A death row chef at a Texas prison who has prepared 218 “last meals” over a decade for inmates facing execution admitted he couldn’t bring himself to cook for one notorious killer.
Brian Price says he tends to “pray” over the dishes before they are presented to the doomed prisoners. But he refused to cook for Leopoldo Narvaiz Jr, who was convicted of stabbing his ex-girlfriend, her two sisters and brother to death in 1998.
This was because Price had an emotional link to the crime as the victims were all friends of his daughters, reports The Daily Express US.
A final meal for inmates is a long-held tradition with many unusual requests hitting the headlines over the years, but there has always been little information about how their meals are prepared or by whom.
Former convict Price has been working at a prison in Huntsville for 11 years. Before that, he’d spent 14 years behind bars himself for assaulting his ex-wife and kidnapping his brother-in-law.
READ MORE: Family left traumatised after botched three-hour death row execution
He says his interest in cooking started at Prison when he was assigned to the role of chef while doing time.
In an interview with the New York Times in 2011, he explained a chef friend had been cooking final meals for death row inmates in the prison at the time, but when he wasn’t able to do it one day, Price stepped in and took over.
The first death row meal he cooked was for an inmate who shot dead a man during a grocery store robbery, and the convict requested “filet mignon” but Price was only able to provide a T-bone steak.
Recalling the meal, he said: “I went ahead and did it to the best of my ability with what we had at our means. And so, the next day sarge called me into his office and said: ‘Hey Price, that guy they killed last night sent a word of thanks to the chaplain over here and said he appreciated what you did. He really liked it’.
“That blew me away. I went back to my cell that night, and I really reflected upon it and that was probably the last thanks that guy gave anyone before he left this world.”
He told The Guardian: “I gave this guy a little bit of pleasure – just something to distract him for a brief moment before his execution. It’s a very humbling and emotional experience and I always prayed over each meal.”
But despite cooking for “monster” inmates like serial killer Kenneth McDuff, convicted of torturing and murdering at least 14 people, Price could not bring himself to cook for Narvaiz Jr.
Narvaiz Jr was convicted of four counts of capital murder in 1998 and all four of his victims, aged between 11 and 19, had been school friends of Price’s daughters and so the chef asked another to step in.
The tradition of death row meals in Texas was put to an end in 2011 after the actions of one inmate named Lawrence Russell Brewer, who requested a huge meal of various items.
His order included two chicken-fried steaks gravy with sliced onions, a triple-meat bacon cheeseburger, a cheese omelette “with fixings”, a large bowl of fried okra with ketchup, three fajitas, a pint of Blue Bell ice cream and a pound of barbecue with a half-loaf of white bread.
Including the already sizable meal, Brewer also asked for a slab of peanut butter fudge with crushed peanuts, a pizza and three root beers – but he didn’t eat a single bite of it.
Texas officials halted the final meal request tradition after his actions, leading Price to offer to prepare the meals free of charge but the state refused his offer.
He told CNN at the time: “Justice is going to be served when this person is executed, but can we not show our softer side? Our compassionate side?
