Prison Interview Documentary - Prisoner's Final Death Row Interview Before Execution

Prison Interview Documentary - Prisoner's Final Death Row Interview Before Execution

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Bill, Do you regret what you did?

Speaker 2 (00:04):
Who's you there? How can you say something if you've
Writn't there a factor?

Speaker 3 (00:11):
Death row inmate once described as having a heart full
of scorpions.

Speaker 4 (00:15):
Based his execution, Billy Wayne Cobel is condemned to die
by lethal injection.

Speaker 1 (00:21):
Are you frightened?

Speaker 5 (00:23):
He's a cold blooded killer and he deserves to die.

Speaker 1 (00:28):
And I've been granted Billy's last interview.

Speaker 4 (00:31):
His life hangs by a thread. I'll be with his
friends and family and the victims of his brutal crime.

Speaker 6 (00:40):
Can't feel sorry for somebody like that.

Speaker 4 (00:43):
As they prepare for Billy's final hours, Nellie, what's happening
in the countdown to his execution? Obviously something went terribly
wrong in there for the Cobra family. Excuse me, sir,
is the execution gone ahead?

Speaker 6 (01:07):
It's Saturday, eighteenth, Central Texas.

Speaker 2 (01:08):
I hope you're having a great weekend so far.

Speaker 7 (01:10):
It's definitely been a little warm today than it has
been our temporaries in the middle eighties and eighty six.

Speaker 4 (01:14):
Right now, the death penalty is legal in twenty nine
states across the US, and around half of all Americans
are in favor of it. Texas is the execution heart
of America. More people are put to death here than
in any other state, which is why I'm here to

(01:35):
talk to those prisoners who are fighting for their lives
and to the people who want them to die. I'm
going to be meeting Bill Coble, whose execution date is
set for next week and borrowing a last minute stay
of execution.

Speaker 1 (01:55):
He knows that he faces a.

Speaker 4 (01:56):
Lethal injection of drugs, and I just wonder, what is
it like knowing knowing you're about to die in a
week's time. Billy Coble slaid three innocent members of the
same family in nineteen eighty nine and has been languishing

(02:18):
on death row ever since. He's being held here at
the infamous Death Row Penitentiary in Livingston, Texas, alongside the
other two hundred and twelve men the state has condemned
to die. Ala seventy year old Billy is fighting for

(02:44):
a last minute stay of execution.

Speaker 2 (02:50):
Here.

Speaker 4 (02:56):
If it fails in just eight days, he'll be the
oldest man to be put to death in Texas for
one hundred years.

Speaker 2 (03:08):
Bill, I'm right, you definitely have an English accent.

Speaker 1 (03:14):
I definitely have an English accent.

Speaker 4 (03:16):
Yeah, Bill do you count the number of days, months,
and years that you've.

Speaker 2 (03:22):
Been here, about twenty nine years.

Speaker 1 (03:27):
Are you frightened about next week?

Speaker 8 (03:29):
Well?

Speaker 2 (03:30):
Death is death. A person said one time, he said,
that's a horrible way of dying. I said, what is
a good way? Can you tell me what a good
way is to die? I have known probably about four
hundred people that's been executed, and I remember every one
of them. The longer you live, the easier to accept death.

(03:56):
Who is not going to leave this world? We are?

Speaker 4 (04:01):
You're absolutely right, but not many of us know when
or how? And you know those two facts. But do
you still hope that there might be some last minute
stay of execution for you?

Speaker 2 (04:15):
I don't have the luxury or the desire to give
it any thought. I mean, I have to live for
this moment.

Speaker 4 (04:28):
When you reflect now on the reason that you've spent
almost thirty years here on death row, it was for
an act of extreme violence. Do you regret what you
did that day? Do you understand and feel the horror
of what happened?

Speaker 2 (04:48):
Was you there?

Speaker 8 (04:50):
Well?

Speaker 2 (04:50):
Why do you speak acause is it the truth?

Speaker 1 (04:53):
What happened? What happened?

Speaker 2 (04:55):
You say? I did? I did? I did?

Speaker 8 (04:57):
I did?

Speaker 2 (05:00):
Can you say something if you weren't there?

Speaker 1 (05:02):
But will you accept that you're guilty of those murders?

Speaker 9 (05:05):
Don't you?

Speaker 2 (05:07):
I accepted I did the murder. Yes, I've accepted that
I'm here for those murders.

Speaker 10 (05:11):
Years relatives say the motive was revenge.

Speaker 11 (05:21):
A forty year old man out on barn went on
a shooting rampage, killing three of his inmarks.

Speaker 4 (05:30):
On the twenty ninth of August nineteen eighty nine, Billy
Coble drove to the small town of Axtell in central Texas.
He was on the hunt for his estranged wife, Karen Vicar,
who was threatening to divorce him. When Billy arrived at
Karen's she wasn't home. Instead, he would end up killing

(05:53):
her brother, father, and mother.

Speaker 2 (05:57):
The bloody night came to a violent end.

Speaker 10 (06:00):
The suspect crashed his car some sixty miles away. He's
in custody and murder charges are pending.

Speaker 4 (06:08):
At the time of the murders, the Vicker family lived
on the same street.

Speaker 1 (06:13):
Hi, Jr. Susanna Les nice to me. How are you doing? Jr.

Speaker 4 (06:17):
Karen's nephew was eleven at the time of the vicious attack.

Speaker 1 (06:23):
Tell me what happened?

Speaker 12 (06:24):
That day, myself and my cousin who's around the same
age as me, Heather, We were on the school thus
and I didn't get off the bus at my house
because I knew my dad would be at work. So
I got off the bus and went to my aunt's house.
And I remember going to the house and Bill was there,
you know, in the house waiting.

Speaker 4 (06:41):
So you went into the house, said hi to Bill.
What happened next?

Speaker 12 (06:47):
He used some rope or something and tied us all
to the bedpost, like with our hands behind her back,
and then he put duct tape.

Speaker 6 (06:54):
On her mouths.

Speaker 1 (06:55):
Were you scared?

Speaker 13 (06:56):
You know?

Speaker 12 (06:56):
I guess at that age your mind doesn't go to
those places because you don't think that's happened.

Speaker 2 (07:03):
Now.

Speaker 4 (07:04):
Billy left the children tied up and headed off to
ambush and killed Bobby Vicker Jr's father. Judge Ralph Struther
was the prosecutor at Billy Coble's trial.

Speaker 5 (07:18):
Bobby had been a wake up police officer and he'd
gotten off work that day and had gotten home and
was working around his ranch and Billy Wayne Coble caught
Bobby out in the open there and was able to
wrestle his service revolver away from him, put it right
under his neck and practically decapitated him when he's shot him.

Speaker 4 (07:46):
Bill shot and killed your dad that day, and then
came back to the house where you were all tied up,
the children were tied up. Did you notice anything about
him at that point that was different?

Speaker 12 (08:00):
He kept kind of bragging about how he was going
to be on America's Most wanted.

Speaker 6 (08:05):
It's a sociopath, is what she'd call it. Narcissistic.

Speaker 4 (08:13):
By this time, Jr's father and grandfather were already dead,
but Billy wasn't finished. He went back across the street
to the home of Jr's grandmother, Zelda.

Speaker 5 (08:27):
He waited until missus Vicker had come home from work,
and he gundered down Ambusher Rut there. She never knew
what happened.

Speaker 4 (08:37):
Having savagely murdered three members of Jr's family, Billy set
his sights on his estranged wife, Karen, kidnapping her in
his car. After a police chase, they crashed and Billy
was finally caught. Against the odds, both Billy and Karen survived.

(08:58):
As you look ahead to the date when he maybe executed,
what goes through your.

Speaker 12 (09:04):
Mind, it will be good to have it over with.
We don't feel sorry for him at all. You know
he was even after the wreck. You know he was
bragging at the hospital to the nurses. Do you know
I just killed three people?

Speaker 2 (09:18):
I'm going to tell you you're three people?

Speaker 4 (09:21):
Huh?

Speaker 14 (09:23):
Gore choie.

Speaker 6 (09:27):
Or you never believes I'll do that either?

Speaker 2 (09:29):
See your shopped and argument.

Speaker 4 (09:33):
Why do you think he would say that I had
no idea and he didn't seem to be affected by
the fact that he'd just killed your father.

Speaker 12 (09:43):
No, he did, you know? No, I mean, I can't
feel sorry for somebody like that.

Speaker 5 (09:52):
I've dealt with the criminal justice system for forty years,
and a Cobel case was one of the most brutal,
uh and I've ever handled. Frankly, he's a cold blooded killer.
He's evil, and he deserves to die.

Speaker 1 (10:19):
A good Can I pre pay for nine? Please give me.

Speaker 3 (10:24):
Twenty dollars?

Speaker 2 (10:25):
Okay.

Speaker 4 (10:28):
I'm in Huntsville, Texas, a small rural town that's home
to America's busiest execution chamber.

Speaker 8 (10:38):
Too.

Speaker 4 (10:39):
How long have you lived in Huntsville? How does it
affect Huntsville that it's not just prisoners which are here,
but you have the whole death chamber.

Speaker 15 (10:49):
I don't think the normal field stand of Huntsville, Hays
that I'm a continue into it. Really, it gets kind
of laughing them.

Speaker 4 (11:01):
Since the death penalty was reintroduced in nineteen seventy six,
the state of Texas has executed five hundred and fifty
nine people, and Billy Wayne Coble is set to be next.

Speaker 1 (11:13):
In just six days.

Speaker 8 (11:20):
Halloween, Cobbol, at age seventy, is scheduled to become the
oldest man executed in Texas during the modern era of
the death penalty.

Speaker 16 (11:28):
The murders of Waco police officer Bobby Vicker and his
two parents rock the Central Texas community.

Speaker 4 (11:36):
In the short time left, those affected by this case
are still asking why. On the twenty ninth of August
nineteen eighty nine, a day that seemed like any other,
Billy ruthlessly murdered his three in laws and then kidnapped
his estranged wife, Karen Vicker. I feel like there are
so many unanswered questions about what happened.

Speaker 1 (11:59):
Do you want to just tell me what happened that day?

Speaker 2 (12:03):
No, to you, it matters to some people, it matters
to me, It really no longer matters.

Speaker 1 (12:17):
Did you love your wife, Karen.

Speaker 2 (12:21):
We all have emotions and there's many different things can
arouse our emotions. A beautiful flower can arouse your emotions.

Speaker 1 (12:31):
Did you love her though?

Speaker 2 (12:35):
I met my Karen when she was about sixteen seventeen
years old, didn't see her again until she was probably
about thirty four years old.

Speaker 1 (12:49):
Were you angry that she didn't want to be with
you anymore?

Speaker 2 (12:53):
It's amazing that was never said before, but he was
always said afterwards, But she never said it before.

Speaker 1 (13:00):
Said what before?

Speaker 2 (13:01):
You just said she didn't want to be with me
no more? Where she said before.

Speaker 4 (13:08):
Karen was Billy's third wife, and they married in nineteen
eighty eight. Karen worked at a jewelry store and Billy
at a local drive in movie theater. After less than
a year of marriage, Karen asked for a divorce, the
alleged trigger for the gruesome crimes against the Vicar family.

(13:30):
Were you were aware of the tension between Billy and Karen?

Speaker 12 (13:35):
People were being a little different, but I didn't know why,
and I didn't think too much of it.

Speaker 1 (13:40):
What did you think about Billy? What kind of a
man was he?

Speaker 13 (13:44):
Well?

Speaker 12 (13:46):
He and my aunt were married for less than a year,
so it wasn't around him that much. But from what
I saw of them, I never had any problems with him.
Of course, now I know that was kind of an act.

Speaker 1 (13:59):
There has to be an explanation for what he did.

Speaker 12 (14:02):
It wasn't just a situation where somebody snaps and does
something out of character. I mean, this wasn't like a
a heat of passion type crime like he planned it.
He had gone shopping, a bought supplies, he built a
silencer for his gun. This was, you know, premeditated.

Speaker 4 (14:21):
Do you feel that what you had that day was
some kind of rage that you.

Speaker 1 (14:25):
Couldn't control.

Speaker 2 (14:29):
Going back to that moment.

Speaker 1 (14:31):
But these were three people that you knew and had
affection for. Do you feel bad about what you did?

Speaker 2 (14:41):
Well? I feel bad about what I did and what
the world's done about a lot of things.

Speaker 4 (14:47):
I'm not talking about other things. I'm talking about the
murder of Bobby and his parents.

Speaker 2 (14:53):
Yes, I feel bad that circumstances have got to appoort
where they should have gotten. I feel bad about killing
the first person I killed in Vietnam. I see them
just as vividly, just as clear as I did the
day that it happen. But I can never go back
and change there.

Speaker 4 (15:23):
Billy's four years of service in the Vietnam War were
mentioned in his first trial, but no link was established
between this and the lingering psychiatric issues he experienced on
his return home.

Speaker 13 (15:36):
Them all away.

Speaker 4 (15:39):
Now, Billy's lawyer is appealing for a last minute's stay
of execution on the basis Billy suffers from post traumatic
stress syndrome. Billy served in Vietnam at the same time
as his best friend James Steele.

Speaker 17 (16:00):
Billy was in the Marines, and most of the Marines
had it for and you're young and scared to death
and not knowing what's gonna happen.

Speaker 4 (16:14):
When the war ended in nineteen seventy five, the number
of men in the American prison system with a military
background rose sharply. It peaked in nineteen eighty five, when
more than one in five inmates was a veteran.

Speaker 17 (16:31):
He could have had a flashback from Vietnam. I don't know,
But knowing Billy like I knew him, something bad had
to happen for him to do what he did, because
Billy Wayne wasn't that type person.

Speaker 1 (16:49):
What do you think now about Bill?

Speaker 12 (16:53):
I really don't know how to describe it just a
horrible person, you know, to do something like this. There
are thousands of people that have shop people in war
and don't do stuff like this.

Speaker 13 (17:02):
You know.

Speaker 12 (17:03):
I don't buy that as an excuse. I think that's
just a legal tactic.

Speaker 1 (17:10):
But what of Billy's younger life.

Speaker 4 (17:13):
Billy's father died when he was only three months old.
His mother was mentally ill and was removed to an
institution when Billy was seven. He spent the rest of
his childhood in a care home alongside James.

Speaker 17 (17:28):
I'm pretty sure Billy missed out on love when he
was a child. When your parents ain't there and they
don't want you.

Speaker 5 (17:39):
Had to work on your head.

Speaker 1 (17:44):
With his first wife, Billy had a son, Gordon.

Speaker 17 (17:48):
Billy Wayne wanted to be a day, I mean a
good day, and he was. He coached kids in baseball
and you know, just do what fathers should do, spend
time with her kids.

Speaker 2 (18:05):
When my son was younger, no matter where I was,
no matter what I was doing, I would like to
have my son with me. I tried to always make
sure that he knew that I always loved him. I
always wanted to be with him, and I wanted him
to be the best he could be.

Speaker 4 (18:22):
How is it when you see your son, Gordon? It
must be emotional for you both.

Speaker 2 (18:27):
It's probably much harder on him having to cope with his.

Speaker 13 (18:36):
And you called daddy first. Lick right all.

Speaker 4 (18:40):
I'm trying to understand how a man who claims to
adore his child could also slaughter three innocent people.

Speaker 13 (18:47):
Were a good son.

Speaker 4 (18:51):
Billie's son, Gordon was fourteen at the time of the murders.
He's now married with two grown sons.

Speaker 1 (18:58):
Of his own.

Speaker 18 (18:58):
When all that happened, Father, here is uh hard times.
A lot of people didn't realize that you know things
they say and words they say, that I can really
really affect people.

Speaker 13 (19:15):
There's no winners in any of this.

Speaker 4 (19:20):
Gordon's sons have grown up only seeing their grandfather behind bars.

Speaker 14 (19:25):
We'd put our hands up to the grass and then
that's always say high and then by. But I wish
I could hug him. I wish I could do all
the things with them, but.

Speaker 13 (19:39):
I can't.

Speaker 4 (19:40):
M There's now just days until Billy Koble faces death
by lethal injection, and Gordon only has two more chances
to spend time with his father.

Speaker 18 (19:54):
It's not gonna be easy, but it ain't nothing, not
any animals. I've been through so much more take a
square on the chin and takes it a head on,
I guess, but I know it's definitely hard to sit

(20:17):
there and watch your father we put to death. I
don't wish out on nobody. No one should have to
go through that.

Speaker 1 (20:42):
Hello, where can I get you? And you get some tin?
I have sweet tea? Oh yeah, I can't have a
sweet Okay.

Speaker 13 (20:52):
Here you go.

Speaker 1 (20:53):
That's a lot sweet.

Speaker 13 (20:55):
Exacise.

Speaker 4 (20:59):
I'm on the outskirts of Huntsville, Texas, a place that
holds an average of one execution a month. What do
you think about Huntsville being the death been as a
capital of America.

Speaker 7 (21:14):
I'm okay with that. Honestly, I do support lethal injection.

Speaker 4 (21:19):
I suppose supporting it is one thing it actually been
taking place because fifteen minutes always for me, that's a
slightly chilling thought that it happens so close, and if
you're directly connected to the case, I mean, that's a
horrible thought, isn't it there?

Speaker 9 (21:35):
But for the grace of God.

Speaker 7 (21:36):
Well, that's probably why I support the death penalty, is
because I had it happen in my family. Somebody they
were brutally murdered, stabbed over twenty times. And it was
a regular customer at a convenience store who came in
every day and ordered a cup of coffee and she
give it to him and he just.

Speaker 5 (21:58):
Lost it one day.

Speaker 7 (22:00):
If you've taken a life without reason, Thenards Brown, it's a.

Speaker 4 (22:11):
Very odd thought that Billy Coble will be put to
death nearby.

Speaker 1 (22:16):
For Billy Coble's family.

Speaker 4 (22:17):
And the family of his victims, it's life changing, and
yet it's just part of the fabric of the life
of this death chamber town. Huntsville is a fairly typical

(22:41):
college town, except over a quarter of its residents are
behind bars, and Huntsville's seven prisons are the lifeblood as
the area's biggest employer. That's the Walls Unit, and that's
where the death chamber is.

Speaker 2 (22:58):
Right.

Speaker 4 (23:02):
Billy will die in this prison that sits just off
the town's main street, and it's a really chilling feeling
knowing what happens there and what's about to happen there.
He'll wait out his final hours in a small, bleak
cell known as the death House, just feet from the chamber.

(23:26):
From nineteen twenty four, the state used this electric chair
for its executions. Nicknamed Old Sparky, it was built by
prison workers and killed three hundred and sixty one inmates
during its forty years of use.

Speaker 1 (23:43):
Now Texas uses lethal.

Speaker 4 (23:44):
Injection, widely considered to be more humane. A representative of
the state witnesses every execution Robert Hurst has seen around forty.
Once he's got to the Huntsville unit, what will happen
to Bill?

Speaker 19 (24:02):
Then a team of our security officers will escort him
to the execution chamber. He is then placed on the gurney,
tied down, and the intravenous line is placed into his arm,
and he is prepared for the lethal injection.

Speaker 1 (24:21):
And then who administers the injection?

Speaker 19 (24:23):
There is a team behind a one way window mirror.
They're the team that administers the injection.

Speaker 4 (24:34):
Most states use a three drug cocktail in their executions,
but after a nationwide shortage in twenty twelve, Texas switched
to a single dose method. Now they use the sedative pentobarbital.
The state currently has ten doses stockpiled, and Billy will
be injected with one of them. How long will it

(24:57):
take for Bill to die after the injection is administered.

Speaker 19 (25:01):
I've seen some executions where an offender is pronounced dead
within about ten to twelve minutes. I've also seen some
executions where the offender is not pronounced dead until sometimes
thirty five forty minutes later.

Speaker 13 (25:18):
Further, we fall when we crack down.

Speaker 4 (25:24):
As the state prepares for Billy Cobel's execution, life around
here carries on as usual. So how would you describe
execution day here in Huntsville? It's a normal day.

Speaker 1 (25:39):
And what's your opinion on the death penalty? Is it's
something support?

Speaker 4 (25:42):
Absolutely yes, the death penalty is expensive. Longer trials and
increased legal fees cost taxpayers here an average of two
point three million dollars per case, around three times more
than housing inmate in prison for forty years.

Speaker 8 (26:04):
This town has been a prison town for years and years,
and the people here knows what happens. And you know,
it doesn't really have an effect on the day to
day life here.

Speaker 4 (26:17):
No, doesn't make you feel uncomfortable, does not just another day.

Speaker 13 (26:22):
Well, yeah, you do the crime, you pay, love you mine,
love away.

Speaker 17 (26:34):
For Billy. I really didn't think about death eny period.
But it's different when it's somebody you know, somebody you love,
it makes you think and now I can see both
sides of it knocking.

Speaker 4 (26:49):
Mid Billy Coovel waited for his death date for twenty
eight years. That's almost double the national average.

Speaker 13 (26:59):
Roh.

Speaker 4 (27:00):
He spent the past decade living in solitary confinement twenty
two hours a day, seven days a week.

Speaker 17 (27:07):
People trace the dogs better in it. Could you imagine
living in an eight by ten cage?

Speaker 13 (27:14):
Rest your life?

Speaker 17 (27:16):
He said. The only time he has a touched human
hands is when the handcuffed.

Speaker 7 (27:21):
That ain't rack.

Speaker 4 (27:24):
But many feel the rights that really matter in this
case are those of the victim's family, and Billy's execution
will be justice for the vicars. Billy's son Gordon, daughter
in law Nelly, and their two sons are facing the

(27:45):
reality that unless his appeal for a stay of execution
is successful, these next few days will be Billy's last.
He went to see Bill this morning and it's obviously
extremely distressed.

Speaker 8 (28:00):
Yes, very easy, but yes, how.

Speaker 9 (28:04):
Are you going to get through the next few days?

Speaker 8 (28:06):
I just try to be there for them all, you know,
especially the boys because that's their grandpa.

Speaker 1 (28:14):
It's a jungle of emotions you're feeling, of course it is.

Speaker 2 (28:17):
I'm completely lost within myself.

Speaker 18 (28:20):
How how would anybody expect me to sit there and
watch them?

Speaker 13 (28:23):
Right, he take my dad's.

Speaker 18 (28:24):
Life, But I want to just tear a wall, pull
him down and tell you.

Speaker 13 (28:38):
He's done wrong.

Speaker 20 (28:39):
And I understand that, and I'm not excusing that one
better eye. My father knows that that was wrong, and
let him know about his days in the prison cell.
To me, that don't make a licked sense to take
another life.

Speaker 1 (28:56):
You're going through your own kind of hell now, though.

Speaker 18 (28:58):
Aren't you one of the hardest thing You're ready to
do it.

Speaker 13 (29:03):
So bad?

Speaker 18 (29:04):
Me strongborn either born, hurry every day that the bong
pow come.

Speaker 12 (29:14):
And get to stay, never work doing every still black.

Speaker 15 (29:20):
Now things are going good within the transferred me their lissue.

Speaker 4 (29:28):
My head's absolutely spinning. I feel enormous sympathy for the family.
None of them are responsible for the crimes of their father,
their grandfather, and yet they're experiencing the effects of those crimes.
None of this changes the fact that on that dreadful
August Day in nineteen eighty nine, Bill Coble took a

(29:53):
gun and went and murdered Bobby Vicker and his estranged
wife's parents. They're the innocent victims in this horror story
and their trauma has lasted thirty.

Speaker 1 (30:07):
Years, a fact.

Speaker 3 (30:10):
With death row, inmate once described as having a heart
full of scorpions, faces execution.

Speaker 16 (30:17):
The Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles denied requests yesterday
to delay his execution.

Speaker 19 (30:22):
Camel Is that to be executed tomorrow.

Speaker 4 (30:27):
The state of Texas has refused to delay Billy Wayne
Cobel's execution. Now his last and final hope is the
Supreme Court, and their verdict won't be reached until the
eleventh hour. I don't know what to think. You seem
to have it under control in your own head. Don't

(30:48):
seem to be frightened.

Speaker 2 (30:49):
No, there's no reason to be. If I take the
next day or not, I have no lawyers in California,
and I have no way of talking to I don't
know what's going on between now and then. But if
I'm here on March the first, then I will try
to be a better person.

Speaker 4 (31:07):
And if the Vicar family expected an apology from you
before you're executed.

Speaker 2 (31:15):
If you want me to give a some type of
like a rehearse apology or something, I mean, I've already
said that I regret what happened. Now, I truly regret
what happened, but I also truly regret what happened to
a lot of things in life.

Speaker 4 (31:35):
You don't want to take this opportunity to say sorry
to the victims.

Speaker 2 (31:39):
But saying it to you is not saying it to
a victim. Saying it to you, I'm really speaking to
the people you're gonna be sureing this to. How would
that help them? What if they never see the interview?

Speaker 1 (31:57):
How do you want to be remembered?

Speaker 2 (31:58):
Bill, I've never thought of it. It really doesn't matter
to me personally, because if I'm dead, I'm with God
in It's not gonna concern me anymore, you understand. I mean,
I'm not gonna be here.

Speaker 4 (32:12):
And what do you feel about your son being there
to witness your last moments?

Speaker 2 (32:16):
I wanted to be there for himself, But to me, no,
I really discerned nobody to be there. I mean, you know,
it's just you have to remember the person, not the body.

Speaker 4 (32:34):
Bill, we're out of time. Well, thank you very much
for talking to us. Well, thank you for talking to me.

Speaker 2 (32:42):
You're welcome.

Speaker 18 (32:46):
Oh death Hammers, Oh.

Speaker 13 (32:54):
Death has.

Speaker 1 (32:57):
Billy Wayne Coble will have worken up?

Speaker 4 (32:59):
This morning, knowing that it's his last day and right
now is the last chance for Gordon to spend a
few hours with his dad. They have a final hope
resting with the US Supreme Court, who could.

Speaker 1 (33:16):
Issue a stay of execution right up to the last minute.

Speaker 4 (33:28):
So they can be closer to him. Billy's family is
spending time at the Hospitality House, a charity for families
of the incarcerated.

Speaker 13 (33:39):
Hope, I burst me.

Speaker 18 (33:43):
It's just really hard, a lot of motion the home,
ups and downs.

Speaker 13 (33:50):
It's just that old place.

Speaker 9 (33:55):
What did your dad say to you this morning?

Speaker 13 (33:58):
Help me love me?

Speaker 5 (34:00):
And we had a good visit.

Speaker 18 (34:01):
We left and talked and remember the old times.

Speaker 1 (34:11):
At seventeen, Hunter is too young to be present tonight.

Speaker 4 (34:17):
Did you see your granddad today, Yes, ma'am.

Speaker 1 (34:21):
What we were able to talk with him about.

Speaker 21 (34:24):
He wished he wasn't locked up in there and we
could get into truck with them, just drive away and
have fun.

Speaker 4 (34:33):
You're still hopeful that there might be a stay before
it's carried out this evening.

Speaker 6 (34:39):
Hopefully there is.

Speaker 1 (34:42):
Are you prepared if that doesn't happen.

Speaker 21 (34:47):
Not really, but if it happens, it happens. And we
just got to live through it as alike.

Speaker 9 (34:59):
At the moment that the guards told you that the
visit was over, that's.

Speaker 2 (35:11):
Promising.

Speaker 4 (35:17):
Well, whatever you think about what Gordon's father has done,
it is impossible not to feel compassion for Gordon and
his family. By noon, Billy's final visits with friends and

(35:46):
family are over. He is now being prepared to be
transported the forty miles west from Livingstone to the War's
Unit prison.

Speaker 1 (35:56):
Absolutely, people does not have crime.

Speaker 4 (35:59):
I'm right outside the Wolves Unit and a crowd is
gathering in anticipation of tonight's event.

Speaker 13 (36:06):
Taxes murder behind these.

Speaker 8 (36:11):
Execution.

Speaker 1 (36:13):
So this is where it could all end for Billy Coble.

Speaker 4 (36:19):
His life hangs by a thread, but he has one
last hope today that the US Supreme Court will grant
a stay of execution. It's just a couple of hours
until the scheduled execution.

Speaker 1 (36:38):
What happens in the next two hours.

Speaker 10 (36:40):
Well, for the next two hours, the offender, who is
here in the holding cell behind me, has the opportunity
to talk on the phone with folks, meet with attorneys.
Sometime in the next fifteen ish minutes or so, he'll
be served final meal, which is actually whatever it is
that's on the menu for today. At this unit, we're

(37:03):
in costic communication with the courts and the Governor's office.
At some point, once we receive the sign off that
all the appeals have been exhausted, then the process would begin.
The death warrants active at six pm.

Speaker 8 (37:20):
CUBE.

Speaker 4 (37:29):
It's just coming up to five o'clock in the afternoon
and the US Supreme Court has just posted on their
website the application for stay of execution of sentence of
death is denied. That was Billy Coble's last chance and
it's gone, which means he will be executed in just

(37:51):
over an hour's time. A group of Waco police officers
and veterans have come to salute the family of their
murdered colleague, Bobby Vicker, What is significant for you.

Speaker 1 (38:11):
About Bill being executed? What will it bring for you?

Speaker 12 (38:17):
First of all, I think he deserves it. I think
it's very important that he doesn't get to choose how
he does, because my grandparents and my dad didn't. He
took that away from them, So I think he should
go through the same mental anguish knowing that he's about
to die.

Speaker 6 (38:34):
I hope he's going.

Speaker 5 (38:34):
Through that right now.

Speaker 4 (38:50):
Time has now run out for Billy Wayne. The Kobel
family are called in for his final moments. By six pm,
the death warrant is active. Between now and midnight, Billy
Coble is set to die. It's an incredibly unsettling feeling

(39:11):
knowing that the execution is going ahead right now and
someone that I've met, someone that I've had an encounter with,
is being put to their death.

Speaker 2 (39:30):
On your Thig of Drama, you're announced about the last
minute and the execution of Billy Cobble.

Speaker 12 (39:35):
I will get back to you with more on that
as soon as we know more.

Speaker 4 (39:39):
The lethal injection of pentabarbital should now be taking effect.

Speaker 13 (39:49):
Take me up.

Speaker 9 (39:53):
Ahead, excuse me, there is the execution going ahead.

Speaker 4 (39:58):
Okay, we don't know what happened inside, but clearly there's
been some kind of confrontation. Gordon and his son Dalton
have been handcuffed and led away and shouting, screaming, extremely
distressed and Nellie also in handcuffs, dragging.

Speaker 1 (40:23):
Nelly. What's happened?

Speaker 13 (40:24):
Drug like he drave for? I am the hood.

Speaker 4 (40:37):
We knew that Gordon was finding it very hard anticipating
the execution of his father, but I wasn't expecting that
obviously something went terribly wrong in there for the Cobra family.

Speaker 10 (41:07):
The State of Texas has executed Billy Coeble in number
nine seven six. He did provide a final statement, Yes, sir,
that will be five dollars. I love you, I love
you and I love you. Take care any questions.

Speaker 1 (41:22):
Why was Gordon led away?

Speaker 10 (41:26):
There was a disturbance. Gordon Koebel started banging on the
glass and had to be removed. I can share with
you that both Gordon and Dalton Kobyl are currently in
custody at the Walker County Jail and will be charged
with resisting arrest and potentially other charges.

Speaker 16 (41:43):
Cobel met his fate by lethal injection, pronounced dead at
six point twenty four pm. Karen Vicker was inside to
witness Billy Wayne Coble took his last breath.

Speaker 11 (41:53):
We asked that just as you have kept us in
your prayers, you pray for peace for everyone affected today. Well,
we agree with the amazing lives that will last too soon.
We find joy in the blessings and love we have
in our family.

Speaker 1 (42:11):
Nellie, it's Susanna, what's happening?

Speaker 18 (42:19):
Immediately just started Bryan, you don't get.

Speaker 7 (42:28):
Nothing at wrong.

Speaker 4 (42:33):
Just got executed.

Speaker 1 (42:43):
There's an air of it's all come to an end.

Speaker 4 (42:50):
I'm not sure whether the Vicar family feel closure, the
Cobal family clearly in great distress. And for Huntsville, the
Walls Unit closes its doors and it's on.

Speaker 1 (43:02):
With another day.

Speaker 4 (43:04):
The execution of one man, the ending of his life,
just a fact of life here, and there'll be another
one next month.

Speaker 13 (43:13):
One. Well, all dreams we send those many years cool.

Speaker 17 (43:20):
They brought me from Livingston to the desk chamber and
I talked to him a good hour on the pomp
and it was just like talking to him like we've
been talking every day. He didn't show no fear, no
change in his voice or nothing. And he said, you

(43:42):
may not understand this, but I'm at peace and I'm
happy to grow. And now more after I think about it,
the way he was caved up like that, I can
understand he was probably ready to.

Speaker 13 (43:58):
Go Next to me.

Speaker 5 (44:03):
I'll always love him whatever you do.

Speaker 13 (44:07):
Just not say this is not me. You see, Leve,
I'm better than the stoney.

Speaker 1 (44:24):
What you've been through must have affected your whole life.

Speaker 12 (44:28):
Actually well yeah, I mean, of course that changes the
trajectory of your life.

Speaker 6 (44:34):
I'll live with my dad and next to my grandparents.

Speaker 1 (44:37):
What do you plan to do afterwards?

Speaker 12 (44:39):
We're just going to the casino in Oklahoma and we're
all just going to hang out and relax, just do
something together.

Speaker 4 (44:46):
And celebrate a little bit, you think, which is a
kind of must be an odd feeling because you're celebrating
a death.

Speaker 12 (44:52):
Maybe it's just knowing that it's finally over. Maybe we'll
all feel a little better afterwards. You know, it doesn't
change what happened, but knowing that he finally got what
he deserves, you know, that would be a good feeling.

Speaker 16 (45:10):
M m

Speaker 21 (45:29):
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