Earl Bramblett

Bramblett was executed by electric chair on April 9, 2003.

After a clemency petition to Governor of Virginia Mark Warner was rejected, along with an appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court, Earl Bramblett was executed in the electric chair for the murder of the Hodges family at Greensville Correctional Center, Jarratt, Virginia, on April 9, 2003. He was sixty-one years old at the time of his death, choosing the electric chair over lethal injection as a form of protest. His final words were, "I didn't murder the Hodges family. I've never murdered anybody. I'm going to my death with a clear conscience. I am going to my death having had a great life because of my two great sons, Mike and Doug." His body was cremated after the electrocution.

Bramblett was tried, convicted, and sentenced to death on December 16, 1997, after the jury deliberated for one hour.

At around 4:30 a.m. on August 29, 1994, a passerby reported a fire at the Hodges residence in Vinton, Virginia. Firefighters and police found fire burning throughout the house. Gaining entry, authorities found 37-year-old Teresa Lynn Hodges' body on a couch, still burning — she had been strangled and doused with diesel fuel. On the second floor, they discovered William Blaine Hodges (aged 41) dead on a bed next to a .22 caliber gun with the barrel removed, shot through his left temple, but not burned. In a second bed they found daughters Winter (aged 11) and Anah (aged 3); both had been shot at close range, and Anah had sustained mild burns.

Bramblett was a suspect in the 1977 disappearances of Tammy Akers and Angela Rader, who were both 14 years old and worked for him at the time. Bramblett reportedly told friends that he wished he had not "hurt Tammy" three years after she went missing, though he was never charged in either Akers's or Rader's disappearances and their whereabouts are still unknown.

In addition, two women testified that, in the 1970s, Bramblett had given them alcohol and molested them when they were eleven and fourteen years old.

Earl Conrad Bramblett (March 20, 1942 – April 9, 2003) was an American mass murderer, convicted for the killing of four members of the Hodges family in August 1994 in Vinton, Virginia. Bramblett murdered each family member in their residence before setting it on fire, and in 1997 was sentenced to death for the murders.