Cheryl Lynn 'Sis' Gazzier Payton was a 23-year-old female who was abducted from her job at a Compact convenience store in Mobile County, Alabama, on October 16, 1976. Her life was cut tragically short just days before her 24th birthday. The man responsible for her death was Thomas Warren Whisenhant, a serial killer who had terrorized the Mobile area.
On that fateful day, Whisenhant kidnapped Payton and drove her to a remote, wooded location.
There, he raped her in his pickup truck before shooting her once in the head. He then dragged her body into the woods and fled the scene. In a particularly gruesome act, Whisenhant returned to her body the following day to mutilate it. His horrific actions were soon discovered, and he was apprehended after a police chase near the crime scene.
Once in custody, Whisenhant confessed in detail to the abduction, rape, and murder of Cheryl Lynn Payton. His confession also solved two other recent murders in Mobile County, as he admitted to killing Venora Hyatt and Patricia Hitt in the preceding 18 months. The community was shaken by the revelation of his violent spree.
Whisenhant's trial for the capital murder of Cheryl Lynn Payton began on August 1, 1977. Despite his plea of not guilty by reason of insanity, the jury found him guilty. On September 7, 1977, he was sentenced to death. This began a long and arduous legal battle, with Whisenhant's case going through numerous appeals. At one point, his death sentence was overturned due to improper statements made by the prosecution, but it was later reinstated. After spending 32 years on death row, Thomas Warren Whisenhant was executed by lethal injection on May 27, 2010. He was Alabama's longest-serving death row inmate at the time of his execution.
