I’ve stared into the eyes of serial killers on death row in their final moments – here’s why they all had same request
JOE Ingle swore he would never watch a friend die. But in 1988, he had to break that rule.
Willie Darden, on Florida‘s death row with a murder conviction, wanted Joe in the chamber when he was killed in the electric chair – so he agreed.
Joe, a reverend of the Church, offers support to those on death row when no one else will.
He remembers: “When Willie came in, he looked like a king. His posture was so regal. It’s hot in Florida, even in March, so he had a little sweat on his brow.
“They pushed him into the chair, and they took his chin and slammed it back. He winced – and I could see that hurt him.
“They’d strapped his legs, and they strapped his arms down. Then they strapped his chest with leather belts.”
“You meet the death row prisoners, and they become your friends.”
Rev. Joe Ingle
Willie’s head and right leg had been shaved so the current could enter his skin unimpeded.
The prisoner made his last statement, reiterating his innocence, and thanked those who had helped him.
He urged them not to give up the fight.
“Then they did what they do – shot the electricity through his body three times. And Willie Darden is gone,” Joe says.
Darden was convicted of shooting dead the owner of a Florida furniture store while attempting to rob it in 1973.
He was tried by an all-white jury that black people were excluded from serving on – a practice later declared unconstitutional.
‘They become your friends’
Joe, 78, has dedicated 50 years of his life to befriending death row inmates.
Nobody in the US has worked with more condemned prisoners than him.
He has been a spiritual adviser to hundreds of prisoners and sat for countless death watches – the final hours before an impending execution.
Many death row prisoners have requested that Joe be the last person they spend time with – and so he waits with them, providing a supportive presence in the final moments.
He says: “You meet the death row prisoners, and they become your friends.”
Joe leaves his judgement at the cell door.
It doesn’t matter what the prisoner has been convicted of, or even if Joe thinks they are guilty of the crime; he believes everybody deserves friendship at the end.
And he believes that nobody deserves to die.
Joe’s first brush with death as punishment came in 1979.
The death penalty was reinstated in 1976, and the first to be executed was Gary Gilmore, killed by firing squad in 1977.
They’ve killed my Johnny
Lois Spenkelink
Gilmore murdered a gas station employee and a motel manager in Utah on consecutive nights in 1976.
John Spenkelink, also from Florida, was the second.
He picked up a hitchhiker and went on a robbery spree, before shooting his crime partner in the back and attacking him with a hatchet – though John claimed self-defence.
Joe says: “John was like a brother to me, and his case was coming down to the wire.
“A man called Chaplain Savage – his real name – asked John if he would pray with him.”
But John didn’t want to spend his last moments with someone who wished him dead so asked for Joe instead.
When the execution slot came around, Joe was waiting with John’s mother, Lois, in a nearby hotel, hiding her from the baying press.
Joe says: “He refused to co-operate and walk into the death chamber, so they dragged him.
“They strapped him into the chair and threw the electricity into him. They wouldn’t even let him have a final statement.”
Joe continues: “Lois had passed out from exhaustion. She’d been to see the governor, held a press conference, been to see John. It was an incredible ordeal.
[Lethal injection] is the chemical equivalent of being burned at the stake
Justice Sonia Sotomayor
“I’m watching the TV and a trailer comes across the bottom of the screen that says: ‘The Florida State Prison announced that John Spenkelink was executed at 10:12am this morning.’
“I had to shake Lois very hard to wake her, and her blue eyes looked right into mine. The tears roll down instantly and she said: ‘They’ve killed my Johnny.’
“Since that moment, I’ve devoted my life to trying to oppose and defeat that system.”
Joe says he realised that death row is “just a killing and caging machine”, and that receiving the penalty is “as random as being struck by lightning“.
It has nothing to do with guilt or punishment, he says, but rather “power and killing”.
He describes what it is like being the last person to talk with somebody.
Joe says: “It’s a gift, but it’s a painful gift. It’s an honour that this person trusts you enough. Almost always they are my friend.”
On March 7 2025, Brad Sigmon was the first person to be executed by firing squad in the US in 15 years.
Last week, Mikal Mahdi became the second, after murdering an off-duty police officer in 2004.
Reflecting on the different methods of execution, Joe says none are better than the others.
“The lethal injection is a combination of three drugs. One leaves you paralysed so you can’t even blink. You can still feel pain, but you can’t move to show it.
“It’s a combination of being waterboarded and chemical burning.”
Justice Sonia Sotomayor of the Supreme Court similarly described the lethal injection as “the chemical equivalent of being burned at the stake”.
“I don’t find they [the inmates] are dwelling on how they’re going to be killed. Death is just part of their reality.”
Joe says that each person behaves differently in their final hours. Some are terrified. Some are just completely exhausted by the mental trauma.
Another inmate he knew well, Philip Workman, was put on death watch a staggering six times before finally being executed.
Joe recalls sitting with Philip 45 minutes before his fourth scheduled death.
He had made his agonising final call to his eight-year-old son.
Then, Joe happened to glance at the TV and see a news bulletin which said Philip had been given a stay of execution.
“In those final moments Philip was just emotionally and physically exhausted.”
A neuroscientist diagnosed Philip with profound PTSD from the torture of repeated death warrants and reprisals.
This is a familiar story to Joe.
“Another time, Ed Zagorski was granted a stay of execution an hour before death. But that’s only because the governor was worried the electric chair wouldn’t work properly.
An electrocution in Florida had recently gone horribly wrong when, instead of killing the inmate, the current set him on fire and he burned to death.
Joe says: “They didn’t want that to happen. They were concerned about the aesthetics, not the morality.”
Ed was executed 18 days later.
Joe has worked with an extraordinary number of death row inmates over the years.
He says: “For many years I visited every death row in the South. I’ve met with governors.
“I’ve met with bishops and lords. We were able to get Pope John Paul the second involved in Bob Sullivan’s case in Florida.”
Joe first became involved in the prison system at the age of 25, when he began visiting the Bronx House of Detention.
He noticed that everyone was poor and from an ethnic minority – and so realised that something was seriously wrong.
Joe went on to found the South Coalition on Jails and Prisons along with some colleagues.
He says: “We had offices in eight Southern states. We visited death rows, fought mass incarceration, fought the death penalty, just did everything we could to stop this killing machine.”
After 50 years of working with death row inmates, Joe himself has been diagnosed with PTSD, and is currently working through trauma therapy.
He grows 175 blueberry bushes on his land in Tennessee because feeling connected to the earth helps.
Clearly emotional, Joe says: “I’m in the process of putting myself back together. I have paid a heavy price. I’m sitting here crying right now.”
After decades of intimate exposure to death row, Joe feels sure that the decisive factors in capital punishment in the US are not guilt or innocence, but rather “poverty and class”.
And reflecting on his part in it, Joe says: “I’m going in there just to be with them, to be their friend. If they want to talk about religion, we’ll talk about it. But I’m there to love them and care for them. That’s my whole role.
“And it’s heartbreaking.”