An Alabama death row inmate with hours left to live admitted that while he doesn't want to die, it's what he "rightly deserves."
Armed with a gun and ax, and high on methamphetamine, Derrick Dearman brutally murdered pregnant Chelsea Marie Reed, 22; Shannon Melissa Randall, 35; Robert Lee Brown, 26; Justin Kaleb Reed, 23; and Joseph Adam Turner, 26; while they slept at a rural home outside Citronelle, Alabama, in 2016.
The five victims were related to his then-girlfriend, Laneta Lester, who he allowed to live.
Dearman, now 36, was convicted of six counts of murder, including one count for the slaying of the unborn baby. He was sentenced to death in 2018.
He initially appealed the sentence to appease loved ones, he said, but quickly made peace with the judge's decision to end his life.
"It's not fair to the victims or their families to keep prolonging the justice they so rightly deserve," Dearman wrote in letters penned to four state officials, including Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall, asking for his execution to move forward and informing them of his decision to drop his appeal, according to USA TODAY.
Dearman was driven to commit the sextuple slaying when Lester moved out because he abused her.
"I am guilty plain and simple, I turned myself in and I pled guilty," Dearman previously told NBC News in April. "Once I got moved over to county and spent a week down there, sleeping every day, my mind coming back to me a little bit more, little bit more, little bit more, I was just in shock. I couldn't comprehend the magnitude of what had happened because those people were good people."
Dearman blamed meth and a drug addiction he struggled with since he was a teen for his deadly rampage.
"Drugs turned me into a very unpredictable, unstable and violent person," he said. "That's not who I am. The person that committed these crimes and the person who I truly am is two different people."
The convicted killer has made peace with his fate and wants to die by lethal injection.
"Am I doing this because I can't live with myself? No," Dearman told the outlet. "I made this decision for different reasons. One of those reasons is so that all parties involved, not just the victims and their families but my family as well, can kind of get some closure and begin healing and moving forward."
