..  ..Robert West ...No 731 ...Ellis I Unit, Huntsville, Texas ...Year of Birth 1961 ...Marital Status single ...Children none ...Date of offense August 24, 1982 ...Sentenced to death January 11, 1983 ...Status Executed July 27, 1997 Click on the image to view a larger version. Scroll below for an account of the session.

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Robert West was convicted of killing DeAnn Klaus in a drunken rage in 1982. Both lived at the Memorial Park Motel in Houston, where Klaus worked in the bar. Police reports indicate that West broke into Klaus's room, tied her to the bed with fishing twine, & strangled & stabbed her. Residents of the motel saw West leave the victim's room covered with blood & called the police; shortly after West was arrested. According to West, the victim's boyfriend had killed his brother by mistake, intending to kill him. In retaliation, West killed Klaus. All four knew each other & were involved in drug dealing. In appearance, West is probably the most stereotypical criminal I had met: a skinhead haircut & numerous tattoos, & a face that's a conspiracy. Most prisoners who have spent years in confinement are docile, but West's manner was all flint & cinders. West had known freedom for just 2 years since the age of 13; he was the quintessential recidivist, the reason prisons are built. "This was my third time in the penitentiary. I told them, 'All right, you think I'm too young to be in prison so I'll show you what a youngster does in prison.' So, for 6 years I went on a rampage, throwing feces & urine on every guard that walked by my cell. Every opportunity I got, I came out of my cell & jumped on him. We were fighting. We were tearing stuff up. Tore all the TVs off the wall. Tore the toilets & sinks off the wall. I lived in solitary for the entire summer of 1985." West spent a good portion of the interview trying to get a reaction from Lorie Savel by being extremely graphic about his life in prison. "Back then we used to have this medication here called Artane. It's a muscle-relaxer that they give the people that are on Thorazine & stuff....We'd go down & see the shrink & get him to put us on Thorazine to get the Artane...& we'd throw the Thorazine in the toilet & do the Artane. The problem with that was...it made you take a shit when you took it....Anyway I tore my toilet off the wall after doing the Artane & I hadn't taken a shit yet, so I was in trouble....They finally came in with the SORT team & they cut my door off with a blowtorch. They got tear-gas canisters pointing in there. He [a guard] come running in with all 7 of them pushing him. He was like a kamikaze....He came in & I caught one of them in the face & then got punched & then flipped over on the bed & then that big motherfucker put his knee in the small of my back & put all that weight on it....I shit in my drawers because of the Artane. Then they beat....They beat the shackles on & took me up out of the cell." Though West tested Lorie often, the rapport that developed between them was palpable. "This is the first time in 10 years that I've sat with anybody outside of the system. It's kind of uncomfortable to tell you the truth because I haven't been in this kind of situation & don't know how to react & I keep-sometimes in my head-like sitting here looking at you, I'm kind of reverting back to the free world again-like this is a normal thing. And I have to remind myself there are just some parts of you that you have to leave behind & that you can't carry in here no more. You just can't be a whole human." Robert's cigarette smoke rings filled the room. Lorie was able to get West to talk about his harsh childhood.

The abandonment by his parents scarred him for life. His reunion with his mother was misguided; his relationship with her was a psychological minefield. She could give him no answers. His confusion was revealing & unnerving. "She was 15 years old whe she had me. When I got out of reform school, the first time I met her I was 18 years old. She was 34 years old....The first thing she said to me was, "You got a joint?" So we're sitting there & we're smoking a joint & we're drinking a beer & I don't see her as mother no more....And we partied & we had the same kind of relationship you have with a lover except there was no sex & no conversation of it....And I was thinking about it. "This ain't my mother. I don't know this woman." I told her what I was really thinking & probably why I didn't get as close to her as I could have because those were the thoughts that I was having. I don't know if they was right or wrong. I still don't." Prison & reform school were his parents. Such an upbringing is bound to give a distorted sense of the world. In prison, West seemed to thrive on the conflict he created. The visions he conjured up were bloodcurdling. "They brought in this squad they called the SORT team, Special Operations Response Team. They were torturers. They came in. Eight of them in a cell on a person; bend his fingers, twist his toes, pressure points here, pulling hair, stretching your mouth open, squeezing your nuts....They taught them how to hurt without leaving bruises & internal injuries." Though West cultivated his reputation for trouble, the last couple of years had brought a complete reversal of his behavior. He was one of those prisoners who got married on death row. He stopped feuding with his jailers. Volcanic in his youth, he matured. West had been the editor of the prison publication, Endeavor, a duty he had shared with Gary Graham. He passed his days writing-for publication, to friends & acquaintances-& reading. "In spite of the system, I went in another direction & started reading. I read Dostoyevsky, Tolstoy, Nietzsche, Camus. I don't appreciate Nietzsche, by the way....I think Nietzsche is too blunt, too crude & I think he's supremist....I'd rather see people take up Camus, Tolstoy, Dostoyevsky-morehumanistic. Camus really turned me on-'neither victims, nor executioners, nor rebels....'" West's own story reads like a Greek tragedy: abandoned by his mother as a child, he killed the wrong person to avenge his brother's death. And finally he was executed by a higher power. Because we were in & out of Ellis I several times, we got to know the guards there fairly well. As a courtesy, they allowed us to walk onto the Row. It struck me as a medieval dungeon: on a bright, hot summer day, it was pitch black inside. A cacophony of wails & expletives rose up as I entered. Small points of light flickered in the dark: little mirrors & reflective devices held through the bars at right angles, to show who might be invading. I took one tentative step & was ordered to stop. The guards, who used floor-to-ceiling shields when they ventured onto the cellblock themselves, would not allow me further. Robert West's cell was at the end.