[4] The ninth of 23 children, Bailey lived in stark poverty and suffered chronic physical abuse, state records show.

[5] In 1979, after being convicted of forgery, Bailey was assigned to the Plummer House, a work release facility in Wilmington, Delaware, but soon escaped.

He later appeared at the home of his foster sister, Sue Ann Coker, in Cheswold, Delaware, saying he was upset and was not going back to the Plummer House.

Emerging from the store with a pistol in one hand and a bottle in the other, Bailey told Coker that the police would be arriving, and asked to be dropped at Lambertson's Corner, about 1.5 miles (2.4 km) away.

After his conviction, the jury found that his crimes "were outrageously or wantonly vile, horrible, or inhuman", and recommended a death sentence.

There, he spent his last 24 hours, sleeping, eating, watching television, talking with staff, and meeting with his fifty-three-year-old sister, Betty Odom, the prison chaplain, and his attorney.

The gallows in Delaware were dismantled in 2003, because from that year, none of its death row inmates remained eligible to choose hanging over lethal injection.