The condemned man sits in a cage of concrete and steel, a portrait of Princess Diana taped to the wall above his head, a cat named Mama curled at his feet. Frederick Bear, inmate 206 on Indiana’s death row, is a study in contradictions: a self-confessed thief who began stealing matchbox cars in kindergarten and graduated to slitting the throats of a mother and her four-year-old daughter. In a rare and chilling interview with legendary broadcaster Sir Trevor McDonald, Bear offered no excuses, no pleas for sympathy.
He looked directly into the camera and declared, “I do deserve to be executed. Bottom line. I ain’t going to candy coat it.
I deserve to be executed.” This is the unvarnished, terrifying reality of life inside one of America’s most notorious maximum-security prisons, where 12 men wait for the state to end their lives, and where the line between humanity and monstrousness is blurred by the grim routine of death row.
The setting is Indiana State Prison, a sprawling, forbidding fortress about an hour south of Chicago. It is one of the oldest and most infamous penitentiaries in the United States, housing nearly 1,900 inmates, the vast majority serving long sentences for unspeakable crimes. Within its walls, a select group of 12 men are under a sentence of death, condemned by the state to be executed by lethal injection.
For two weeks, Sir Trevor McDonald was granted unprecedented, privileged access to this dark and forbidding world, walking the ranges of death row, sitting in the cells of killers, and witnessing the grim machinery of state-sanctioned death. What he found was a place where time is measured in appeals, where hope is a fragile commodity, and where the most hated inmate of all has made a kind of peace with his own destruction.
Frederick Bear is the man at the center of this storm. His crime, committed in February 2004, remains one of the most heinous in Indiana’s history. High on methamphetamine and withdrawing from the 𝒹𝓇𝓊𝑔, Bear knocked on the door of a home under the ruse of being lost.
A four-year-old girl answered. Her mother, 24-year-old Corey, came to the door. Bear’s initial intention, he admitted, was rape.
But he could not go through with it. Instead, terrified of being caught and sent back to prison, he made a cold calculation. “I thought that if I killed them, nobody would never know,” Bear told McDonald, his voice flat, devoid of emotion.
He then cut both their throats. The mother and her daughter, Jenna, died in their own home. For eight years, Bear denied involvement, but now, sitting on death row, he acknowledges the full weight of his actions.
“I was a cold-hearted son of a bitch,” he said, his eyes fixed on the floor of his cell.
The interview with Bear is the centerpiece of this harrowing documentary, a raw and unflinching look at a man who has accepted his fate. He does not ask for forgiveness. He does not claim to be a victim of circumstance.
Instead, he offers a brutal self-assessment. “I’ve been a thief all my life,” he said. “That’s all I’ve been.
I’m not proud of that fact, but that’s all it is.” He traces his criminal path back to childhood, stealing matchbox cars from a store, then graduating to shoplifting, then stealing cars, then stealing money. The death of his sister, he said, was a turning point, a moment when he “gave up.”
But he offers no excuse for the murders. “I’ve killed a little kid in a most horrendous way, in the worst possible way that could be imagined,” he said, his voice cracking for the first time. “I still wake up from that.
It’s seven years, almost now, and I still wake up in a cold sweat when I think of what I’ve done, especially to that little girl. She was at the beginning of her life, and I stopped that. How do you think I feel about that?”
The documentary, titled “Death Row’s Most Hated Inmate,” captures the claustrophobic reality of life on the row. The 12 men are locked in their cells for 23 hours a day, granted a single hour of recreation. They exercise on leg press machines, write letters to loved ones, and call their families.
Bear’s cell is a shrine to Princess Diana, whom he has adored since childhood. “Because of her heart,” he explained. “What she represents.
She’s just one of those people like Mother Teresa or Jesus for that matter.” He also has a cat, Mama, a sleek black feline that he calls his “second love.” The cat is a lifeline, a creature of comfort in a sterile world of concrete and steel.
“Most of us probably won’t get off death row,” Bear said, matter-of-factly. “We will be executed, or we’ll die from our appeals running out, or whatever health reasons. I hope maybe one day I might get off, but the reality and the truth of that is, I probably won’t.”
The process of appeals is a labyrinthine journey with 16 distinct levels, from the initial trial to the final clemency request to the governor. Bear is on level 13. “That’s what tells me I don’t know if I’ll get off or not,” he said.
“Time is running out. When your time runs out, you’re handcuffed, you’re strapped down, you stick a needle in your arm, and they 𝓀𝒾𝓁𝓁 you. Might sound cold, but that’s the reality.”
The last man to be executed at Indiana State Prison was Matthew Eric Wrinkles, convicted of killing his wife and two relatives. He spent 14 years on death row. On the night of December 11, 2009, he was put to death in the prison’s death chamber, a sterile room with a gurney and a one-way window.
Superintendent Bill Wilson, who presides over all executions, took McDonald on a tour of the chamber, describing the final hours of a condemned man.
“This is usually a very quiet time for the offender,” Wilson said, standing in the holding cell where inmates spend their last moments. “Some make themselves preoccupied with television. Others just sit here and meditate and are very quiet for the last few hours.”
Wilson’s job is to carry out the execution, a task he approaches with a grim professionalism. “My job is one single event,” he said. “And that’s to put this man to death.
That’s a very surreal moment in time.” He described the process: the reading of the death warrant, the final statement, the insertion of the needle. He recalled one execution where the offender apologized to the staff for putting them in that position.
Another resisted passively, refusing to move, forcing the guards to carry him to the gurney. “We do everything we can to make sure the offender is comfortable,” Wilson said. “We constantly encourage him to ask questions, to be there for him.”
The relationship between Wilson and Bear is a strange, almost symbiotic one. They meet weekly, talking about life, about their destinies, about the event that will ultimately unite them. “Our destinies are intertwined,” Wilson said.
“Our course in life will throw us in the same event. I think it’s important that I get to know these guys as well as I can, or as well as they allow me. Mr.
Bear has been one of the offenders that we’ve had some really solid conversations about life, where we’re at, why we’re here, how our destinies have actually led us to this point where at one particular juncture we’ll participate in the same event.” Bear, for his part, does not resent Wilson. “It’s not actually Mr.
Wilson taking my life,” he said. “The state of Indiana has taken my life. He’s a good guy.
He’s a fair person. He’ll listen. He’ll understand.
He’ll exercise judgment on what he has to do fairly. I gotta respect that.”
Beyond death row, the prison is a world of its own, a microcosm of violence and despair. The majority of the 1,900 inmates are young men, many convicted of murder. They arrive in a steady stream, processed through the intake unit, where they are asked if they are suicidal, sick, or weak.
Lieutenant Gillespie, a veteran officer, took McDonald to Cell House C, the largest block in the prison, holding nearly 400 offenders, nearly all convicted murderers. It is a cavernous space, with tiers of cells stretching up to the ceiling. The atmosphere is tense, volatile.
“You have to be prepared for anything and everything,” Gillespie said. “That situation yesterday, it could have been me getting walked out on a gurney instead of somebody else. You have to be ready for it all.”
The documentary captures a sudden, violent incident in Cell House C. CCTV footage shows a prisoner being dragged along the range after being badly beaten. The victim was so badly injured that Gillespie initially thought he was dead.
“When I got there, I actually thought he was deceased because he wasn’t moving at all,” he said. The attack triggered a lockdown, confining all inmates to their cells for 24 hours a day. For men like Dennis Lehrer, who is serving a life sentence, a lockdown is a crushing blow.
Lehrer, who has been in prison for 24 years, has a cat named Rascal, a small, affectionate creature that helps him cope with the isolation. “When you don’t keep busy, you’re going to go crazy,” Lehrer said. “I’m lucky.
I’ve got a TV. I’ve got Rascal in there. She helps me pass my time.”
But during a lockdown, even Rascal is confined. “She wants to get out on the range and run around,” Lehrer said. “The restrictions apply to her as well.”
The prison barbershop offers a rare glimpse of near-normality. Convicts who work there are among the most trusted in the institution. John Sawatka, serving life with no possibility of release, has been cutting hair for years.
His customer, Lieutenant Bowen, a Marine, likes his hair “high and tight,” but Sawatka has been “put in check” by Bowen’s wife, who prefers a fade. The barbershop is Sawatka’s escape, his world for six days a week. At the end of the day, he returns to his dormitory cube, a small, personal space defined by three walls.
“This is my cell, this is my cube, this is my life,” he said. “And that’s all I need.” Sawatka is a contract killer, convicted of stabbing two people to death for $700.
He was hired by a man who threatened to 𝓀𝒾𝓁𝓁 his family. “I took the lives of two innocent people,” Sawatka said. “That’s all there is to it.
I’m guilty.”
The documentary’s most haunting moment comes when McDonald confronts Bear with the moral implications of his crime. “I’ve never believed in the death penalty myself,” McDonald said. “But when I think about what you do, I begin to understand why people feel it should be the appropriate sentence for crimes like yours.
Do you understand that?” Bear did not hesitate. “I do deserve to be executed,” he said.
“Bottom line. I ain’t going to candy coat it. I deserve to be executed.
By the laws governed in this state of Indiana, I deserve to be executed. The death penalty was put in place for people who did what I’ve done. There’s no way around it.
If a person does what I’ve done, they should be executed. Bottom line.”
As McDonald prepared to leave the prison, he asked for one last meeting with Bear. The condemned man sat in his cell, the portrait of Princess Diana still on the wall, the cat still at his feet. He spoke of his childhood, of the 𝓪𝓫𝓾𝓼𝓮, of the death of his sister, of the long, slow slide into crime.
He spoke of the day he killed Corey and Jenna, of the cold sweat that still wakes him at night. “I’ve marked their birthdays on my calendar,” he said. “They’re a part of my life, and I’m a part of theirs, whether they like it or not.
I intruded in their life. I’ve killed a little kid in a most horrendous way. You just don’t know.
I still wake up from that. It’s seven years, almost now, and I still wake up in a cold sweat when I think of what I’ve done, especially to that little girl. She was at the beginning of her life, and I stopped that.
How do you think I feel about that?”
The answer, for Bear, is clear. He feels the weight of his crime, the burden of his guilt. He does not seek redemption.
He does not ask for mercy. He waits, in his cell, for the state to carry out its sentence. “I do deserve to be executed,” he said again, his voice steady.
“Bottom line.” The documentary ends with a shot of Bear’s cell, the cat, the portrait, the calendar with the birthdays marked. The camera lingers on his face, a face that has become the symbol of death row’s most hated inmate.
But in that face, there is no hatred, only a cold, hard acceptance of the fate that awaits him. The state of Indiana will 𝓀𝒾𝓁𝓁 Frederick Bear. And he knows he deserves it.
