out wrong. But, you know, the fact of it is, there's no joking around.

And then I guess, kind of going back to some of the stuff we were talking about at the beginning, in terms of kind of your unique experience, having witnessed all these. I mean, do you know, like, are you the person in the U.S. that's witnessed the most executions, or something like that?

If someone in the U.

Yeah, I guess, you know, it is sort of this, I don't know, I guess, ethically or morally complicated question of kind of what should be the ultimate punishment. And, you know, you can kind of ask that question abstractly and kind of come up with one thing. I don't know if kind of like actually witnessing it and being there influences the way you feel about it or...

I haven't, I have never said, and I won't, that this is either good or bad, because it just, I don't see, I don't see of any value for the work that I have done or that I continue to do, since I continue to cover these freelance spaces for the AP. Somebody reading a story, if they know that, oh, I think that the death penalty is wonderful, or I think the death penalty is horrible. And if that comes out and that they know that, then they pick up a story with my name on it, interpret that story through that prism. And it's just not, it's not good. Besides, I don't think my editors would let me do this if I did take a stand one way or the other.

Yeah. Well, I don't want you to opine about whether the death penalty is good or bad. Maybe a better way of asking is something like, do you think there's something that, like people who haven't witnessed it, don't realize about it, or that, like people have kind of common misconceptions about this, that you view it differently than people who haven't had that personal experience?

The one, well, the one thing I tell folks who are going into the chamber for the first time as a reporter, and we gather in a media room beforehand, and there's certainly other reporters wanting to, you know, what am I going to see? So you go through the, you kind of go through the routine and you say, well, here's what's going to happen. One thing I stress with them is it's very quick. And at least here in Texas, it's very quick. Pay attention, because they're going to cough a couple of times or they're going to gasp a couple of times or they're going to start breathing deeply and start snoring.

Reporting this beat, has it changed your outlook on life or how you think about people?

Yeah, you're less trustful of people. And as our kids were growing up, and they're both adults now, you don't want them to be paranoid that there's a, you know, somebody lurking behind every tree or around every corner. But you want them to be aware that there are bad things out there. And kids, teenagers especially, feel invulnerable. You want to try to temper that invulnerability without making them paranoid.

What about the other way around? Did you ever kind of feel this stuff bleeding into your personal life?

On Christmas Eve, when I go to church and the choir is singing Silent Night, everyone is reveling in the spirit of the season of Christmas. And I'm thinking of being in the death chamber, where the final words of an inmate, as he's dying, was to sing Silent Night.

Sleep in heavenly peace.

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