Idaho plans to execute one of the country’s longest-serving death row inmates via lethal injection on Wednesday, February 28. Thomas Eugene Creech, 73, will be killed for murdering another prisoner with a battery-powered sock in 1981.
Creech, a notorious serial murderer, is suspected of more than merely murdering David Jensen, a young, crippled man serving a car theft sentence. Overall, he was convicted of five murders across three states and is suspected of killing at least a half-dozen others. He is now spending time at the Idaho Maximum Security Institution.
Creech is recognized in prison as a well-behaved old man who enjoys poetry. Prison personnel claimed he wrote them poetry of encouragement or condolence.
Who is Thomas Eugene Creech?
At the time of Jensen’s murder, Creech and Jensen were both inmates at Idaho’s maximum security prison. Eugene served time for two murder convictions in Idaho at the time.
According to court documents, Jensen had previously tried suicide by shooting himself in the head. This resulted in the loss of his brain, which was then replaced with a plastic plate inside his skull. This resulted in impaired speech and motor functions.
Creech and Jensen are alleged to have had a strained relationship. According to court filings, Jensen assaulted Creech with a battery-filled sock, but Creech managed to take the weapon. He later used it to beat Jensen to death. Creech said he killed Jensen in self-defense.
According to Idaho News 6, former Ada County Prosecutor Jim Harris reported that Creech informed him about his youth. “I think it was potentially the loss of his father at a very young age. Particularly since the man essentially died in his arms. His first enemy. His first attempted murder was the male nurse who failed to get help for his father before he died,” said Harris.
According to the Hamilton, Ohio-based Journal News, Creech admitted to committing his first murder at the age of 17 by “drowning a friend in New Miami who he believed was responsible for the traffic death of his girlfriend.” Eugene reportedly claimed to have slain up to five members of an Ohio motorcycle gang for “satanic cult worship rituals.” These are only a few of the alleged murders he has committed.
Creech has been accused of killing a man in San Francisco while affiliated with the Church of Satan. He ultimately married Thomasine Loren White, and both were wanted for the murder of Paul C. Schrader in Tucson, Arizona.
Creech killed men who killed his wife
In a letter to Idaho News 6, Creech claimed that he killed some men who raped his wife and pushed her out of a four-story window. Creech stated that the incident left his wife “paralyzed and damaged mentally.” She later died by suicide at Oregon State Hospital.
Creech was later found guilty of murdering 22-year-old William Joseph Dean. Dean’s body was discovered in Creech’s living quarters at St. Mark’s Episcopal Church in Portland. He was later accused of murdering traveling painters Edward T. Arnold and John Wayne Bradford.
Creech denied killing Arnold and Bradford but admitted to being a mass murderer.
A statement from the Idaho Supreme Court previously said, “Eugene ‘has admitted to killing or participating in the killing of at least 26 people. The bodies of 11 of his victims who were shot, stabbed, beaten, or strangled to death have been recovered in 7 states.”