Bio

Kenneth Edward Gentry was born on January 28, 1961, in Bartow County, Georgia. He had been serving a 10-year sentence for assault in Georgia when, in July 1982, he escaped from prison by driving a prison vehicle through a fence.

Murder Story

By September 1983, Gentry was wanted by authorities in connection with several prior offenses, including his Georgia prison escape. While in the Denton, Texas area, he picked up Jimmy Don Ham, 23, who was hitchhiking, and the two became acquainted. After a brief visit in Denton, the two left Texas together, joined by Gentry's girlfriend, Linda Patterson, and his sister; the group traveled through Florida, back to Texas, then to Oklahoma, before returning to the Denton area.

According to trial testimony, approximately two days before the murder, Gentry asked his uncle, Harold Loftin, a pointed hypothetical question: "If you was going to dispose of somebody, how would you do it?" Loftin replied that he would find "the most wooded, most deserted area I could find... because I love the woods." Gentry's sister overheard this exchange and later testified that her brother was actively seeking a new identity around this time. Linda Patterson separately testified that Gentry had told her he intended to assume Ham's identity and find work under that name in another state. At one point, when Ham briefly stepped out of the room, Gentry reportedly remarked to those present, "There goes my new I.D."

A police car was spotted driving near the property where the group was staying. Gentry's sister, aware that her brother was wanted both for his Georgia prison escape and for an unrelated robbery he had committed with Ham, ran to warn the two men. Gentry and Ham left together in one vehicle, while Gentry's brothers, Calvin and Larry, followed separately in a truck. 

During the time the murder is believed to have occurred, Calvin and Larry Gentry provided their brother with an alibi, testifying they had spent two to three hours playing pool at a local pool hall. Meanwhile, Gentry took Ham to a remote part of Lake Dallas, under the pretext of target shooting practice with a pistol, and shot him once in the chest and once in the head, killing him. Ham's body was later discovered in a park along the shore of Lake Lewisville, near Dallas.

Gentry was arrested in Austin, Minnesota, on September 15, 1983, two days after Ham's body was found. Shortly after being returned to Texas, he attempted to escape from the Denton County Jail; according to one account, he had convinced his own mother to help smuggle him a pistol for this attempt. He was convicted of capital murder and sentenced to death. In November 1984, while awaiting the outcome of his appeals, he made a further escape attempt by jumping a security fence on death row.

On direct appeal, Gentry raised seven points of error, all of which the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals rejected, affirming his conviction and death sentence in 1988 (Gentry v. State). The U.S. Supreme Court denied certiorari on June 5, 1989.

Kenneth Edward Gentry was executed by lethal injection at the Huntsville Unit in Huntsville, Texas, on April 16, 1997 — the second person executed in Texas that week and the sixth that year, and the 113th executed in the state since it resumed capital punishment in 1982. His brother and sister witnessed the execution on his behalf, while five members of Jimmy Don Ham's family watched from a separate viewing room; both families declined to speak with reporters afterward. His final meal consisted of butter beans, mashed potatoes, onions, tomatoes, biscuits, chocolate cake, and Dr Pepper with ice. He was pronounced dead at 6:24 p.m.