By DON FLETCHER
News Staff Writer
James Osgood, convicted in 2014 of the brutal rape and murder of his girlfriend’s cousin four years earlier, was executed by lethal injection last Thursday, April 24, at William C. Holman Correctional Facility, near Atmore.
Osgood was sentenced to death for the capital murder of Tracy Lynn Brown Wilemon, a 44-year-old recently divorced mother, in Chilton County.
According to court documents, Osgood confessed to Chilton County Sheriff’s Office investigators that on Oct. 13, 2010, he and his girlfriend, Tonya Vandyke, attacked Wilemon, with whom Vandyke had grown up in California, in her bedroom.
Both Osgood, who was 55 at the time of his execution, and Vandyke sexually assaulted Wilemon, according to Osgood’s confession, during which he also told investigators he slashed Wilemon’s throat “a number of times before stabbing her in the back.”
Chief Assistant District Attorney C.J. Robinson told jurors the murder was committed “because James Osgood decided he wanted to fulfill some twisted fantasy to kill someone.”
Court records show that in his confession, Osgood said “there was a lot of cutting involved but it wasn’t a crime of violence. There was no anger involved.”
Gov. Kay Ivey issued a statement, calling the killing “premeditated, gruesome and disturbing,” and Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall said, “no one should have to endure the pain they’ve (Wilemon’s family) carried or relive the horror of her tragic and senseless death.”
According to an Associated Press story, the convicted killer told a reporter he had dropped his appeals because he was guilty and thought his execution should go forward.
“I’m a firm believer in — like I said in court — an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth. I took a life, so mine was forfeited. I don’t believe in sitting here and wasting everybody’s time and everybody’s money,” Osgood reportedly said.
He was pronounced dead at 6:35 p.m. CDT, becoming the second condemned inmate executed in Alabama this year.
Demetrius Frazier, 52, was executed by nitrogen hypoxia in February for the 1991 rape and murder of Pauline Brown, 41, who was killed inside her Birmingham apartment.