Michael Torrence

Nevertheless, Torrence continued to push for his appeals to be dropped, stating in multiple interviews that while he acknowledged the gravity of his actions, he did not feel any remorse for the victims. He was eventually granted his request, and was scheduled for execution on September 6, 1996. After the announcement, Dennis Lollis' widow, Shelby, announced in a media interview that she would attend his execution, as she considered it a debt she owed to her late husband. On the aforementioned date, Torrence was executed via lethal injection at the Broad River Correctional Institution in Columbia, amidst fears Hurricane Fran might strike the state. Before his execution, Torrence's lawyer read a handwritten statement in which he claimed that he now "acknowledges and understands the effects" of his crimes, that he wished this would bring closure to the victims' families and that he had accepted God as his savior. His request for a last meal (steak, shrimp and lobster prepared by a local Japanese restaurant) was rejected, and the prison cafeteria instead gave him shrimp with cocktail sauce and strawberry shortcake. Torrence was executed on the same day as Douglas Franklin Wright, another serial killer who was executed in Oregon.

The sentence was overturned by the South Carolina Supreme Court just a year later, and Torrence was ordered to undergo a new trial in 1994, where he was again found guilty and resentenced to death by jury verdict. Soon after, Torrence started petitioning the courts to allow him to drop all of his pending appeals, as he claimed that he preferred to be executed rather than spend the rest of his life in prison. Due to this, he frequently clashed with his court-appointed lawyer Joe Savitz, who barred him from doing interviews with the press. Savitz expressed his belief that his client was mentally unstable, as he had supposedly claimed to have killed a family in Guatemala in 1979 while working as a mercenary, which Torrence's father said could not be true, as Michael had been imprisoned in North Carolina at the time. In contrast, prosecutor Donald Myers supported Torrence's efforts, arguing that, in contrast to what his attorney claimed, his racial prejudices and other hateful beliefs did not make him irrational, and that he was well-aware of what he had done.

In early 1987, 20-year-old Donna Michele Webb Torrence, a topless dancer who worked at a strip club called "The Carriage House" near Fort Jackson, complained to her husband, 28-year-old Thomas John Torrence, that two patrons had supposedly taunted her. In order to get back at them, Torrence recruited his younger brother, Michael, and the trio decided to rob them. They eventually tracked the two men, 31-year-old Charles Alan Bush and 41-year-old Dennis Lollis, both of whom were engineers at the M. Lowenstein Corporation textile mill in Olympia, to their shared room at the Red Roof Inn in Cayce.

Michael Rian Torrence (April 15, 1961 – September 6, 1996) was an American serial killer responsible for the murders of three people in South Carolina from February to March 1987, two of which were committed with the help of his brother and his brothers wife, Donna. Sentenced to death for one murder and two life terms, Torrence successfully volunteered for his execution, dropping all appeals against the wishes of his public defender, and was executed in 1996.