John Wayne Gacy
When police uncovered what lay beneath John Wayne Gacy’s house, the world was given a new definition of horror. The Illinois contractor and part-time children’s clown murdered at least 33 young men between 1972 and 1978. Arrested in December of ’78, Gacy was executed by lethal injection at Stateville Correctional Center. He’d once worked for KFC – so that bucket of chicken feels like a return to familiarity in a way. Perhaps he wanted comfort. Or maybe it was just one last indulgence of a gluttonous man who couldn’t resist his temptations (Pictures: Getty/Shutterstock)
Ruth Ellis
Her story closed an era in British history. Ruth Ellis became the last woman executed in the UK in 1955 after shooting her lover dead. A single scrambled egg was all she asked for. The modesty of it almost softens her image, set against the headlines of the time that painted her as a murderous femme fatale. Britain soon grow a conscience after gawping at the hanging, that egg being the last last meal for a woman the country’s prison ever served up (Pictures: Getty/Shutterstock)
Marion Albert Pruett
Few inmates went bigger for their last meal. Pruett’s criminal trail stretched across several states and was littered with robberies and murder, before Arkansas authorities finally stopped him in 1999. His last meal reads like a junk food carnival: pizza, burgers, piles of fried sides, a whole pie and oceans of cola. No restraint, no symbolism, no consequence. Just the kind of hell for leather appetite you might associate with a serial killer (Pictures: Getty/Shutterstock)
Timothy McVeigh
When McVeigh carried out the Oklahoma City bombing in 1995, he killed 168 people and changed America’s sense of safety overnight. Before his federal execution six years later, he ordered only mint chocolate chip ice cream. Cool, sweet and green – his choice is almost childlike in its simplicity. Perhaps there’s a deep-seated psychological reason behind opting for the safety of childish food when faced with something with a magnitude that’s hard to get your head around (Pictures: Getty/Shutterstock)
Peter Kürten
In 1931, the man Germans called ‘The Vampire of Düsseldorf’ faced the guillotine. His final meal? Reliably German. Weiner schnitzel, fried potatoes and local white wine. The kind of meal that could have come from any home kitchen in Germany. Maybe that was the point. A killer who terrorised a city for years ending his life desiring something ordinary, something almost recognisably human. A weird irony, given the savage inhumanity the man demonstrated in his crimes (Pictures: Getty/Shutterstock)
Richard Cooey
Ohio inmate and food fan Richard Cooey didn’t hold back when he realised that he’d never eat again. Convicted of a brutal double murder in 1986, he was executed two decades later after years of appeals. His meal was a mountain of food: steak, fries, eggs, hash browns, toast, onion rings, pastries, ice cream, fizzy soda… Was his giant meal all part of his final ditch attempt to swerve lethal injection? It could’ve been. Only Cooey tried – and failed – with a last minute plea not to be executed, claiming that the cocktail of chemicals would have taken too long to work in his system, been ‘inhumane’ and was fraught with potential for complications. On account of his obesity. The 267lb killer’s plea was rejected, the injection went ahead. It was both lethal and uncomplicated in the end (Pictures: AP/Shutterstock)
Ricky Ray Rector
There’s something innocent about Rector’s final choice. After killing a police officer in Arkansas in 1981, he shot himself in the head, leaving lasting brain damage that raised moral questions about his execution. It almost didn’t go ahead but for the intervention of then-state governor Bill Clinton, who intervened in Rector’s case. For his last meal, he asked for steak and fried chicken with cherry Kool-Aid and pecan pie. He didn’t eat the pie, telling guards he planned to save it ‘for later’. There was, of course, no later. And no pie. Not for Ricky (Picture: AP/Shutterstock)
Thomas Grasso
If chaos could be plated, this was it. Grasso, executed in Oklahoma in 1995 for murdering two elderly victims, ordered up seafood, ribs, burgers, pie, shakes and Spaghetti-Os – all at once. It sounds like a recipe for food poisoning, not that it’d really have mattered all that much. His final words even included a complaint that the kitchen gave him spaghetti instead of Spaghetti-Os. Everyone’s a critic, eh? (Pictures: Getty/AP)
Ruth Snyder
Her case shocked New York in 1928 – a suburban housewife conspiring with her lover to kill her husband? It was scandalous. And the newspapers loved it. On the eve of her electrocution she ordered chicken parmesan, pasta, ice cream and enough grape soda to flood the cellblock. It didn’t, however and she was executed as planned (Pictures: Getty/Shutterstock)
Victor Feguer
There was no feast for Feguer. Convicted of kidnapping and murder, he faced Iowa’s gallows in 1963 with one request: a single olive. Why? Was he just a fussy eater with a tiny appetite? Well, no. The man had a rather strange, almost rather poignant plan. He tucked the pit into his pocket, hoping it would sprout into an olive tree from his grave – a small act of imagined peace. As if he could atone for his sins posthumously somehow (Pictures: Iowa State Penitentiary/Shutterstock)
