South Carolina's firing squad chair is pictured behind its electric chair, which is covered, at the Broad River Correctional Institute in Columbia, South Carolina. Death Row inmates can choose among firing squad, electric chair and lethal injection for their executions. If they don't select one, the default is the electric chair.
Stephen Bryant is pictured.

A South Carolina killer who taunted police by writing a message in blood after murdering three men in a week has become the third inmate executed by firing squad in the state this year.

Stephen Corey Bryant, who once scrawled "catch me if u can" on a wall using the blood of 62-year-old victim Willard "T.J." Tietjen, was executed on Friday, Nov. 14, for the 2004 murder. He was pronounced dead at 6:05 p.m.

Bryant's executioners strapped him to a chair and placed a hood over his head. Three volunteer corrections officers shot him simultaneously from 15 feet away.

Bryant's attorneys had argued that he should be spared from execution because he was sexually abused as a child and had brain damage caused by his mother using drugs and alcohol while she was pregnant. The South Carolina Supreme Court rejected those arguments earlier this week and allowed the execution to proceed.

"Mr. Bryant is the seventh man South Carolina has executed in fourteen months," one of his attorneys, Bo King, said in a statement after the execution. "Each was forced to make the barbaric and unconscionable 'choice' between bloody, burning, or protracted deaths. Each execution has been brutal and shameful. None has made South Carolina safer or more just.”

USA TODAY reached out to the South Carolina Attorney General's Office for a response late Friday.

Bryant is the 43rd inmate to be executed in the U.S. in 2025, the most executions carried out in a single year since 2012. He's also only one of six men executed by the firing squad in modern U.S. history.

Here's what you need to know about Bryant's execution.

News media witnesses describe execution

When the curtain was drawn for the three members of the news media acting as witnesses, Bryant was already strapped down to the execution chair, they said in a news conference afterward.

Bryant's feet were shackled to the chair, his arms were strapped behind him and to the chair, and his head also was strapped down, they said. Bryant declined to say any last words, and that’s when a hood was placed over his head. Within about a minute, three corrections volunteers shot him, they said.

A post-it-sized bullseye over Bryant's heart flew halfway across the room after the shots were fired and blood pooled across his chest.

One of the witnesses, Jeffrey Collins with the Associated Press, said that Bryant was breathing shallowly for about 30 seconds after the shots rang out and that roughly 40 seconds after that, he seemed to either spasm or cough once before going completely still.

He said that three of Tietjen's family members witnessed the execution and held hands throughout the process. Their only visible reaction was flinching when the shots were fired, he said.

Bryant's last meal was spicy mixed seafood stir-fry over rice, fried fish over rice, two egg rolls, three stuffed shrimp, two candy bars, German chocolate cake and Pepsi, a corrections spokeswoman said.

What was Stephen Bryant convicted of?

In October 2004, Stephen Bryant was on probation for burglary when he went on an eight-day killing spree that left three men dead and one critically wounded.

The last man murdered was Willard "T.J." Tietjen, who was shot nine times in his home just east of Columbia after allowing Bryant to come in on Oct. 11, 2004.

That afternoon, Tietjen's wife and daughter kept trying to call him but he wasn't answering. At 5:30 p.m., someone picked up his cellphone but it wasn't Tietjen. It was Bryant.

"T.J. is dead," he told Tietjen's wife of 39 years, Mildred Tietjen, who testified during the sentencing phase of Bryant's trial, according to The Item newspaper of Sumter, South Carolina.

When Tietjen's daughter, Kimberly Dees, called her dad's number, Bryant again picked up and said: "I'm having a wonderful day, how are you?" before he told her he had killed her dad three hours earlier, Dees testified.

When police arrived to Tietjen's home, they found he had been shot nine times and that the killer used his blood to write a taunting message on the wall: "Victem 4 in 2 weeks. Catch me if u can." Tietjen's eyes had been burned with cigarettes and candles had been lit around his body, court records say.

Bryant also left a handwritten note in a Manila envelope on Tietjen's chest: "I am the light. I am so bright. I am the sun. Yours truly, The Prowler," it said. A note on the table said: "Good luck finding me. LMFAO," The Item reported.

Earlier that week, Tietjen had shot three other men, two fatally. They included his friend, 36-year-old Clifton Gainey, and a stranger, 35-year-old Christopher Burgess. A 56-year-old man named Clinton Brown was shot in the back and left for dead but survived.

Bryant pleaded guilty to all his crimes. A judge sentenced him to life in prison for the murders of Gainey and Burgess, and the death penalty for Tietjen's.

Who was Willard "T.J." Tietjen?

Tietjen was a devoted dad, grandpa and husband who had retired from the Air Force after being stationed all over the world, from the Philippines and Germany to Thailand and Oregon.

His daughter testified that her dad took her to plays and concerts, and taught her to fish, hunt, roller skate, appreciate nature, and respect her country, The Item reported in 2008.

"We spent a lot of happy hours together," Dees said, adding that he imparted a very important life lesson to her: "The value of life. All life has value ... We're all part of God's creation."

On the stand, Dees recalled how her 5-year-old son comforted her over the death of the family patriarch they both adored.

"He told me he would always be with me and stay with me so nobody could ever murder me," she said, according to The Item.

Meanwhile Mildred Tietjen testified that she married her husband just three months after meeting him in December 1964 on a blind date when he was stationed in Iowa, The Item reported.

"He had such a zest for life," she said, before recalling his last words to her: "I love you."

Why was Stephen Bryant executed by firing squad?

South Carolina allowed Bryant to choose among three execution methods: firing squad, electric chair or lethal injection. If he hadn't chosen, the default method is electric chair.

The firing squad has been rarely used in the United States, though it appears to be gaining momentum as states say they're struggling to obtain the drugs needed for lethal injections.

Before this year, Utah was the only state to use the method, and had only done so three times: in 1977, 1996 and 2010. Utah had planned to use the method on an inmate in August but the Utah Supreme Court stopped it over concerns about his dementia.

South Carolina legalized firing squads in 2021 and began using the method this year, executing two inmates in April and May.

A defense attorney who witnessed the last such execution in April described it as "barbaric" and "a horrifying act that belongs in the darkest chapters of history." State officials defend the method as constitutional.

On top of Utah and South Carolina, Mississippi, Oklahoma and Idaho have legalized firing squads. Idaho, which approved firing squads in 2023, is set to make them the state's default method next year.

When is the next execution?

The next execution in the U.S. is that of Richard Barry Randolph in Florida for the 1988 murder of his neighbor, Minnie Ruth McCollum, who was raped, beaten, and stabbed in East Palatka, about 45 miles east of Gainesville.

If it moves forward, Randolph's execution will be the 44th in the U.S. this year, a number that hasn't been seen since 2010.

Amanda Lee Myers is a senior crime reporter who covers the death penalty for USA TODAY. Follow her on X at @amandaleeusa

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Firing squad executes South Carolina serial killer who wrote message with victim's blood

Reporting by Amanda Lee Myers, USA TODAY / USA TODAY

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