Tales from the Texan who cooked 218 last meals for death row inmates
Dec 13, 2016, 6:10 PM
(Photo by Pedro Fernandez, CC Images)
(Photo by Pedro Fernandez, CC Images)
Brian D. Price went to prison in 1989.
“For the assault of my ex-wife and the kidnapping of my brother in law. A domestic dispute that got way out of hand and I lost control for a while and it cost me 14 years of my life. I ended up at the Walls Unit Prison in Huntsville, Texas, that’s where the executions take place.”
Everyone in prison gets a job, and Price was assigned to the kitchen. One day, the inmate who usually prepared the last meals for death row inmates wasn’t able to cook, so they asked Brian if he would step in. The prison can’t force someone to do it, but Price agreed.
“I decided if I was going to do the last meal, no matter what their crime was, I was going to try and do it as if it was someone I knew and loved, a family member. I wanted to prepare it to the best of my ability with what we had to work with. When someone would request a last meal, they’d request sometimes some extravagant meals. Most of the time they didn’t get what they requested because it had to be something we could prepare right there out of the kitchen commissary. If they wanted a lobster, they got a piece of frozen pollock, which I’d try to gussy up a little bit. I’d wash the breading off and put my own batter on it, made it look like something from Long John Silvers so they thought they were getting something from the free world, at least. If you wanted a steak, you got a hamburger steak. Well, after I prepared that last meal for that particular inmate, a man who had committed a murder… I’m Christian, so that night I prayed over the meal and asked the lord to give him forgiveness, if he hadn’t already. The next day Sergeant Cook called me into his office and said, ‘Hey Price, the guy they killed last night, he sent a word of thanks over to you. He said he really enjoyed that meal.’ When I heard that, it really had an affect on me. I thought, well, that was probably the last thanks that man gave anyone in this world. I maybe brought a little bit of a smile on his face before he left.”
Price told his supervisor he’d take over the last meals, and for ten years, from 1991 to 2001, he cooked 218 last meals in the state of Texas.
There was one particular meal he made over and over again.
“The most requested last meal, believe it or not, was a cheeseburger and french fries. Comfort food. We made homemade buns for it. It was really big, a monster burger.”
There were also some unusual requests.
“One man wanted dirt from the grave he was going to be buried in for his last meal. Some type of voodoo ritual. But we gave him yogurt instead.”
I wondered if an inmate could ask for as much food as he pleased.
“They would request whatever they wished but they wouldn’t get it. One man wanted 24 tacos and six enchiladas, a whole bunch of stuff. Captain Parkin said, ‘No, he can’t eat all that. Just give him six tacos, a couple enchiladas.’ A reasonable amount that he could probably finish before he went to meet his maker.”
In 2011, a Texas inmate named Lawrence Russell Brewer, a white supremacist gang member, was executed for chaining a man to the back of a pickup truck and dragging him to his death. For his last meal he requested two chicken fried steaks, a triple-patty bacon cheeseburger, fried okra, a pound of barbecue, three fajitas, a meat lover’s pizza, a pint of ice cream and a slab of peanut butter fudge with crushed peanuts.
Brewer didn’t eat any of it. Not a single bite.
Prison officials used this as an excuse to take away an inmate’s right to a chosen last meal. In 2011 the state of Texas stopped allowing inmates to choose their last meal. Instead they would eat whatever’s on the menu in the chow hall that day.
This really upset Price, who was already years out of prison, married and running his restaurant. He felt someone on death row was already paying the ultimate price: losing their life for the crime they committed. He thinks everyone deserves one last bit of comfort and one last choice.
He felt so strongly, he offered to come back to the prison and work for free.
“I offered to prepare the last meals again, myself, at my own expense.”
His offer was denied.
When Price went to prison he supported the death penalty, but after he started cooking last meals he changed his mind.
“It’s a horrible thing. there’s only one way to paint capital punishment, which I’m totally against, and it’s painted jet black. That’s what it is, it’s a tragedy.”
Price has a book you can order called Meals To Die For. This interview is a part of my podcast, Your Last Meal, which also features the rapper Prodigy from Mobb Deep. Subscribe on iTunes or listen here.
