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)

"Do I own it? No, uh, uh. Nope.

"I was no saint. I was on a crime spree, they said. I was cashing checks, robbing. I was on a self-destruct mission. I never denied it, but I'm not a killer."

Link, a small, wiry man, grew up fatherless. He was kicked out of school in 10th grade; he'd already started using drugs at age 14, and his drug use grew.

Link, 44, has two or three appeals left. "You got to keep hope. You got to learn to deal with it over time (but) I don't think there is no such thing as finding peace."

Link's daily routine of work, TV and lifting weights helps him cope. He tries to lay low.

"I'm just myself," he says. "Some like me. Some hate me. Ain't much I can do about it. That's the way of the world, the same way as on the streets."

He says it's ludicrous to think the death penalty deters crime.

"They do first and ask questions later," he says.

"They always say the family wants closure on a particular case. It's not closure they want, it's revenge. The death penalty is revenge."

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Chuck Mathenia wants to be executed, but he can't.

And so he paces in Potosi's special needs unit.

Mathenia was 25 when he killed his former lover, Daisy Nash, and her mentally impaired sister, Louanna Bailey in 1984. Both were in their 70s.

He's technically still under a death sentence for the murders. But he is mentally retarded. And so, in 1994, a judge declared him not competent for execution.

That puts him in an odd kind of purgatory _ a very high-security, rigid confinement with no relief of death in sight.

"I'm trying to get executed, but I ain't getting nowhere ... ," he says. "I want to be executed more than anything. Sure do."

As much as he'd like to leave it, prison is the only steady home Mathenia's had. His parents died when he was 6 years old _ he was never told why _ so Mathenia says he cast about the Ozark foothills, from abusive aunt to alcoholic uncle to his sister's place and beyond.

Then, when he was 18, he met Daisy Nash, who gave him a place to live. He mowed her lawn, helped around the place. But she wanted more, he says, and they lived together for seven years, until Nash's family urged her to force him out.

He stabbed Nash with a butcher knife, rode his 10-speed bicycle to Louanna's house, and killed her, too.

Nash "didn't deserve to die," he acknowledges now.

Guards and Mathenia's attorney say he is so disconnected from reality that he couldn't be pulled away from watching "Jailhouse Rock" the night he won a stay of execution in '93.

A huge Elvis Presley fan, he'd been watching nonstop movies in the death watch cell.

These days, he's not interested in television. He's "just tired of being locked up."

"It don't make no sense, you know? Being on Death Row and you can't get executed. And, you can't get off of death row. It's kind of messed up.

"I got to pay for my crimes anyway. Ain't nothin' to it really. Can't live forever anyway."