Detailing Death

Robert Kirby (thanks, Matt): Shortly before midnight on Jan. 25, 1996, five men gathered at a table in a darkened room at the Utah State Prison and prepared to kill a sixth.

They watched the clock and waited. In just moments, John Albert Taylor would die for the 1989 murder of Charla Nicole King, an 11-year-old Washington Terrace girl he raped, then strangled with a telephone cord.

Convicted of aggravated murder and sentenced to die, Taylor spent a decade on death row before abruptly ending his appeals and requesting the punishment be carried out. At 12:03 a.m., the five-man squad leaned into their rifles and shot him to death.