Leif Christian Halvorsen

Case record

Leif Christian Halvorsen was sentenced to death on September 15, 1983 in Fayette County for his participation in the murder of three people together with Mitchell Willoughby, who also received a death sentence.

People involved

• Leif Christian Halvorsen — co-defendant, sentenced to death
• Mitchell Willoughby — co-defendant, also sentenced to death
• Jackqueline Greene — victim
• Joe Norman — victim
• Joey Durham — victim
• Susan Hutchens — codefendant who received a 10 year term in exchange for testifying against Halvorsen and Willoughby

The offence

On January 13, 1983, Halvorsen and Willoughby shot to death Jackqueline Greene, Joe Norman, and Joey Durham in a Lexington, Kentucky apartment.

That night, they attempted to dispose of the bodies by throwing them from the Brooklyn Bridge in Jessamine County, Kentucky. Two bodies were found on a bridge, each bound to a heavey rock, and a third was found in the river below the bridge.

In Fayette County in 1983, Halvorsen, along with Willoughby, executed a teenage female and two male victims inside a home they were remodeling. They shot the female eight times in the back of the head. They shot the younger male five times — in back, testicles, right arm, left leg, and right temple. They shot the other male three times — in the back, the chest, and in the back of his neck.

The victims had been shot during a drug-related argument at a home in Lexington, Kentucky.

Trial

Willoughby was convicted with Halvorsen of 3 counts of murder, 2 of which brought death sentences.

A codefendant, Susan Hutchens, received a 10 year term in exchange for testifying against the two men.

Outcome

Halvorsen was sentenced to death on September 15, 1983 in Fayette County.

Other details

In 1992, a corrugated box arrived in the mail at a Boston studio. The package turned out to be a macabre calling card, consisting of one of Mitchell Willoughby’s handmade sculptures: a miniature figure sitting in the electric chair, “faithful to the smallest detail.” The gift was described as a test of Willoughby’s response to a request to photograph him. The narrative describes that the photographer was off to Eddyville to a new Kentucky State Penitentiary on death row, where the photographer was introduced to everyone and then separated from guards and administrators by commotion after which a metal door was closed. The narrative also describes that some inmates were dressed in shorts and T-shirts and others, stepping out of the shower, were wrapped only in towels, and that inmates busied themselves with pool, checkers, chess, and a Universal workout machine. The narrative describes that Mitchell Willoughby was a big man who lifts weights and practices Tae Kwon Do when no one is looking, and that he was soft spoken and did not talk much, with comments described as usually monosyllabic. The narrative also described that Mitchell’s partner in crime shared the same cellblock and that they talked briefly about family. The narrative further states that an interrupted man had been on death row longer than anyone else in the United States, had been sentenced to die in 1960, and that no one had been executed in Kentucky since 1962.