Fact Check

Did a Death Row Inmate Eat an Entire Bible as His Last Meal?

Condemned prisoners sometimes make unusual choices for their final meals, but generally they stick with items that are actually edible.

Published April 28, 2017

 (paulista / Shutterstock.com)
Image Via paulista / Shutterstock.com
Claim:
A death row inmate named Jeremy Morris ate a Bible as his last meal.

On 25 April 2017, the entertainment web site World News Daily Report (WNDR) published a hoax news article which appeared to report that a death row inmate named Jeremy Morris ate an entire Bible for his last meal. It was accompanied by the following photograph, showing a man with heavy face and neck tattoos, including a pentagram on his forehead:

When the prison staff asked 33-year Jeremy Morris if he wanted anything special for his last meal, he answered “I just want a Bible”.

The prison guards of the William C. Holman Correctional Facility thought he wanted to pray and repent, so they gave him an old copy of the King James Bible.

Against all expectations, the condemned murderer began tearing up the holy book and eating it.

World News Daily Report is an entertainment web site that has a long history of publishing misinformation and hoax stories, like this one. The web site carries a disclaimer labeling all of its content as fiction:

World News Daily Report assumes all responsibility for the satirical nature of its articles and for the fictional nature of their content. All characters appearing in the articles in this website – even those based on real people – are entirely fictional and any resemblance between them and any person, living, dead or undead, is purely a miracle.

The man pictured in the WNDR article is not named Jeremy Morris; the photograph is a mugshot of a man named Michael Campbell, a registered sex offender who gained some internet notoriety in 2013 when two mugshots showing how he looked before and after he got his face tattooed went viral.

Sources

The Smoking Gun   "World's Scariest Perp Poses for Yet Another Nightmare-Inducing Mug Shot."     3 October 2011.

The Huffington Post   "Michael Campbell Arrested: Is This the Scariest Mugshot Ever?"     3 December 2011.

Dan Evon is a former writer for Snopes.