"To be Greenville’s most prolific — and uncaught — killer"--What causes a person to have a goal like

[raccoon]

that?


Owens' slated execution to end life filled with violence

Freddie Eugene Owens is a young man who once said his life’s goal was to be Greenville’s most prolific — and uncaught — killer.

He didn’t make it on either count.

Barring a stay of execution by the U.S. Supreme Court, Owens will be put to death by lethal injection at 6:30 p.m., Friday in a stark, hospital-like setting at Broad River Correctional Institution in rolling hills north of Columbia.

Owens, 30, did make his mark in one respect. His case is one of the most notorious in recent Greenville history.

The condemned killer gave a veteran homicide detective “cold chills.” An ex-girlfriend testified that Owens once vowed to “go down in history for committing the most murders in Greenville County without getting caught.”

A robbery spree culminated in murder in a now torn-down Laurens Road Speedway convenience store, not long after midnight on Halloween in 1997.

Witnesses would later testify that Owens and three others donned ski masks and hoods, clutched handguns and robbed Greenville stores during a reckless sweep that ended in the slaying of Irene Grainger Graves, a 41-year-old single mother of three.

Surveillance videos from the store showed the incident from four angles. One masked gunman went behind the counter while the another stayed on the customer side, pointing a pistol at the clerk…

Hours later, angry at his conviction (for murder) he beat senseless Christopher Bryan Lee, who had just been booked on a 90-day traffic offense. Lee was mistakenly placed in the high-security unit and was killed when a pen was rammed into a nostril, suffocating him. …
(I hope Lee’s family got them a good lawyer.)

By all accounts, Owens’ life, from growing up in a poverty-ridden Greenville neighborhood to his days on Death Row, has been steeped in violence.

Throughout the trial, no one disputed that violence has always swirled around Owens.

While growing up, Owens began skipping school to stay home with his mother after he watched his stepfather chase her with a machete, testified Donna Schwartz-Watt, a forensic psychiatrist.

A social worker, Marjorie Brittain Hammock, testified that Owens' grandmother did prison time after shooting a family member.

The second of five children, he had two brothers who were incarcerated, she said then. Owens had little contact with his biological father while growing up, Hammock said.

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