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Subject: Paul Crump, Killer Who Wrote Novel


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died October 11th
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Date Posted: October 17, 2002 5:59:56 EDT

Paul Crump, a former death row inmate who gained international notoriety and parole after writing "Burn, Killer, Burn," a novel about a murderer who commits suicide rather than be executed, died on Friday at the Chester Mental Health Center, where he had been held since 2000. He was 72.

The cause was pneumonia and lung cancer, his sister, Gwendolyn Jones, said.

Mr. Crump served 39 years in prison for killing a security guard in the armed robbery of a Chicago meatpacking plant in 1953. His four accomplices received prison sentences, but Mr. Crump was sentenced to die in the electric chair and had 15 execution dates before the sentence was changed to 119 years by Gov. Otto Kerner. He was paroled in 1993.

He returned to prison after being convicted of harassing a family member and violating an order of protection.

While serving his first sentence, Mr. Crump, inspired by a visit from the writer Nelson Algren, began reading classic literature and wrote the novel, which was published in 1962.

Those who backed Mr. Crump's efforts for parole, including the Rev. Billy Graham and the gospel singer Mahalia Jackson, viewed the book as proof that he had been rehabilitated. Mr. Crump was also the subject of a documentary by William Friedkin, director of "The Exorcist" and "The French Connection."

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