In ninety minutes, Wilkie would die.
Brad Frame’s leg muscles ached as he stepped from the car onto the gravel driveway. He needed to
stretch after the four-hour drive from Philadelphia, so he placed his hands against the car’s body,
and braced his legs on the solid ground until he felt his hamstring go taut.
After a moment, the warmth he had retained from the heated leather seats of the Mercedes quickly
dissipated into the brisk March night. He zipped up his parka, exhaled, and watched as his breath,
visible in the sodium vapor lights at the perimeter of the prison, wafted slowly into space. Standing
by the open car door his gaze moved outward from the floodlit stone walls to the grays of distant
hills silhouetted against a black sky. It all seemed so peaceful until the rising chants of nearby
demonstrators, with their conflicting death penalty messages, reminded him why he stood next to
his car on a godforsaken spot in the middle of Pennsylvania.
A few minutes earlier as his car approached the base of the hill on which the prison stood, anti-
death penalty protestors had rushed him. They leered at him with angry faces, shaking their hand-
painted signs in an unreadable blur, and pounded the windows while shouting obscenities. Their
fury surprised and angered him, and he stared back at them in disbelief. He couldn’t understand
how they could embrace the life of a man who had brought so much pain and suffering to his
family. Brad felt his heart racing and his jaw tighten. Words took shape in his mind: Do you know
what this man did to my family? Before he could shout back the State Police had cleared the
roadway, and Brad had continued his journey up the hill.
Brad glanced at his watch—almost 10 p.m. He slammed the car door and reminded himself that it
wasn’t too late to back out. Frank Wilkie had invited him to the Rockview Correctional facility for
the execution. Wilkie, who, eleven years earlier, had kidnapped his mother and sister from their
Main Line home in Philadelphia. A week after the kidnapping they were found brutally murdered.
Brad zapped the remote to lock his car, then turned toward the chain link fence.
Approaching the gate of the death house, located on the grounds of the prison in a former field
hospital, Brad stared up at the v-shape brackets at the top connected by barbed wire into which
coils of razor wire had been cradled. Wicked looking stuff. The guards must have seen him coming,
because the gate opened with a soft whir and he continued walking toward a thick security window
at the building’s entrance. A uniformed officer behind the glass muttered, “ID,” into the intercom,
and Frame flashed his driver’s license. A few seconds later a deep buzzer sounded followed by the
clank of metal as the door ground open. Another Correction’s officer waited on the other side.
“I'm Tom Hardesty.” The officer extended his hand. “We've been expecting you, Mr. Frame. You’
re the last to arrive.”
“Call me Brad,” he said matching Hardesty’s vigorous handshake.
“I see you made it past the demonstrators. Sorry you had to go through that, but they got their First
Amendment rights.” Hardesty laughed. “The other witnesses are in a holding room, Mr. Frame…
Brad. You'll be going into the execution chamber shortly. Follow me.”
Brad shivered. Hardesty said execution chamber as easily as he might say art gallery.
Hardesty led him back a short fluorescent-lit hallway on a circuitous route. Brad followed the click
of Hardesty’s hard-soled shoes down the tiled hallway, past rest rooms, a water fountain, and
unmarked doors toward a stout, mustachioed man who waited for them near an open doorway.
Hardesty stopped and turned smartly. “This is Mr. Frame,” he announced, then turned back and
said, “Superintendent Henry Dolewski.”
Brad grasped Dolewski’s hand, and noticed the superintendent sized him up as if he were a new
tenant for the cellblock. Force of habit, he surmised.
“It’s good to meet you,” Brad said. “I was surprised to get your call the other day.”
“After twenty seven years in this business nothing surprises me,” Dolewski said, adding, “Would
you believe I had to scrounge up another witness this afternoon? The condemned man’s other
witness bailed out on us. You can wait in here, Mr. Frame.” Dolewski put his hand on Brad’s back
guiding him through the door. Perhaps a dozen others, gathered in small clusters throughout the
room, snapped their heads noting the new arrival.
When the Superintendent had called three days earlier with the news that Frank Wilkie wanted
Frame to serve as a witness to his execution, Brad’s first instinct was no way. But Sharon Porter,
an associate in his detective agency had convinced him. She said it might help bring “closure,” and
that maybe Wilkie wanted the chance to apologize. Brad doubted it. Besides, Brad was an agnostic
on the death penalty, not quite understanding how another death would ease the pain he’d felt for
the past eleven years.
“You might be interested in the briefing materials, Mr. Frame,” Henry Dolewski said, pointing at a
nearby table. “Now if you'll excuse me, I have important matters to attend to.”
Brad grabbed a portfolio, and figured he should introduce himself to the other witnesses. It was
easy to spot the government’s witnesses; they all wore suits—must have gotten the same memo. A
retired police officer, a warden from a nearby county prison, a policy analyst from the State
Correction’s Department, and a Deputy State Attorney General offered short greetings and polite
handshakes. Then a man in a tight-fitting black suit with narrow lapels and wearing a goofy string
tie described himself as an “interested citizen” and firmly grasped Brad’s hand for an overly long
time until Frame finally disengaged.
The media were easy to identify too, clumped in two groups at the far end of the room. The ones
wearing denim and casual shirts were all print journalists, Brad surmised, while he recognized one
of the two guys in dark blazers, pale blue shirts, fashionable ties, and Reeboks from Channel 6 in
Philadelphia. They both looked primed for remote TV broadcasts when the execution was
concluded. Brad approached the reporters and quickly introduced himself. He also recognized Paula
Thompson from The Philadelphia Inquirer, who had interviewed him once as an expert in her
coverage of a missing person’s case. Thompson started to ask a question, but Brad turned and beat
a path to the water cooler, managing to avoid her.
Except for Thompson, all the witnesses were men. What an eclectic group, he thought, with no
more in common than if they were all vacationing on the same cruise ship.
10:17 p.m. Brad retreated to a quiet corner of the conference room and thumbed through the
Correction’s Department briefing kit—undoubtedly prepared for the benefit of the media—detailing
the evening’s sequence of events. It described death by lethal injection in the clinical language of the
law: “Death shall be inflicted by injecting the convict with a continuous, intravenous administration
of a lethal quantity of an ultrashort-acting barbiturate in combination with a chemical paralytic
agent… until death is pronounced by a licensed physician.”
“You ever see an execution?” The question rose above the murmur of scattered conversations.
Brad glanced up from the briefing materials and saw the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reporter staring at
him.
“I did,” the reporter continued, “in Texas, when I worked for the Dallas Morning News. They
used lethal injection too. Stuck the needle in a muscle, instead of a blood vessel. It took that poor
son-of-a-bitch forty minutes to die. I thought I'd never get out of there.”
Brad noticed that the policy analyst grimaced at the man’s story, while others turned away. Brad,
unsure if he wanted to remain for the execution, headed toward the exit.
Paula Thompson blocked his path. In addition to her denim fashion statement, her bedraggled hair
made a plea for a fresh shampoo. She reminded Brad of a cobra; its neck flattened and prepared to
spit venom. She didn't even count to ten before firing her question at him: “So you weren't content
to get the man convicted, you had to come see him die?”
The room grew eerily quiet. Without looking Brad could tell that all eyes were focused on him. He
cleared his throat and hoped he wouldn’t sound as anxious as he felt. “I take no pleasure at
witnessing this execution, Ms. Thompson. I'm here at Frank Wilkie's request, but I'm also confident
that justice is being done.”
“What do you mean?” the Philadelphia TV reporter asked. “Are you saying Wilkie asked you to
attend his execution?” Thompson had broken the dam and questions came flying, even from non-
reporters: “Did you meet with him?” “What does he want?” “Did he ask you to petition the
Governor for clemency?”
Brad raised both hands in a gesture of surrender. “Look, I haven't seen Frank Wilkie since his trial
ten years ago. I haven’t got a clue why he wants me here.”
Thompson persisted. “What about all the appeals? Didn't you testify?”
“No. I did not testify.” Brad met her gaze directly. “Appeals are used to argue law, not facts. The
facts are that Frank Wilkie and Eddie Baker took the lives of two innocent people—my mother and
sister. That's never been in dispute. The only thing that has, is whether the jury's death mandate
should be carried out.”
Paula Thompson blinked her brown eyes, then turned and preached to the other witnesses. “A guy
sits on death row for ten years. He’s already paid a big chunk of debt to society, and then they do
this.” She shook her head, as if in disbelief.
“It’s not my fault the courts can’t provide swift justice,” Brad countered. “Every time the State was
ready to take Wilkie’s life, the appeals process kept extending it—first for weeks, then months and
years. Judge MacIntee, who tried the original case, died a couple years later. And you know what?”
Brad asked rhetorically, realizing a bitter tone had crept into his voice. “That gave some attorney
another reason to file an appeal.” He drew a quick breath. “Get this! Based on not being able to
probe the Judge’s state of mind when he sentenced Wilkie to death.”
“Do you believe the death penalty deters murder?” Thompson asked. Brad noticed she was
scribbling his comments in her notebook.
“I know Frank Wilkie will never commit another murder.” Brad stared at her, as if daring her to
dismantle that logic.
“When they start broadcasting executions,” Thompson said, “they'll put an end to this barbarism.”
Brad walked away from her. He wished he had never come to the prison. Not only wouldn’t he
find closure that night, but also he faced the prospect of seeing his own words distorted and
smeared across the pages of The Philadelphia Inquirer.
“Wasn’t there another guy convicted of this same crime?” a reporter asked to no one in particular.
“Eddie Baker,” the retired police officer answered. “He hung himself in his prison cell a couple
years ago. He saved the taxpayers a few bucks, at least.”
10:46 p.m. The seconds chugged by. And with each passing minute, the conference room grew
more claustrophobic. Each witness managed to find a few square feet of space and paced off the
minutes. Brad listened to the idle musings of his fellow witnesses.
Hank, the interested citizen, chimed in, “I don’t know how what we're gonna see is any different
than what that so-called ‘Suicide Doctor’ was doin’ up in Michigan. This is more humane than the
electric chair.”
A couple of witnesses nodded their heads. Brad remained stoic, not wishing to get drawn into any
debates.
“If you want to see something barbaric, we could bring back public hanging,” the county prison’s
warden wryly offered. “The last public hanging in Pennsylvania was in my county in 1913. Back
then each county was responsible for its own executions. Our county commissioners—ever mindful
of the public tax dollars—paid an executioner who promised he wouldn't have to spend a lot of
money building an expensive wooden scaffold. The guy rigged up this system which used
counterweights to hoist the poor man into the air instead of goin' through a drop like a conventional
hanging. After a half-hour of prayers and speeches, they strung the man up in the courtyard of the
jail. It took him twenty minutes to choke to death, instead of getting his neck broke if they'd've
rigged a regular drop.” The man paused, then seeming to draw energy from the rapt interest of his
listeners continued, “Of course the public was admitted as witnesses along with any unsuspecting
drunk and disorderly who happened to be confined the previous night. They considered it
therapeutic for the other prisoners to watch the hangings.”
Brad felt a headache coming on and massaged his forehead.
Officer Hardesty materialized in the doorway. “Gentlemen, and, ah, lady, if you'll follow me,
they're ready for you.”
According to the briefing book, Frame was witness number six. The witnesses lined up in order and
proceeded single file, in hushed silence, down a narrow corridor until Hardesty stopped, opened a
door and directed them into the room where they would view the execution. His was the last seat in
the front row, a sturdy wooden chair. The Deputy Attorney General sat next to him, and Frame
noticed that Paula Thompson slid into a chair in the back row on the opposite end of the
observation room. Officer Hardesty backed out of the metal door and it clanged shut. Soon the only
sound Brad heard was the breathing of his fellow witnesses.
There was no question where they were supposed to look. Three glass panels in front of them
offered a full view of the death chamber. Brad was surprised how close they were to where the
prisoner would meet his fate. If not for the glass, he could have touched the gurney. He was kept
further back watching an oil change at the Mercedes’ dealership.
The execution room was a modest-sized, windowless, concrete block space painted a pale shade of
green. On the right side of the room, next to the only door, a black phone hung silently on the wall.
On the left, a small one-way-mirrored-window concealed the place where Brad presumed the
executioners could observe the prisoner. The briefing materials described a process involving two
persons activating separate switches, only one of which actually released the deadly fluid. Like
giving one member of a firing squad blank cartridges, he surmised the procedure provided emotional
cover just in case one of the executioners later developed pangs of conscience. A coiled plastic tube
extended from a slot beside their observation window. It would convey the drugs: Sodium
Thiopental, producing nearly immediate anesthesia followed by brain death; Potassium Chloride,
paralyzing the heart; and just to make sure, a third chemical, Pavulon, to impede the functioning of
the lungs.
Brad’s eyes focused on the sheet-covered gurney in the center of the room—the condemned man's
deathbed. Behind it stood a white-coated technician with a tray of intravenous needles and plastic
tubing, alongside a heart-monitoring machine. He noticed the man wore surgical gloves.
11:02 p.m. Brad began to wonder if the Governor had granted a last minute reprieve. Every once in
a while a witness would sigh.
Then Brad saw the door on the opposite side of the execution room swing open, and a uniformed
correction’s officer held it back. First in the lineup to enter was Superintendent Dolewski who
positioned himself behind the gurney.
“...He leadeth me beside the still waters; he restoreth my soul. He leadeth me in paths of
righteousness for his name's sake. Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death...”
A wiry black man in his mid-forties dressed in a gray jacket, black shirt, and wearing a clerical
collar preceded the condemned man. His words drifted to the witnesses through metal grills above
the windows in the partition wall, which gave every sound a muffled echo.
Brad had read in the briefing materials that George Haines was the prison's Protestant chaplain.
Continuing to recite the 23rd Psalm from memory, the chaplain moved into position to the left of
the gurney.
Four guards escorted Frank Wilkie. Brad barely recognized him, having not seen him for ten years.
Back then he’d been a cocky jerk in his late-twenties with a full head of brown hair. Now with
thinning hair and a pasty complexion he was dressed in a light blue jumpsuit and already looked
sapped of life. Wires connected to sensors taped to his chest protruded through grommets sewn into
the suit, enabling prison officials to monitor his heart during the procedure. Brad noticed Wilkie
clutched a book in his hands even as his wrists were secured with leather restraints. He glanced at
the gurney and then toward the superintendent who remained taut lipped and alert. Two of the
guards boosted the prisoner to a seated position on the gurney. Almost immediately, the other
officers lifted and turned Wilkie’s feet so that he had to lie down. More officers entered the room,
each with a task to perform. The prisoner was quickly bound to the table with thick leather straps.
With military precision those guards withdrew, and two of the officers who had escorted him
removed the leather wrist restraint attached to his belt. They re-secured Wilkie's right arm to an
armrest extending from the right side of the gurney, dislodging the book he carried. The book fell to
the floor. Brad leaned forward until his forehead touched the glass and could make out that it was a
Bible Wilkie had dropped.
Frank Wilkie let out a mournful groan, and flailed about, trying in vain to reach his Bible. The
prisoner extended his still-free hand, but two guards jammed his left shoulder back toward the thin
padding on the gurney, and the left arm restraint was quickly applied.
“My Bible!” Wilkie thundered. His words echoed through the chamber, destroying the calm
atmosphere that had prevailed up to that point.
It seemed to Brad that the prisoner’s eyes pleaded with Chaplain Haines. As the guards double-
checked the straps securing Wilkie to the table, the chaplain bent down to retrieve Wilkie's Bible.
“I want you to take it, like we talked,” the condemned man said. His words were softly spoken, yet
loud enough to carry through the grillwork in to the hushed witness chamber. Haines clasped
Wilkie's arm and bowed his head in silent prayer. Frank Wilkie squeezed his eyes shut, then opened
them as the chaplain withdrew to his appointed station.
Tilting his head to the right, Wilkie showed no emotion as he stared toward the glass of the witness
booth. Unlike the death chamber, which was bathed in fluorescent light, the witness observation
room was dimly lit, and Brad wondered if Wilkie could see him. The condemned man’s eyes darted
anxiously back and forth across the bank of witnesses, all of whom seemed to be holding their
breath. Brad wanted the ordeal to end. Wished he had never come to the prison. It all felt surreal,
like a nightmare from which he hoped he would soon awaken.
As the prison’s physician entered the execution room, all others withdrew except for two guards,
the chaplain, medical technician and the superintendent. One of the remaining guards closed and
locked the door from the inside.
The superintendent looked about the chamber, appeared to spot something on the floor and bent
down to retrieve it. The wall below the windows obstructed Brad’s view, but when the warden
stood up he could see it was a single sheet of paper. The superintendent glanced at it briefly before
folding it and slipping it into his inside coat pocket.
Dolewski surveyed the chamber one last time as if to see if all was in readiness, then spoke the
words Brad thought might provide the explanation for his invitation. “Does the prisoner have any
final words before sentence is carried out?”
Wilkie remained impassive. His eyelids fluttered closed, and then he shook his head from side to
side.
Dolewski nodded to the technician who, under the watchful eye of the physician, inserted a needle
into a vein in the condemned man's arm. Wilkie’s body tensed then relaxed. The technician
extended the coil of intravenous tubing—conveying at first only a saline solution according to the
briefing materials—and affixed the tube to the receptacle at the end of the needle now lodged in the
prisoner's arm. The wires attached to his chest were connected to the heart monitor. The doctor
inspected the intravenous line and pronounced it ready.
Prison staff took their positions at the perimeter of the room, while the superintendent stood about
three feet away from the prisoner. Prompted by a 3” by 5” card held in his left hand, Dolewski
repeated the required words advising Wilkie that the death sentence was about to be carried out.
The warden looked up from the card, and to unseen personnel behind the one-way mirror he said,
“You may begin the execution.”
The sound startled Brad—like the pop-whoosh a tire makes when it’s separated from the rim—and
his body tensed. He recalled the briefing materials had reminded them that the execution used the
latest mechanical process, buttons pushed, pre-measured poison sped on its way, starting with
anesthesia.
Seconds later, Frank Wilkie lay unconscious on the table.
Witnesses watched in silence. Brad heard the noise again—the second chemical starting its journey.
But he didn’t jump that time, and found himself questioning his own humanity, since it had only
taken once for him to get used to the sound of an execution machine.
Wilkie's breathing became more labored. Longer and longer intervals passed between the natural
rising and falling of his chest. The wait seemed interminable. If lethal injection was intended to
sanitize an execution, Brad thought, it didn't make it any easier to watch. A gunshot to the head
would have been messy, but he would have been out of the stifling confines of the witness chamber
a lot sooner.
Brad couldn’t pretend he hadn’t thought about this moment many times during the last ten years—
ever since he’d stood in court and offered a victim’s impact statement just before the judge
pronounced sentence on Wilkie.
Brad stared in Wilkie’s direction, but he wasn’t really looking at him. His mind drifted back to
happier times: “Brad!” He heard his mother’s voice calling to him as he stood at the kitchen
window. He pictured her shouldering a large blue canvas bag, wearing the floppy straw hat that she
always used to shield the sun when gardening, and carrying a box. “Lucy and I are planting some
flowers along the path,” she shouted. “We could use your help clearing out the underbrush.”
Moments later he’d joined them in what she called her “secret garden.” She’d had Brad’s dad build
a set of steps down the steep slope at the back of their Bryn Mawr home and clear a place for a
wooden bench. In that secluded spot it felt like they were miles from anyone, in fact, looking back
up the hill Brad couldn’t even see the roof of their house. “What are you staring at?” his sister Lucy
had asked, as she sat cross-legged in the dirt sorting flower bulbs. “You can’t even tell there are
houses around here,” he’d said. Brad smiled as he recalled his younger sister, her face smudged
with dirt as she wiped a few strands of hair out of her eyes and glanced back toward their house to
see what he was talking about. “What are you planting, Mom?” he had inquired. “I’ll give you three
guesses,” she said, with a twinkle in her eyes. But he only needed one—Daffodils—her favorite
flower.
The steady alarm on the prisoner’s heart monitor shook Brad from his thoughts, and then he
noticed the green flat line. An aide reached over and turned off the alarm, while the physician
consulted his watch. The doctor extracted a stethoscope from his jacket pocket, hooked it on his
ears, and listened to the prisoner’s chest. After several more agonizing minutes and a second check
with the stethoscope, the doctor finally signaled that Wilkie was dead. The technician drew a sheet
over the body. The door to the cubicle opened and witnesses were invited to leave.
Nobody declined.
Brad, closest to the door, hurried out of the room hoping to elude further inquiries from the media.
11:35 p.m. Outside the prison the chilly temperature felt curiously refreshing after the longest half-
hour Brad had ever spent, lending a tinge of reality to the evening, as did the presence, immediately
outside, of an ambulance standing ready to remove Wilkie's body. For an instant, Brad thought he
heard the muffled shouts of prisoners behind the cellblock walls. Maybe they were protesting—in
vain—the loss of one of their comrades. The yellowish tint of the sodium vapor lighting in the
prison compound made the fog appear eerie as it rolled in from the valley below.
“Mr. Frame!” a voice shouted from behind.
Brad cringed, then stopped and turned around.
Chaplain George Haines had caught up with him just as he approached the exit gate.
“Mr. Frame, I have something for you,” the Chaplain said. “Wilkie wanted me to give you this.”
He thrust Wilkie's Bible into Brad’s hands.
Copyright 2005 - Ray Flynt
