On May 8, 2007, the body of 54-year-old Michael Kent Jamerson, a male resident of Madison Heights, was discovered by a turkey hunter in a wooded area just off State Route 130 in Amherst County, Virginia. An investigation revealed that Jamerson had been fatally shot multiple times in the head and body. The murder weapon, a. 357 Magnum revolver, was later found by a college student fishing on the banks of the James River, approximately three miles from where Jamerson's body was located.
The investigation quickly led to a suspect, Robert Charles Gleason Jr. Authorities determined that Gleason murdered Jamerson to prevent him from testifying against a methamphetamine distribution ring in which both men were involved. Gleason believed Jamerson was cooperating with law enforcement and killed him to silence him. Following the shooting, Gleason fled on foot but was soon apprehended by Amherst County Sheriff's deputies in a nearby wooded area.
In February 2008, then 37-year-old Gleason pleaded guilty to the first-degree murder of Michael Kent Jamerson and was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole. However, Gleason's violent actions did not end with his incarceration. He vowed to continue killing unless he was given the death penalty. True to his word, on May 8, 2009, the second anniversary of Jamerson's murder, Gleason strangled his cellmate, 63-year-old Harvey Watson Jr., at Wallens Ridge State Prison. In 2010, while awaiting sentencing for Watson's murder at the supermax Red Onion State Prison, Gleason strangled another inmate, 26-year-old Aaron Cooper, through the wire fence of their individual recreation cages.
Gleason pleaded guilty to these murders as well and, waiving all appeals, demanded the death sentence. On January 16, 2013, Robert Gleason Jr. was executed by electric chair at the Greensville Correctional Center in Jarratt, Virginia, his execution being the first in the United States that year. He was the last person to be executed in Virginia before the state abolished capital punishment.
