| Lovers make a decision Thomas, set for a Jan. 10 execution, also said his killings were senseless. "It didn't need to happen," he says. Yet, at the time, Thomas made a calculated decision to kill for love. In 1990, the 17-year-old Thomas was dating Jessica Wiseman, 14. Her parents, Kathy J. Wiseman and James Baxter Wiseman II, wanted her to stop seeing Thomas, so the young lovers hatched a plan. Jessica let Thomas -- armed with a shotgun -- into the family's Piankatank Shores home through an open window on Nov. 10, 1990. Thomas confessed to police that he used the shotgun to kill both; James Wiseman was found dead in his bed, his wife was found in a hallway. "We were both in love and we both wanted to be together," Thomas now says. "And, really, at that time, in our minds, that was the only way we could be together." Jessica, 14 at the time, had to be tried as a juvenile under Virginia law. She was convicted and held in a juvenile correctional center until she turned 21 in 1997 -- the maximum punishment allowed at the time. She is now free. Virginia law has since been changed permitting 14-year-olds to be tried as adults, but she would still have been too young to face the death penalty. 'I am now someone who is mature' Thomas, however, was 17 at the time, old enough to be tried as an adult and sentenced to capital punishment. "I was naive to a lot of things when I was 17," he says. "I didn't really have any responsibility. I had the lay of the land. I could come and go as I pleased. I could have Jessica come and sleep over with me if I so desired. I really had no discipline." Now, 10 years after the crime, Thomas wishes he could have a second chance. "Judge me for what I am now," Thomas says. "I am now someone who is mature." |
| The Story Behind the Movie: "Twisted Desire" |