State: Killer of Tarpon woman granted fifth stay

Amos Lee King Jr., who has lived 25 years on death row for the rape and murder of 68-year-old Natalie Brady, on Tuesday received his fifth stay of execution.

King, 48, had been scheduled to die at 6 p.m. Monday for the 1977 murder of a Tarpon Springs woman everyone called "Tillie."

King is the longest-serving death row inmate from Pinellas County. It is the third time King has avoided execution this year.

"I am not surprised," said Mrs. Brady's youngest sister, Marie Williams of St. Petersburg.

The 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Atlanta issued a one-sentence order to delay his execution while he appeals another court's refusal to appoint an attorney to plead his case for clemency.

"Shouldn't this guy have a lawyer to make his claim to innocence?" said Cleveland attorney Michael J. Benza, who is trying to get appointed to represent King on a clemency petition.

The Florida Attorney General's Office immediately filed an application to lift the stay and have King's execution proceed Monday as scheduled.

King needs a new attorney because his regular state-appointed attorneys cannot legally represent him in clemency proceedings, Benza said.

A previous request for an attorney was denied. King was appealing that decision when his execution date was set last week, Benza said.

King has filed a separate appeal with the U.S. Supreme Court. That appeal centers on challenges to Arizona's capital punishment law and its relationship to Florida law.

A second convicted murderer, Linroy Bottoson, is still scheduled to be executed Dec. 6 for the murder of an elderly woman in Central Florida 23 years ago. Like King, Bottoson is trying to use the Arizona case to challenge his death sentence.

King has survived death warrants signed by three governors -- Bob Graham in 1981, Bob Martinez in 1988 and Jeb Bush this year. Bush had scheduled execution dates for King in January and July, but courts intervened.

Mrs. Brady, a widow, lived in a secluded one-story house about 200 yards from the work-release center from which King escaped. She had been out playing bingo the night she was raped, choked and killed. Her house was set on fire.

King was caught, in bloody clothes, trying to slip back into prison. He nearly killed corrections officer James "Dan" McDonough in a 40-minute fight. He stabbed McDonough 24 times.

King admits escaping and assaulting McDonough, but he denies raping and killing Mrs. Brady. A jury recommended death 12-0.

King has since come close enough to death to make funeral arrangements and order his last meal.

"Every time it comes up, it gets everyone's emotions up," said Mrs. Williams, the victim's sister. Every time an execution date passes, it hurts, she says.

"How could it not?"

Mrs. Brady married late in life and had grown stepchildren, Mrs. Williams said. She was the oldest of 10 children and doted on her younger siblings and nieces, she said.

Mrs. Brady loved to knit and crochet. At her family's Broadway restaurant on Tarpon Avenue, she served home cooking -- chicken, fish chowder, strawberry shortcake. When customers could not afford to pay, she'd feed them anyway.

She was the kind of person, her sister said, who did not deserve 25 years of delays and frustration.

"I'm so sick of hearing this," Mrs. Williams said. And then she began to cry.

-- Information from the Associated Press was used in this report.

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Lucy Morgan

From the Times state desk