Florida Department of Corrections

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.” Death row inmate from West Palm Beach makes last-minute appeal

“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, an

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