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)

Tisius didn't know his father, fought with his mother, wasn't close to his three half-siblings. He dropped out of school, ran wild, and ended up in jail, where he shared a cell with Roy Vance. Spring me when you get out, Vance pleaded. The 19-year-old obliged _ and killed two guards who got in the way.

Vance "was pretty much the only family I had," he says.

"I mean, he wasn't family but he treated me like family. He was like an older brother. I wasn't going to lose my own family."

He's 26 now. Over time, he's taken responsibility for his actions, but he knows he can't undo them. And he hasn't asked the guards' families to forgive him: "It would be like reopening the wound. I mean, I put myself in their situation."

"Everybody plays the what-if game, but there's not a whole lot of point to it," he says. "If you spend your time questioning what you did, then you're going to miss what you can do."

Execution? A "cop-out," he says. Easier than life in prison.

Execution means "I don't have to deal with what I did ... with the pain ... with the people I've hurt, and ... with anyone hurting me anymore."

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Martin Link is innocent, he insists. He's no angel, but kill a child? "I didn't do it," he says. "A kid? Come on, I've got a kid of my own."

The child was 11-year-old Elissa Self _ abducted, raped and murdered in 1991. Link denies it all _ the prosecutors were overzealous, the DNA testing was faulty, the evidence circumstantial,

"Politician prosecutors just wanted somebody," he says. "They don't care who it is."

On this day, the 16th anniversary of the murder, Link is emotionally flat.