AP Interviews 5 Mo. Condemned Prisoners

Inmate Martin Link, sentenced to death in the murder of an 11-year-old girl, gestures during an interview at Potosi Correctional Center, Missouri's maximum security prison where condemned men live in the general prison population, Jan. 11, 2007 in Mineral Point, Mo. (AP Photo/Jeff Roberson) (Jeff Roberson - AP)

Otherwise, there'd be "no way in the world I'd have been involved."

"I can't erase what happened," he says. "If I could, I would. If I could give my life for hers, I'd bring that little girl back."

But he can't. And he knows nothing he can say can bring solace to the girl's family, or restore his own wasted life. He thinks about it sometimes, just as he thinks about his children, forced to "deal with things that I feel in my heart they wouldn't be dealing with had I not messed my life up. I've failed them."

On this day, he is controlled and emotionally blank. He later apologizes, in a letter with neatly penned cursive, for "looking like a madman" in need of shave and haircut _ luxuries he has been allowed only once a month, since he was placed in "the hole," in solitary confinement, for stabbing a prison employee without warning in January 2006.

He says he has no memory of it; prison officials wondered if the attack was triggered by his anxiety when the state set an execution date for Taylor.

At his own execution, he does not want his mother to be a witness.

"I caused her enough pain," he says, quietly.

"If I do get executed, it's like I tell my daughter and sons, don't cry and feel sorry for me. If anything, cry and be happy for me cause I'll be free of this. I'm not happy here."

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Michael Tisius spends his days drawing pencil and charcoal portraits, and poring over European history and art books: "I can't even picture myself in any situation of harm or violence ... being the person who would inflict it."

If he wasn't in prison, in solitary confinement, Tisius says he'd be a tattoo artist. No fewer than 42 cover his skinny, pale body.

But this is where he is, and this is where he will remain, until his execution.