Prison staff were left feeling disturbed by one of American history's strangest death row meal requests. Murderer James Edward Smith, 37, was put to death on April 5, 1984 in Texas - a state where last meals for inmates has now been outlawed. The former tax driver, incarcerated for shooting dead a life insurance firm's district manager, asked for rhaeakunda dirt, believed to be eaten in voodoo rituals, which Smith practiced behind bars.
He thought performing the voodoo ritual at death would increase his chances of reincarnation - and when the request was rejected threatened to haunt the jail for 300 years. In 2011, Texas prison officials stopped the practice of letting condemned inmates choose their last meal after complaints about the expansive request from Lawrence Russell Brewer. He asked for two chicken fried steaks, a triple-meat bacon cheeseburger, fried okra, a pound of barbecue, three fajitas, a meat lover's pizza, a pint of ice cream and a slab of peanut butter fudge with crushed peanuts.
Prison officials said Brewer didn't eat any of it. The stories have been revisited by a TikTok star with a penchant for the macabre, Josh Slavin, who admits his fascination with Death Row inmates' last meals might be "weird." Slavin, 22 and from Washington DC, dives into the dark tradition of replicating and taste-testing condemned prisoners' final meal requests.
Slavin told the Daily Star that his interest could be chalked up to the fact that he "might just be weird." His early cur.
