A WRONGLY convicted death row inmate says he bonded with serial killers and Nazis while waiting to die – but insists they’re not monsters.
Herman Lindsey, 52, spent a devastating 18 months waiting to be killed by lethal injection before his release in 2009.
The dad-of-six spent 23 hours a day in his soundproof cell just yards away from the execution room at Florida State Prison.
Inside the harrowing hellhole, Lindsey struck up a friendship with Oscar Bolin, a serial killer, William Van Poyck, who murdered a Vietnam veteran and cop killer Jason Wheeler, who identified as a Nazi who spewed racism on the row.
But Lindsey, 35, who claims the row is haunted by a ghost, says he bonded with fellow inmates “like brothers” – and says their grisly executions torment him to this day.
Lindsey told The Sun: “Losing someone you know on death row is just like losing someone who is close to you, like a brother.
“Just because we’re on death row doesn’t mean we don’t have feelings. We bond there.
“The worst part was being there when other inmates were executed. I was there when three or four people got executed.
“It’s the feeling of it. They feed you breakfast, lunch and dinner but all before 12pm so there’s no more movement.
“It wasn’t about being in a dark space. It was about a space of betrayal and hurt. I’m seeing all the other inmates taking four, 15 or 20 years for their appeals.
“It’s just like two people who become soldiers, they’re in training and then they turn around and they become best friends.
“We couldn’t be around each other long enough to fight. The only time we came together was through recreation.”
Lindsey described how death row is “locked down” for 24 hours a day – only released to go and take showers and escorted one person at a time.
“I started reading books to pass time, I started looking at the Wicca religion and I adopted being at one with the universe,” he explained.
“I used to read a lot of books on that and Western books, Longarm and stuff like that, and then we had John Grisham books. I was in my cell 24 hours a day. I could only get let out to eat.
“We played basketball together. We ate together. We played chess outside. Even though we weren’t able to be around each other except for recreation.
“You can go out there and play basketball, you go outside and they put you within the fences where you can go but it’s two or three at a time.
“They don’t let a lot of us be together. You have two hours to walk around in the sun, play basketball or exercise.
“This was once every two weeks or so. It’s supposed to be twice a week. And then otherwise you were just talking from across yourselves.”
It really tore me apart when both of them were executed because they held the row up, they helped keep people going
Lindsey says he saw “the human part” of the inmates and said: “Those people are not monsters.”
And he was “hurt badly” by two executions in particular – Bolin and Poyck.
“Both were right next to me in their cells,” he said.
“It really tore me apart when both of them were executed because they held the row up, they helped keep people going.
“Oscar was the go-to man because his wife was the attorney. So for legal issues we talked to him and he was like, ‘I’ll ask Rosalie’.
“William was just a fun guy that was spiritually up. If there was a problem he tried to mediate and solve it.”
Bolin, 53, stunned America by marrying the attorney on his case, Rosalie Bolin, in 1996, 10 years after his conviction.
Lindsey said Bolin cut a loved-up figure on the row, but his death by lethal injection shattered Rosalie, who believed Bolin was innocent after leaving her husband and four daughters to be with him.
He added: “I was at the vigil with Rosalie at the time Oscar was being executed. A lot of people showed up and it was very sad.
“It had a huge impact on her because she loved him. Afterwards, she just distanced herself. She made him very happy. It’s the way he acted, the way he always talked about her.
“What do you say when you have a wife who’s coming to visit you every week? You have a problem or any of the inmates have a problem on death row, he told her and she would try her best to help out whether it was talking to administration or whatever she had to do to try to help get the situation done.
“They would spend time together in attorney interviews, that was it. She was working on his defence team.
“After I got out, Rosalie and I met up and she was at every execution for a vigil.
“She was still helping out guys on death row. Me, her and the other exonary, Seth Penalver, we developed a bond, we’d go to her house, eat and stay the night, then we’d go to an execution vigil because she didn’t live far away instead of renting a hotel.
“Rosalie is a great lady and when they executed Oscar it was a big blow to her, she relocated and she practices very little now.”
Wheeler was sentenced to death for murdering officer Wayne Koester with a firearm before this was reduced to life in prison.
Lindsey says Wheeler declared himself a Nazi and was openly racist to Lindsey, who is black, from the start but managed to make him see the error of his ways.
He added: “Wheeler was racist and bragged about his murder. But he changed in prison.
“He let you know he was racist, but he and I became friends. He tried to justify it and say ‘you’re not like regular black folks, it’s the other ones I can’t stand’.
“How did I feel about this white guy being racist? Do I feel bitter? No, I didn’t feel any of that.
“I was able to meet Wheeler and bond with him before I knew what he had done. Then when I heard what he had done, I had the option to weigh Jason then to Jason now, see the difference and be over it.”
He added: “The majority of people who claim to be racist aren’t really racist. It’s a way they are taught, influenced.”
While sitting in his cell, particularly on the nights of executions, Lindsey said a well-known spirit would roam the hallway.
He said: “The spirit would not just walk though on the night of executions. There were times it would just walk through, like it’s our guardian.
“It didn’t want to harm anyone, it wasn’t a spirit you had to be afraid of.
“They said it was the spirit of someone but I can’t remember who. When it went past, everyone was like, ‘did you see him?’ It’s fascinating when you see this.
“It’s not like a time you have seen it and people think you have gone crazy. It’s a time where everybody could see it.”
When Lindsey was arrested he was already in jail serving a 12-year sentence for trafficking cocaine following a desperately poor upbringing.
It was his final day, his bags were packed and he was preparing to see his six children again at the age of 34.
Instead he was told he’d been accused of murdering Joanne Mazollo during a pawn shop robbery in 1994.
Mazollo, who worked there as a clerk, had died instantly from a gunshot wound to the head. Her dead body was found slumped in a chair.
Lindsey says he wasn’t even at the scene of the crime when she was shot. The Florida Supreme Court later ruled the state’s evidence was “simply not sufficient to support a conviction” upon appeal.
It added the state had “failed to produce any evidence in this case placing Lindsey at the scene of the crime at the time of the murder” and that evidence was “consistent with a reasonable hypothesis of innocence”.
The spirit would not just walk though on the night of executions. There were times it would just walk through, like it’s our guardian
Herman Lindsey
But Lindsey knew the odds of proving his innocence were stacked against him from the start. He had a criminal record that just cost him over a decade behind bars.
Police had given him the impression they had been desperate to crack a 12-year-old case.
Lindsey, who had just got married, came from a poor background and sold drugs to make ends meet.
But he was not a murderer, and despite being cleared he says he hasn’t received a penny in compensation since.
He blames his wrongful conviction for his split from ex-wife Nikki and has since had to move from Florida to Georgia with his new wife, who has the same name, to cut back on costs. Together they have a young child.
Now Lindsey works as an executive for the organisation, Witness to Innocence, his only income stream.
According to the Death Penalty Information Centre, there have been 31 executions in the US so far this year with two scheduled on September 25 and a further nine after that.
In 2024 there were 25 in total and the year before that it was 24.
Florida set a new record of executions in one year in August, since the restoration of the death penalty decades ago, following the death of Edward Zakrzewski.
There have also been a grim number of reports of botched executions including Mikal Mahdi in April this year.
He took longer than the expected window of 10 to 15 seconds after a firing squad missed the target on his heart.
UK-based anti-death penalty group, Reprieve, claims the US is turning to black market drugs because pharmaceutical companies do not want their drugs used for lethal injections.
The Florida Attorney General’s Office has been approached for a response.
