WEST PALLM BEACH, Fla. — His family in West Palm Beach remembers Kayle Bates as a polite young man with a bright future when he joined the Florida National Guard after graduating high school.
His cousin Gabrielle Wise-Brice has made several trips to see him in prison.
“I’ve been visiting him since I was a little girl,” said Wise-Brice. “He always checks in on me so he can know I have my head on my shoulders. He’s just been a great person.”
“He was evil,” countered Frank McKeithen, the recently retired Bay County sheriff who was the lead investigator in the 1982 murder of Janet Renee White near Panama City.
McKeithen arrested Bates after he says Bates abducted the woman from her office, and stabbed her to death in a wooded area nearby.
“It was just very brutal,” said McKeithen. “His demeanor is what made it so brutal. No feeling bad, he was just trying to lie to get out of it.”
“Prior to his conviction in this case, he had never been in trouble in his life,” said attorney Thomas Dunn, who represented Bates during a death penalty appeal, and says the trial and death penalty conviction in the case were flawed.
Dunn says some key DNA tests were never done; that jurors were given flawed instructions during an appeal that led them to believe Bates could be serve as little as 12 years in prison; and that the victim’s second cousin served on the jury during one of his trials.
Despite this, courts continued to uphold Bates’ guilty verdict and death sentence. The latest appeal is over the race of the victims of capital crimes since Governor Ron DeSantis took office.
“For the warrants that Governor DeSantis has signed off on, 95% of those involve white victims,” said Dunn, who believes prosecutors never concretely proved Kayle Bates committed the 1982 murder.
“I’m just hoping that we can put a stop to this,” said Gabrielle Wise-Brice, adding she’ll pray this weekend that a court will at least order a pause on Tuesday’s scheduled execution.
McKeithen, the man who investigated the case, is planning on heading to Starke, Florida, to witness the execution.
“I’ve always wanted to see this one through,” said the retired sheriff. “I’m going for her.”