Early this morning, one of America's most heinous and depraved criminals took his last breath in a small, clinical room in a prison in Indiana. It was the first time the US federal government had carried out an execution in 17 years.
Daniel Lewis Lee was a hideous man, both inside and out. A fanatical white supremacist, serial murderer and neo-Nazi - whose loss of an eye in a barfight had earned him the nickname "Cyclops" - Lee was one of the founding members of the "Aryan People's Republic" - a white supremacist terror organization that sought to overthrow the US government and establish an all-white ethnostate in the American Heartland.
Lee and his partner in crime, Chevie Kehoe, committed numerous acts of violence across the United States in the mid-1990s, including the bombing of a Spokane courthouse, the killing of a suspected federal informant, and, most notoriously, the horrific torture-murder of an entire family in Arkansas.
On January 11th, 1996, Daniel Lewis Lee and Chevie Kehoe disguised themselves as FBI agents and broke into the empty home of gun dealer William Mueller, his wife Nancy, and their adopted 8-year-old daughter, Sarah.
Later that night, when the Mueller family returned home, they were ambushed, subdued, and tied to chairs. Lee and Kehoe wanted guns for their planned white revolution, and they demanded that William Mueller tell them where they could find his firearms and cash. When Mueller refused to tell the pair, Lee and Kehoe violently beat him. But, when Mueller still refused to talk, Lee and Kehoe instead turned to Mueller's wife and daughter.
Separating the family, Lee and Kehoe brutally tortured Nancy Mueller and 8-year-old Sarah Mueller for hours with electric cattle prods. Hearing the agonized shrieks of his wife and daughter, William Mueller broke down and told the pair what they wanted to know.
After collecting Mueller's guns and $50,000 in cash, Lee and Kehoe shot their three captives with stun guns, duct-taped their mouths and noses shut, covered them in black plastic trash bags, and threw them into the back of a car, where all three slowly suffocated to death. Their bodies, weighed down with rocks, were later thrown into Lake Dardanelle in Russellville, Arkansas, where they would eventually be found five months later.
Chevie Kehoe and Daniel Lee's revolution would never come to fruition. After a nationwide manhunt by the FBI, Lee, Kehoe, and several others were arrested and charged with firearms violations, interstate trafficking, racketeering, conspiracy, and the murder of the Mueller family. In 1999, a federal jury in Arkansas found them guilty on all counts, sentencing Kehoe to life in prison and Lee to death by lethal injection. The two parted ways for the last time, with Kehoe being sent to the ADX Florence federal supermax prison in Colorado and Lee being sent to federal death row at USP Terre Haute in Indiana.
And that brings us back to today's events. Early this morning, at around 5:00 AM, Daniel Lewis Lee was led from his holding cell in the death house to the execution chamber - a sterile, brightly-lit room decorated with sea-green tiles and a checkered floor.
For three hours, as his lawyers filed motion after motion trying to delay his execution, Lee lay strapped to a gray-colored Ritter 111 gurney in the death chamber, IV lines in his arms, staring at the ceiling, waiting for his inevitable end.
What transpired while Lee awaited the injection that would end his life? We will never know for sure. Surely he must have thought about what landed him in that chamber. There's no way he couldn't have. What else would he have done as he lay there, hour after hour, counting down the final minutes of his life?
Perhaps he reflected on his crimes. Perhaps he wondered if it was all worth it in the end. Perhaps he felt the slightest tinge of remorse for his horrible deeds. Perhaps he felt fear - the same fear that William, Nancy, and Sarah Mueller undoubtedly felt as they lay in the back of a van, smothered by plastic bags, with the life slowly being snuffed out of them.
Or perhaps Lee simply died the same way he had lived - an ugly man full of hatred, malice, and apathy.
Maybe he felt nothing. Nobody will ever know for sure.
At 7:46 AM, the gray curtains to the witness rooms parted. 20 witnesses - both victims and members of the press - saw Lee lying on the gurney, wearing a brown prison shirt, his arms outstretched at his sides on the gurney armboards, and a blue-green sheet covering him up to his neck. Two IV lines were set in each arm, with the tubes running through a small metal panel in the back wall into the executioner's room.
Lee must have known he was being watched. He briefly lifted head to look into the witness rooms. Perhaps he saw the Mueller family in the witness room to his right, where the victims had gathered to watch him die.
Despite the horrors that Lee had put them through, the surviving members of the Mueller family had staunchly fought against Lee's execution. Maybe he was moved by their strength and ability to forgive. Maybe he felt the slightest amount of shame for what he had done, and realized that perhaps the world wasn't as corrupt as he thought it was.
Or maybe he felt nothing. Nobody will ever know for sure.
The warden entered the chamber at around 7:48 AM, and read the death warrant to Daniel Lee. The warrant mentioned the names of William, Nancy, and Sarah Mueller. Perhaps Lee - now just minutes away from death - felt some semblance of sorrow as he heard the names of his victims being read aloud, and was reminded that it was because of his indifference to their lives that his life was about to end.
Or maybe he felt nothing. Nobody will ever know for sure.
After reading the inmate his death warrant, the warden, according to protocol, asked Lee for his last statement. This was Lee's chance. This was his chance to make amends, to show regret, to express the slightest bit of remorse and sorrow for his actions. The Mueller family was right there, watching him as he lay strapped to the gurney.
Perhaps he briefly considered apologizing to them. Perhaps some part of him wanted to cry out to them, to tell them he was sorry and to plead for their forgiveness.
Or perhaps he felt nothing. Nobody will ever know for sure.
Lee opened his mouth and spoke in a bitter, defiant tone: "I bear no responsibility for the deaths of the Mueller family. You are killing an innocent man".
No apology. No remorse. Just anger and bitterness - the same characteristics that had defined Lee's short time on earth.
At approximately 7:50 AM, in a small room behind the back wall of the death chamber, an executioner screwed in and pressed the plunger of a syringe containing a lethal dose of pentobarbital. The deadly drugs flowed down the clear IV tube into Lee's left arm.
Lee must have felt the drugs take effect. His lips quivered briefly, his legs shook, and he briefly raised and then lowered his head. Did he, at that moment, as his life was fading away, finally - for once in his life - feel regret, sorrow, and remorse for what he had done? Maybe he did. Maybe he recited a short prayer in his mind, pleading to his God for mercy as he prepared to leave the mortal world.
Or perhaps he felt nothing. Nobody will ever know for sure.
At 8:02 AM, Lee closed his eyes, took his last breath, and went completely still.
Five minutes later, the doctor entered the death chamber. He checked Lee for a pulse and shined a light in his one remaining eye. There was no reaction. No sign of life. The execution was complete.
"Death has occurred", came a voice over the death house intercom. The curtains to the witness rooms closed as the attendees slowly filed out.
At 8:07 AM, on July 14th, 2020, Daniel Lewis Lee felt nothing.
That, at least, we know for sure.
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