Joanna Waltershttp://gu.com/p/335bp/tw
Michael Perry in prison in Livingston. Photograph: Justin Clemons
With a metallic slam, the cage door shuts and is locked behind him, and a young man sits down, thick wire mesh a few inches from his back and bulletproof glass right in front of his cheekily handsome, scrubbed face.
He picks up a chunky telephone receiver attached to the wall, which is wired through to the visitor sitting on the other side of the glass.
"Hello."
This is death row in Texas and the condemned man is Michael Perry, who is now about to become famous or, perhaps more likely, infamous in a documentary about capital punishment by prominent film-maker Werner Herzog.
It would be more accurate to say at this point that the man was Michael Perry, and that he'll become well known from beyond the grave.
Eight days after he was filmed, the 28-year-old was executed, despite maintaining his innocence even as they injected him in the death chamber with the requisite lethal chemicals.
Herzog uses the details of Perry's murder case in an intriguing, if meandering, examination of crime and the death penalty. The resulting documentary, Into the Abyss, opens in the US later this month.
Audiences will become familiar with Perry's toothy grin and Texas drawl, and also how Herzog wipes the smile off Perry's face within moments of meeting him when it becomes clear to the inmate that while the German film-maker is against the death penalty, he has not come to fight Perry's individual fight.
Into the Abyss is more of an illustrated statement that no one should be executed no matter what they might have done.
It was an extraordinary day on death row when Herzog met Perry. By a strange coincidence I was there, too, to conduct Perry's last interview before he died.
Before being taken to the visitation area, Herzog and I were processed through security together at the prison in Livingston, 74 miles from Houston.
We chatted a little as he waited with his film crew and me with my photographer. But everyone was nervous. Time for media interviews on death row is strictly limited and officials – or the prisoners themselves – can cancel them at the drop of a hat.
Herzog mentioned his new documentary, I told him I was interviewing two prisoners for the British edition of Marie Claire magazine. Eventually we were escorted inside.
Not long after he'd sat for Herzog's cameras, Perry came to talk to me. He was close to tears and too agitated to sit down. After a few seconds, he picked up the receiver and said hello.
"Hi Michael, thank you for meeting me. What's the matter?"
"I nearly walked out of that. I nearly quit this whole thing and asked them to take me back to my cell," he replied, his voice quavering in exasperated fury.
"Why?"
"When I tried to talk about my case, Herzog talked over me and just wanted to say what he wanted to say," he said.
Michael Perry speaks to Joanna Walters in prison in Livingston. Photograph: Justin Clemons Having blurted that out, Perry calmed a little and sat down. Death row means solitary confinement and behind the glass Perry was, literally, untouchable to all visitors.
Ten years ago, on 24 October 2001, 50-year-old nurse Sandra Stotler was baking cookies at her home in the town of Conroe, Texas.
According to investigators, local wildchild Michael Perry and his best friend Jason Burkett, both 19 and acquaintances of Stotler, broke into her home, intent on stealing her sporty little red Chevrolet Camaro convertible. Perry shot Stotler with Burkett's shotgun. The bullet hit her in the side and she fell, then struggled up. He shot her again, and she was dead.
Blood smeared and spattered across the house, they wrapped her body in a blanket and dumped it in nearby Crater Lake, where it was later found floating.
According to the district attorney, after dumping Sandra, Perry and Burkett returned to her neighbourhood. When her son Adam, 17, and his friend Jeremy Richardson, 18, returned home, Perry and Burkett intercepted them and lured them into nearby woods with a lie about a friend having suffered a hunting accident.
There, both were shot dead, and Perry and Burkett stole Adam Stotler's Isuzu SUV, drove back to the Stotler home and stole Sandra's sports car.
Witnesses recall the two turning up at a bar with their newly-acquired cars, boasting that they'd won the lottery and offering joyrides.
Perry and Burkett were arrested in a car chase and shoot-out with police on 30 October. Perry was shot, and while he was being taken away by ambulance confessed to murdering Sandra Stotler.
In a further taped confession he also told police where to find the bodies of Adam and Jeremy.
Perry later retracted those confessions and argued that he'd first spoken nonsense while high on drugs and then had been roughed up by police until he falsely admitted guilt. Perry and his lawyers argued, right up until the day of his execution, that he was actually in custody on a traffic violation when Sandra was murdered – as they dispute the estimated time of her death. And they insist that false confessions happen all the time when people are under stress, and are grounds to re-open an investigation.
Burkett and Perry blamed each other for the triple homicide but both were found guilty at trial.
Perry was charged only with murdering Sandra Stotler and was sentenced to death. Burkett was convicted of all three murders but, by a narrow jury vote, was sentenced to life in prison.
Perry is now dead. Burkett first comes up for parole in 2041.
"Did you do it?" I asked Perry.
He looked me straight in the eye. "No. No, I did not," he said.
He continued: "It's still hard for me to believe that in eight days the state of Texas is going to murder me. It's like a human slaughterhouse.
"There's no doubt that I have already been proven innocent: it should be a massive case for re-investigation. I have scars from being beaten up by the cops. I watched them go on the stand and lie," said Perry.
Investigators disagree. They say Perry gave them information about the murders that only a perpetrator would have known.
Into the Abyss also makes no attempt to argue that Perry is innocent and gives full airing to the "mountains of evidence" the DA cited.
Perry's supporters, including his collection of lovelorn female fans on Facebook from as far afield as Britain and Australia, will hate the documentary.
But Herzog says early on that he believes no human being should be executed. Interviewees in his film point to Perry's youth and history of delinquency as explanatory – though not excusable – factors, though Herzog doesn't go into Perry's personal story much.
"I've been institutionalised from the time I was 13," Perry told me.
His biological mother was a drug addict who gave Michael up for adoption. His adoptive parents were caring but barely able to control him from a young age.
When I met Perry he was forlorn about his adoptive parents. His father had recently died and he'd not been allowed out for the funeral nine days before.
"I'm really worried about my mother. She just lost her husband, and to lose her son a few weeks later …" his voice trailed off.
He'd been diagnosed over the years with attention deficit disorder and juvenile forms of anti-social personality disorder – defined by the US National Library of Medicine as "a mental health condition in which a person has a long-term pattern of manipulating, exploiting, or violating the rights of others".
He was found not to have bipolar disorder – but to my admittedly untrained eye seemed to be showing symptoms of manic depression.
"A lot of people say they don't regret anything. I don't know how they can say that. I wasted so many chances. I could have had such a good life. I don't deserve the parents I had, I was horrible and put them through so much," he said.
They tried private school.
"I made myself get thrown out."
They tried an outward bound counselling course in the Florida Everglades. Perry dropped out. He stole from his parents. They tried various reform schools and therapy courses throughout his teens, to no avail.
"I had opportunity after opportunity and I wasted them and rebelled. That's one of the reasons why I got the death penalty," he said.
At 18 he dropped out of a private residential treatment programme in Mexico called Casa by the Sea that housed many American youngsters with behavioural problems.
The facility was closed down by Mexican government child protection authorities in 2004.
Perry bowled up in San Diego, 18 and homeless.
"I had no clue how to look after myself, I tried to get a job, I had no ID, I had no idea, I had nothing," he said.
An older man invited him off the street to a drug-fuelled party, then offered him a place to stay.
"Basically I became a rent boy. As embarrassing as this is, if I had the choice between starving to death on the streets or selling myself I'm going to sell myself," he said.
What would he tell a teenager now who found themselves on the street like that?
"Go to a church, or even the cops."
He sold prescription pills to fund his own rampant drug abuse. His parents told him he could still move back home with them if he'd get a job. He wended his way back to his native Texas, but didn't take up their proposition.
"I don't feel sorry for myself. I was extremely immature. I've grown up now, you have no choice in here," he said.
I decided to ask him just one legal question from the crime report - a googly, or curve ball, really.
"Michael, why did the cigarette butt that was found under Adam Stotler's body have your DNA on it?"
He physically leapt back from his stool as if I'd buzzed him with a cattle prod, blurting out in a half-shriek: "I'm not here for that crime."
I stared at him. He pulled himself back together.
"The only thing I can think of is that it was planted there. Or the DNA was faulty. Or maybe I smoked half and put it back in the box and Jason Burkett smoked the other half after me," he said.
In his film, Herzog interviews Jason Burkett's father, who's spent the bulk of his life in prison, too.
He opines that executing Perry was not going to bring the Stotlers or Richardson back, nor deter others from serious crime.
On the way out from our visit to death row, I told Herzog he'd upset Perry and asked him what had happened.
"I just told him I didn't have to like him," Herzog said, breezily.
He put that ballsy provocation in his film, too, and the viewer can see his subject's smile disappear.
Some prisoners finally confess on the execution table. Some say nothing, some pray, some sing, most address their families.
Perry's last statement was controversial: "I want to start off by saying and letting everyone involved in this atrocity know they're all forgiven by me."
He looked over at his weeping mother in the observation room.
"Mom, I love you. I'm coming home Dad, I'm coming home."
A single tear rolled down his right cheek.
He was declared dead at 6.17 pm on 1 July 2010.
NBC anchor Brian Williams addressed Texas governor Rick Perry in a recent Republican candidates' debate.
"Your state has executed 234 death row inmates, more than any other governor in modern times," Williams said, as the conservative audience cheered.
"Have you struggled to sleep at night with the idea that any one of those might have been innocent?"
Rick Perry smirked slightly. "No, sir. I've never struggled with that at all."
He picks up a chunky telephone receiver attached to the wall, which is wired through to the visitor sitting on the other side of the glass.
"Hello."
This is death row in Texas and the condemned man is Michael Perry, who is now about to become famous or, perhaps more likely, infamous in a documentary about capital punishment by prominent film-maker Werner Herzog.
It would be more accurate to say at this point that the man was Michael Perry, and that he'll become well known from beyond the grave.
Eight days after he was filmed, the 28-year-old was executed, despite maintaining his innocence even as they injected him in the death chamber with the requisite lethal chemicals.
Herzog uses the details of Perry's murder case in an intriguing, if meandering, examination of crime and the death penalty. The resulting documentary, Into the Abyss, opens in the US later this month.
Audiences will become familiar with Perry's toothy grin and Texas drawl, and also how Herzog wipes the smile off Perry's face within moments of meeting him when it becomes clear to the inmate that while the German film-maker is against the death penalty, he has not come to fight Perry's individual fight.
Into the Abyss is more of an illustrated statement that no one should be executed no matter what they might have done.
It was an extraordinary day on death row when Herzog met Perry. By a strange coincidence I was there, too, to conduct Perry's last interview before he died.
Before being taken to the visitation area, Herzog and I were processed through security together at the prison in Livingston, 74 miles from Houston.
We chatted a little as he waited with his film crew and me with my photographer. But everyone was nervous. Time for media interviews on death row is strictly limited and officials – or the prisoners themselves – can cancel them at the drop of a hat.
Herzog mentioned his new documentary, I told him I was interviewing two prisoners for the British edition of Marie Claire magazine. Eventually we were escorted inside.
Not long after he'd sat for Herzog's cameras, Perry came to talk to me. He was close to tears and too agitated to sit down. After a few seconds, he picked up the receiver and said hello.
"Hi Michael, thank you for meeting me. What's the matter?"
"I nearly walked out of that. I nearly quit this whole thing and asked them to take me back to my cell," he replied, his voice quavering in exasperated fury.
"Why?"
"When I tried to talk about my case, Herzog talked over me and just wanted to say what he wanted to say," he said.
Michael Perry speaks to Joanna Walters in prison in Livingston. Photograph: Justin Clemons Having blurted that out, Perry calmed a little and sat down. Death row means solitary confinement and behind the glass Perry was, literally, untouchable to all visitors.Ten years ago, on 24 October 2001, 50-year-old nurse Sandra Stotler was baking cookies at her home in the town of Conroe, Texas.
According to investigators, local wildchild Michael Perry and his best friend Jason Burkett, both 19 and acquaintances of Stotler, broke into her home, intent on stealing her sporty little red Chevrolet Camaro convertible. Perry shot Stotler with Burkett's shotgun. The bullet hit her in the side and she fell, then struggled up. He shot her again, and she was dead.
Blood smeared and spattered across the house, they wrapped her body in a blanket and dumped it in nearby Crater Lake, where it was later found floating.
According to the district attorney, after dumping Sandra, Perry and Burkett returned to her neighbourhood. When her son Adam, 17, and his friend Jeremy Richardson, 18, returned home, Perry and Burkett intercepted them and lured them into nearby woods with a lie about a friend having suffered a hunting accident.
There, both were shot dead, and Perry and Burkett stole Adam Stotler's Isuzu SUV, drove back to the Stotler home and stole Sandra's sports car.
Witnesses recall the two turning up at a bar with their newly-acquired cars, boasting that they'd won the lottery and offering joyrides.
Perry and Burkett were arrested in a car chase and shoot-out with police on 30 October. Perry was shot, and while he was being taken away by ambulance confessed to murdering Sandra Stotler.
In a further taped confession he also told police where to find the bodies of Adam and Jeremy.
Perry later retracted those confessions and argued that he'd first spoken nonsense while high on drugs and then had been roughed up by police until he falsely admitted guilt. Perry and his lawyers argued, right up until the day of his execution, that he was actually in custody on a traffic violation when Sandra was murdered – as they dispute the estimated time of her death. And they insist that false confessions happen all the time when people are under stress, and are grounds to re-open an investigation.
Burkett and Perry blamed each other for the triple homicide but both were found guilty at trial.
Perry was charged only with murdering Sandra Stotler and was sentenced to death. Burkett was convicted of all three murders but, by a narrow jury vote, was sentenced to life in prison.
Perry is now dead. Burkett first comes up for parole in 2041.
"Did you do it?" I asked Perry.
He looked me straight in the eye. "No. No, I did not," he said.
He continued: "It's still hard for me to believe that in eight days the state of Texas is going to murder me. It's like a human slaughterhouse.
"There's no doubt that I have already been proven innocent: it should be a massive case for re-investigation. I have scars from being beaten up by the cops. I watched them go on the stand and lie," said Perry.
Investigators disagree. They say Perry gave them information about the murders that only a perpetrator would have known.
Into the Abyss also makes no attempt to argue that Perry is innocent and gives full airing to the "mountains of evidence" the DA cited.
Perry's supporters, including his collection of lovelorn female fans on Facebook from as far afield as Britain and Australia, will hate the documentary.
But Herzog says early on that he believes no human being should be executed. Interviewees in his film point to Perry's youth and history of delinquency as explanatory – though not excusable – factors, though Herzog doesn't go into Perry's personal story much.
"I've been institutionalised from the time I was 13," Perry told me.
His biological mother was a drug addict who gave Michael up for adoption. His adoptive parents were caring but barely able to control him from a young age.
When I met Perry he was forlorn about his adoptive parents. His father had recently died and he'd not been allowed out for the funeral nine days before.
"I'm really worried about my mother. She just lost her husband, and to lose her son a few weeks later …" his voice trailed off.
He'd been diagnosed over the years with attention deficit disorder and juvenile forms of anti-social personality disorder – defined by the US National Library of Medicine as "a mental health condition in which a person has a long-term pattern of manipulating, exploiting, or violating the rights of others".
He was found not to have bipolar disorder – but to my admittedly untrained eye seemed to be showing symptoms of manic depression.
"A lot of people say they don't regret anything. I don't know how they can say that. I wasted so many chances. I could have had such a good life. I don't deserve the parents I had, I was horrible and put them through so much," he said.
They tried private school.
"I made myself get thrown out."
They tried an outward bound counselling course in the Florida Everglades. Perry dropped out. He stole from his parents. They tried various reform schools and therapy courses throughout his teens, to no avail.
"I had opportunity after opportunity and I wasted them and rebelled. That's one of the reasons why I got the death penalty," he said.
At 18 he dropped out of a private residential treatment programme in Mexico called Casa by the Sea that housed many American youngsters with behavioural problems.
The facility was closed down by Mexican government child protection authorities in 2004.
Perry bowled up in San Diego, 18 and homeless.
"I had no clue how to look after myself, I tried to get a job, I had no ID, I had no idea, I had nothing," he said.
An older man invited him off the street to a drug-fuelled party, then offered him a place to stay.
"Basically I became a rent boy. As embarrassing as this is, if I had the choice between starving to death on the streets or selling myself I'm going to sell myself," he said.
What would he tell a teenager now who found themselves on the street like that?
"Go to a church, or even the cops."
He sold prescription pills to fund his own rampant drug abuse. His parents told him he could still move back home with them if he'd get a job. He wended his way back to his native Texas, but didn't take up their proposition.
"I don't feel sorry for myself. I was extremely immature. I've grown up now, you have no choice in here," he said.
I decided to ask him just one legal question from the crime report - a googly, or curve ball, really.
"Michael, why did the cigarette butt that was found under Adam Stotler's body have your DNA on it?"
He physically leapt back from his stool as if I'd buzzed him with a cattle prod, blurting out in a half-shriek: "I'm not here for that crime."
I stared at him. He pulled himself back together.
"The only thing I can think of is that it was planted there. Or the DNA was faulty. Or maybe I smoked half and put it back in the box and Jason Burkett smoked the other half after me," he said.
In his film, Herzog interviews Jason Burkett's father, who's spent the bulk of his life in prison, too.
He opines that executing Perry was not going to bring the Stotlers or Richardson back, nor deter others from serious crime.
On the way out from our visit to death row, I told Herzog he'd upset Perry and asked him what had happened.
"I just told him I didn't have to like him," Herzog said, breezily.
He put that ballsy provocation in his film, too, and the viewer can see his subject's smile disappear.
Some prisoners finally confess on the execution table. Some say nothing, some pray, some sing, most address their families.
Perry's last statement was controversial: "I want to start off by saying and letting everyone involved in this atrocity know they're all forgiven by me."
He looked over at his weeping mother in the observation room.
"Mom, I love you. I'm coming home Dad, I'm coming home."
A single tear rolled down his right cheek.
He was declared dead at 6.17 pm on 1 July 2010.
NBC anchor Brian Williams addressed Texas governor Rick Perry in a recent Republican candidates' debate.
"Your state has executed 234 death row inmates, more than any other governor in modern times," Williams said, as the conservative audience cheered.
"Have you struggled to sleep at night with the idea that any one of those might have been innocent?"
Rick Perry smirked slightly. "No, sir. I've never struggled with that at all."
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