Idaho death row inmate Thomas Creech reflects on failed execution, family of victim speaks out for first time (2024)

Part 1 Creech reflects on failed execution

Three and a half months ago, Thomas Eugene Creech narrowly escaped death inside the execution chamber at the Idaho Maximum Security Institution.

"When they mapped my veins a couple nights before and seen exactly where my veins were at – I watched them map it – I thought, 'man I'm gone,'" Creech said.

Idaho's longest-serving death row inmate was supposed to be executed in February after a death warrant was signed. But, after eight attempts, an Idaho Department of Correction medical team was unable to establish an IV line to carry out the lethal injection.

Creech and his wife recently reached out to KTVB's Morgan Romero. He wanted to finally share why he believes he dodged the state-sponsored execution and what it was like.

The 73-year-old also said he wants people to see he's a changed man.

Around 10 a.m. on Feb. 28, Creech expected to take his final breath. After being in prison a half century, Creech said he "fully believed I was gonna die," and had "convinced myself that was it."

"They came in to the death cell and handcuffed me and strapped me to the board. The execution team, they call it the strap down team, they put me on the gurney and wheeled me in through the execution room," Creech said. "Then once they had me in there, they started adjusting my hands and legs to strap me down, and then the warden told them to go ahead and proceed with the execution. I looked over to the right and saw my wife sitting there and she had the most devastating, horrible, terrorized look on her face that I had ever seen in my life. It made me sick to my stomach, it was horrible."

Creech's wife, Leanne, was crying while sitting next to his priest.

His son, who Creech said looked man, also was there.

"They started in my right arm, up by my elbow and that was the first place that they poked me," Creech said. "I could feet it. It was like a sting. The part that hurt was when they moved the needle around trying to get the vein to accept it. Then they kept it moving down my arms and feet several times."

Creech remembers a total of 10 attempts, but the Idaho Department of Correction said it tried – and failed – eight times to establish an IV line where they would inject pentobarbital into Creech's veins.

"I don't know if it was wishful thinking or I actually saw, but I thought I saw angels standing on each side of my bed," Creech said. "I think I started crying. I pointed up to the sky and told my wife I was sorry."

Creech told KTVB his veins collapsed, meaning the veins' walls squeezed shut, preventing blood from flowing through.

Just under an hour later, at 10:58 a.m., IDOC leaders announced they were halting the execution.

"What they encountered in some instances was an access issue, but in others where they could establish access, they were unable – it was a vein quality issue that made them not confident in their ability to administer chemicals through the IV site once established," IDOC Director Josh Tewalt said in a news conference.

"My thought was, 'wow, this is a divine intervention.' Only thing I could think of, otherwise I'd be dead," Creech said. "I believe it was god almighty that had his hand in it that stopped it. I don't want to believe anything else."

IDOC's medical team, escort team and incident command staff trained for and rehearsed his execution multiple times.

Creech said they never practiced on him.

The Idaho Department of Correction requires medical team members taking part in an execution to place IV catheters and establish drips in at least two volunteers within the year leading up to execution.

In the two days prior to the execution, they also have to take part in at least four training sessions and two rehearsals.

"When I was in the death house for 30 days before execution, every two to three days they would take me down to medical and practice doing the execution," Creech said. "They would come get me out of the room I was in, take me to medical and when I was in medical, they'd go back and forth into the room and have somebody act like they were me."

The medical staff even mapped out his veins in the days leading up to the execution, but Creech said IDOC knew it was a challenge to get needles in his veins, and he had surgery on an aneurysm.

"They've known this forever, even when they did blood draws on me for diabetes and stuff, they had a hard time accessing the veins," Creech said. "My attorneys warned them about this, but apparently didn't take it to heart."

Since the failed execution, which was to be Idaho's first execution in 12 years, Creech said his health deteriorated.

"Some days I'm not even sure if I'm gonna live until the next day," Creech said. "I have chest pain all the time … I continue to have nightmares. One of the dreams I have is I wake up and I'm back on that table again and they're standing around me putting needles in again. Then the other one that really terrorizes me is I go into that room and it's my wife on that table – not me, she's on the table – and they're trying to put drugs in her arms and I'm trying to break the window out to get to her. And then I wake up."

Creech's death warrant expired that night, and a new warrant has not been issued.

"Living with the death penalty is the worst part of having the death penalty," Creech said. "If they execute you, it's over with. There's not more hurting. But when you're under the death penalty not knowing from one day to the next if you're going to get a death warrant or not, it's really bad. It plays on your mind every day. Like I said, I'm no saint, but I feel bad. As bad as a person can possibly feel."

Creech and KTVB's Morgan Romero talked about the murders he committed back in the 1970s, the ones that first landed him in prison and got him his first death sentence in Idaho.

He explained why he killed a fellow inmate, 22-year-old David Dale Jensen, in 1981 and the remorse he said he feels over it now.

Hear how Creech is reflecting on the decisions he made, and what could be ahead for him, Friday on the News at Ten on KTVB Channel 7.

Part 2 Crimes, family of victim speaks out

According to the Death Penalty Information Center – Creech's is one of nine problematic or failed executions in the United States since 2021.

“I don't think I'm a serial killer. A serial killer goes around killing people for no reason, they don't have to have a reason, they just kill to kill. That's not me,” Creech said, “even though the reasons I had don't make it right, you know I'm guilty of doing it.

Creech has spent nearly half a century in Idaho's maximum-security prison and has been scheduled for execution twelve times. He is convicted of killing five men in the 70s and 80s and testified that he killed 42 people in the past, now says that’s not true. 

“I made some horrible, terrible decisions when I was younger,” Creech said.

He has been on death row for over 40 years. When he is inside his cell, he said he can see the execution chamber from his window. He is expected to be put to death there on Feb. 28, 2025.

“It used to be 23.5 hours a day in your cell. That’s the only time you got out was half an hour. But now we get dayroom time about four hours a day,” he said, “I did things I shouldn’t have done that got me the death penalty.”

The reason Creech is doing the interview is because he said that for 50 years he’s been fighting in here for my life and the state always just told their side of the story.

 That story goes back to 1974, when Creech killed the first of his five proven victims. 

 “They said seven, but it was two guys I had shot that I thought died and they didn’t die, they lived through it,” Creech said.

Authorities say Creech suffocated a man named Vivian Robinson, whose body was found badly decomposed in Robinson’s Sacramento home in June of 1974.

Creech then shot and killed William Dean inside a church in Salem, Oregon, two months later. 

“I went after the guys that raped my wife Tomi and threw her four stories out of a window, he said, “she knew who two of the people were because they were gang affiliated and they had been in our house because I had bought and sold drugs to them.” 

 Then, in November of that same year, Edward Thomas Arnold and John Bradley’s bodies were found in a ditch near Donnelly, Idaho. 

 Creech and his girlfriend at the time, Carol Spaulding, were later arrested and charged with murdering the men. 

 “They gave us a ride and we were drinking, and Carol had to go to bathroom, so we stopped,” Creech said. “One of the guys reached up from back seat and put a knife to my throat and started talking about having sex with her. And I was carrying a gun and shot both of them.”

Arnold’s granddaughter said her grandpa was shot in the back of the head and the driver was shot in the face. She said Creech and his girlfriend were in the backseat and it was “impossible” her grandpa and his friend held a knife to Creech’s throat.

 Two years after he was sentenced to death for those murders, the United States Supreme Court barred automatic death sentences. Thereby converting Creech’s punishment to life in prison. 

 In 1981, while serving that sentence, Creech attacked and killed fellow inmate David Jensen. Officer reports indicate the two had gotten into a fight.

 “The gang that he was trying to join instead of jumping him in like a regular gang they want him to fight me and that would give him an immediate reputation,” Creech said.

Jensen's stepbrother Kirk Guidinger said there was no gang activity in the prison and "what he's feeding you is full of bull c***."

Guidinger continued and said Creech attacked Jensen after he spilled milk in the prison's cafeteria.

"Creech was a janitor, and David was 10 feet tall, bulletproof in his mind, and he said poor boy has to clean up my mess, poor little boy. And Creech beat him with a sock full of batteries for making him in front of his buddies," he said.

Creech claims Jensen swung a sock full of batteries at him and he took it from him. Creech then said Jensen got a knife. Police reports show Creech was stabbed.

“A few min later here he came out of his cell, and I had the sock and batteries, took it out of my back pocket after I took it from him, and I swung it one time and hit him in the head and he went down, and then I kicked him,” Creech said. 

Guidinger said there was no self-defense, and his brother had disabilities and the mentality and stretch of a 12-year-old.

"He was an easy target," he said. "Anybody could have killed him, and Creech knew that... he couldn't fight back."

Two inmates in neighboring cells told police that’s not the full story. According to an interview a few days later, one of those inmates said Creech told him before the attack the only way to fight Jensen was to kill him.

He also said Jensen wasn’t violent.

During his 1983 sentencing, an Ada County judge determined that Creech, “did not instigate the fight with the victim, but the victim, without provocation, attacked him. he was initially justified in protecting himself.”

However, the judge went on to say the murder, “took on many of the aspects of an assassination” and Creech’s violence “went beyond self-defense.”

The judge eventually sentenced Creech to death again.

“I feel so much remorse,” Creech said. 

 He told Morgan Romero if he could do it over, he would have walked away from the fight.

“It’s the worst thing I’ve ever done in my life that I feel bad about,” he said. “More than any other person I killed, I feel bad for his family. I’m sorry. I hope someday that they can find it in their heart to forgive me.”

"I think if he had the chance and he was a little younger, he’d do it again. I think if he had a chance now, he’d do it again. He’s a killer. And that’s what they do," Guidinger said.

Creech said he thinks the Thomas Creech of 1974 deserves to die.

“I would say yes because I was a different person back then,” Creech said. “I was kind of cold blooded and I wanted revenge on people who hurt my wife. That was my lifestyle. I lived in that fast lane, but that’s not the same person I am now.” 

Creech said when he was younger, he was very impulsive.

As he pays for the crimes he committed when he was younger, he said he is unsure what the State of Idaho has planned for him.

"I’m sorry for all the people I’ve hurt, the pain caused their families,” he said.

 Does he think his punishment is just?

“I think the worst punishment is making person spend their life in prison and they have to continue to think about it day in and day out,” he said.

Guidinger hopes Creech is able to be executed.

"I'd like to see him stuck in front of a firing squad, he said. "That way, we don't have to find a vein."

Arnold’s granddaughter also told Morgan Romero the remorse Creech is showing is pity for himself because he sees himself as a victim.

Currently, Creech’s attorneys are actively trying to prevent another execution attempt in state and federal court. 

Officials at the Idaho Department of Correction (IDOC) said the prison is ready if, and when, a death warrant is signed for Creech. 

As KTVB previously reported, records show the department paid $100,000 for 15 grams of pentobarbital recently.

Double what they previously paid for the same amount of drugs previously. 

There have been questions about IDOC’s ability to insert a central line in Creech.

While IDOC’s director told legislators right after the failed execution that policy doesn’t allow them to use central lines to inject the drugs, that is not true.

7investigates learned that the procedure is approved and briefly mentioned in IDOC’s execution policies.

Those policies say if the medical team can’t reliably get to peripheral lines, they can place an IV catheter in a central line.

However, in documents filed in federal court Thursday, the Attorneys General representing IDOC said the medical team hasn’t been practicing that method and they don’t have a medically licensed and credentialed volunteer that would place, or oversee, the placement of that line right now.

In the interim, Creech now claims the reason he admitting to killing 42 people previously was because his attorney at the time told him he could make money off a book deal and help pay for his wife – the one he says was raped – to receive private care, instead of remaining in the state psychiatric hospital.

A month before his planned execution, the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department in California identified Creech as a suspect in a 1974 cold case murder. 

The agency said it’s in a holding pattern with its case, waiting to see whether Idaho executes Creech. 

If he does not get executed, the district attorney will decide what to do. If he is put to death, the sheriff’s department said it will close the case. 

KTVB’s award winning investigative team reports on local, crime, and breaking news across Idaho.

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