Henry Eugene Hodges, an unhinged Tennessee inmate who is on death row for the 1990 murder of a telephone repairman, used a hidden razor to slice off his penis, his lawyer said.
Warning: Graphic content
He had the meltdown last month over a food package, reported New York Post. His lawyer Kelley Henry said that jail staff members refused to let him have the special package as he was one month shy of a required six months of clear conduct. He started smearing feces around his cell. To stop him from doing so, a correction officer decided to stop feeding him. The lawyer said that it led Hodges to slit his wrists with the hidden razor at the Riverbend Maximum Security Institution in Nashville.
The lawyer shared that Hodges then asked to be put on suicide watch at the infirmary. Henry said that a “high-ranking” officer told the person treating her client that he was manipulating them. The officer said that he could be placed on suicide watch when he was back in his cell where he later sliced off his penis.
His penis was later reattached at a hospital then he was sent back to the jail where he’s been restrained. He is confined to a thin mattress on a concrete block, said his lawyer.
According to Fox News, Henry said that Hodges has been diagnosed with bipolar disorder mixed type. He suffers from psychotic episodes as well.
Hodges grew up as the favorite child of an abusive father who spoiled him while he violently abused his brothers and his mother, reported Q News. At 12, Hodges stopped going to school, and later had spells in juvenile detention. He served four years in jail from the age of 17 for attempted kidnapping and armed robbery. Upon release, he worked various jobs. He also started hustling in Nashville, and the Gay4Pay street hustler allowed men to fellate him in exchange for money.
In 1992, he was sentenced to death for killing phone repairman Ronald Bassett in May 1990, and was convicted of a separate murder in Fulton County. The conviction was for murdering a North Carolina chemical engineer in an Atlanta hotel.
