The Josh Innes Show - Firing Squad

Episode Date: March 6, 2025

A dude who killed two people has chosen death by firing squad. This is a rare thing in America. This leads to a discussion about redemption, hope and heaven. Odd, I know. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Well, here's a headline for you. Headline reads, Who is Brad Keith Sigmund, the South Carolina death row inmate who chose the firing squad? Interesting! I'm intrigued. Death row stuff intrigues me because I'm a white guy and that's what we're into. White women are into their, you know, true crime documentaries and I guess white men are into this kind of shit. We're into strange shit. Here's the story though. When his girlfriend of five years broke up with him, Brad Keith Sigmund. I wonder if he always went by Brad Keith Sigmund or when he became a murderer that's about to be electrocuted, not electrocuted,

die by firing squad. Whenever he's becoming this guy, do you just start to call him by three names or did he always go by Brad Keith Sigmund? Because if he went by Brad Keith Sigmund the whole time, then he was kind of destined to be somebody who was going to plug his ex-girlfriend. But I digress. So he snapped. Sigmund killed her. Holy shit. Sigmund killed her parents, David and Gladys Lark, in their home, hitting them each nine times with a baseball bat. He then kidnapped his ex and shot her once after she jumped out of his speeding car. And she survived. Whoa.

Like, you almost would rather not survive. You know, not to get all morbid, but like this guy just killed both of your parents with a baseball bat. He shot you. You jumped out of a moving vehicle. Like, your life's fucked. Like, I don't mean this

in a negative way but how do you bounce back from that how do you go like boy time to hit the dating scene again like I don't think you can I don't think that's something that you can recover from I think that breaks you like I feel bad for this lady Sigmund who is said to be executed by firing squad in South Carolina on Friday has always admitted to murdering the Larks in 2001. Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, I am guilty, Sigmund told jurors at his trial, according to archive footage in the Greenville News. I have no excuse for what I did. It's my fault, and I'm not trying to blame nobody else for it. I'm sorry. Meanwhile, his ex-girlfriend, Rebecca Armstrong, in her first interview in 24 years since her parents' murder, said that Sigmund's actions ripped her family apart and he should answer for what he's done, though he doesn't believe in the death penalty.

Obviously, she got married again, though, so she was able to bounce back in that manner, but that's just got to be a mess of a situation. If Sigmund's execution moves forward, he will become the first inmate in South Carolina executed by firing squad in modern history and the fourth in the U.S. since 1977. Sigmund chose this method over the electric chair or lethal injection, with his attorney citing the unreliability of the execution drug and the barbiturary of an ancient uh and the bar the bar barbiturary barbarity got it but today junior the barbarity i've never heard that word barbarity of an ancient electric chair which would burn and cook him alive i actually agree with this i think i would take both of those routes although like I don't know what a lethal injection feels like. Like, is it like a relaxing

death feeling or do like you feel yourself like not being able to breathe and shit? Like, I don't know how that whole process works. So if it's just like, Hey, just get plugged a bunch of times and die instantly. I guess I'd probably take that route as well. As his execution approaches, USA Today is looking back at his crime, who his victims are. I don't need to look back at his crime. The guy admitted to it. Why do we need to look back at it? The chick broke up with the guy.

He murdered the two parents with a baseball bat and tried to kill the girlfriend, but she got away. But I do think if I did have my druthers, I would say that the way to go would be by firing squad. Because that's right. I would imagine if you're getting electrocuted, you feel yourself getting electrocuted. That's why you really shouldn't give somebody the choice. If this guy went out there and killed two people, perhaps you should kill him in the most barbaric way possible. And you could say, well, Josh, what if he's, you know, repented for his sins and he's found Jesus in prison?

They all fucking do that because they have no other choice. Like that's the choice you have once you've been a mass murderer in prison. It's like, well, I got nothing else to do here. I'm stuck here for the rest of my life. Maybe I need to go down a path of something that makes me feel better about myself and might get me to heaven. Maybe so. Maybe God will say, you know what?

You've repented. You've done well. Yes, you killed the two parents with the baseball bat. Yes, you tried to kill the other gal, but you did find Jesus. Good to meet you. And you know what? You can go to heaven. Maybe not the greatest part of heaven.

You get to heaven, but it's like downtown St. Louis. You might die, but you may not. And there are decent parts of it. So maybe it's like downtown St. Louis. Like, you might die, but you may not. And there are decent parts of it. So maybe it's like downtown St. Louis is like a whole section of heaven. Maybe that's how heaven works. Maybe heaven, like, I don't think just heaven is one place where everybody's happy. Like, maybe it goes in levels. Hold on, let me play a couple commercials.

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The following was recorded from inside an ice plunge. Okay. All right. When a core's life is cold enough enough the mountains on the can turn blue so the next time you want a cold lager cold filtered cold package core's light just wait until those glorious mountains on the can turn blue it's easy to say that fast when you're freezing gold maybe heaven operates in sections like an exclusive club or something where like there's the club that everybody's in like we're all dance we're all having a good time but then there's like a velvet rope and better shit and better

drinks and better food is happening over here or there's like a champagne room there's the normal strip club where the lady with the c-section scar is making $2 to dance to Nickelback. But then you go in the back and you pay $10 and she might jerk you off. So maybe that's what heaven is like. Maybe heaven is a situation where you get in. There's certain criteria that you meet. But you don't meet the saintly criteria, right? You're not like Mother Teresa who gets to be in like the ultimate heaven. Maybe ultimate heaven

is you get to select what your heaven is. See, that would be a good heaven. You don't want to be forced to do something that someone makes you do. Maybe your heaven is you get like, if you're like super duper heaven, like you didn't fuck anything up, you did great things, you were chaste and pure and whatever, right? Maybe your heaven is you get to go in and they go, all right, Josh, you get to pick what your heaven is. You've been a perfect human. We never saw you masturbating to Pornhub in the shower all those days and weeks and months and years. We never saw you do all those horrible things to your body. We think you're a saint. Let's say, Josh, you're a saint. What would your heaven you're a saint what would your heaven be like and i'd be

like well i'd be at texas roadhouse for one and the beer would be ice cold maybe occasionally there'd be like a little stuff i mean little crystals of ice not too much where it becomes difficult to drink like sometimes that happens over at uh at twin peaks they're like hey our beer is 28 degrees cool but there's icebergs in it. It makes it hard to drink. I want it to go down smooth. I don't want to be gagging on your ice. So then maybe it'd be nonstop rolls from the roadhouse, but I never get full of them ever. And I just keep dipping it in the butter. And the steak is always prepared perfectly. Not when you go to the fucking Kirkwood, Missouri, Texas roadhouse where it's always overdone.

It's perfect. Perfect steak. And my dog is there and we hang out. You know, maybe that's what heaven is. Maybe you get to choose your level. So like, if you're like, just, if you just make the cut, like you're like, you know, in the play in tournament for heaven, right? You're like on the first four, like, you know, you're playing in Dayton on a Tuesday night to see if you can get the right to go play Duke in the first round, like a situation like that. You're on the outside looking in, but you're just it. You're like last four in, that's you. You don't get those same choices, right? So like you've got like a limited, like God knows what your favorite things are and he makes sure you can't have any of those. But he says, here's like your third and fourth favorite things. And maybe we could make this possible, right? Maybe

that's what heaven is. I don't know. I don't know if that's how these things operate. Maybe they do. Maybe they don't. But all that said, going back to the idea of being, you know, in prison and being, you know, finding God and like, you know, like that's what prisoners do. And you can't really blame them because once you're in prison and once you've killed two people with a baseball bat and tried to kill another one, but she jumped out of a car after you shot her or you shot her after she jumped out of a car and she survived. Once you get to that level of it, like, I don't know that heaven is in your future and you're probably in a really bad spot. What other choice do you have?

Like, you always hear these stories about dudes in prison and they're like, well, you know, he's been here for 30 years. He killed the whole family, but now he reads the Bible and he teaches Shakespeare to the prisoners. Like, cool, but what is your other choice?

Like, you're either going to sit in prison and just be miserable and be a horrible human forever and just it eats at you or you find something to occupy your time because even if you're a mass murderer or someone who killed two people with a baseball bat you're still in the mindset of like i'm a human i need something to do right to pass the time you don't want to sit in a prison for 30 years. Like me at this current state I'm in, I'm waiting to hear back from radio stations. Like I've reached out to a couple. Some have seemed somewhat interested, all that.

All I do is sit here all day in my mind and I'm just like, can someone fucking call me back from one of these so I know where I stand, right? That's all I'm thinking about all fucking day. It consumes me. No matter what I'm watching, I'm thinking about this because I need a fucking job. I want a fucking job, right? Like that's where my mind is right now. Imagine you're in jail and you killed

three people or murdered a family with a baseball bat and you're in there for the rest of your life and death row and you're going to die. You got to find something to do to A, occupy your time, and B, make you feel better about your situation and give you what? Hope. H-O-P-E. Hope. And hope is a dangerous drug, right? So when you've got hope, like that's all you got going for you. I bet this guy who killed the two people with the baseball bat and tried to kill his ex, he probably has convinced himself that he's going to heaven. But what other choice do you have when you're in prison? There isn't another choice because you need hope and hope can be a dangerous thing. So like, what do you do? That's why I try to avoid having hope sometimes. Like if you're

hopeless, then maybe good things will happen, right? Like I had a phone call with somebody in radio last week and they're like, I think we kind of want to find a way to bring you in. But then I'm like, I want to get excited about it. And I want to believe everything that you say, because it sounds so good. If anybody knows that song reference, please send me a message. You're an award winner and I love you. But like, I'm talking to him and deep down in my heart, I'm like, I just know it's not going to work out. And why do I know it's not going to work out? Because lately nothing fucking works out when it comes to this stuff. You know, and I want to be able to just walk around and go, I believe in this, you know, I want to believe I can be happy and be like, something's going to work out from this. But deep down, I always feel like it's not because I've been just kicked in

the fucking balls over the last seven months. So by just radio shit, right? People talk to you, then they ghost you and never hear from them again. So hope is, I was talking to Jilly about this the other day. She's like, yeah, it's kind of a weird hopeless thing. And, and I'm like, yeah. And, and, and I told her, I was like, I want to have some level of hope, but I find it easier to just not, you know, and just assume the worst. And maybe just, maybe a miracle will happen. Maybe something will come up and they'll go, you know, we actually do want to hire you. But once you've been burned by the guy in Philly, multiple guys in Philly, one who wanted to hire you and then didn't cause Mike worked there. And then one guy who said he'd

call you on Monday. And that was 10 months ago and still haven't called. And you get burned by, or you talk with somebody on a radio station. They are the ones that ask you if you'd be interested in working for them. And then you come to find out months later after you pry a little bit, they probably would not have even reached out to you unless you reached out. I know I've taken this conversation about this guy that killed two people and he's about to get death by the firing squad and I've turned it into my life. I get that. But it's about hope. So if you're in prison and even though you've killed two people, you still want to have some form of hope. So these people find God and then you hear these stories about him and they're like, boy, old John David Souther here. Actually, that's not a good example. John David Souther

is the name of a guy that wrote songs with the Eagles. Really good song, by the way, called Her Town Too or My Town Too that he did with, what's his name? James Taylor. Great song. J.D. Souther and James Taylor. I don't know why that three names came to my mind. Sorry, John David Souther, who might be dead anyway, but he is not a serial killer. I was just looking for a three-name person. But you're sitting there and you're wondering to yourself, what can I do to find hope? And that's how these guys find hope, whether or not they're going to go to heaven. I mean, I'm going to guess they're not because I would think that God would be like, sorry, pal, you still killed two people. I appreciate that you feel bad about it, but

you still killed two people. Now, if you look at the idea of death by firing squad, I find death by firing squad to be, I think that might be the best way to do it. I don't know. I have to dig deep into the descriptions of these things, but I would imagine that being electrocuted is terrible. And I would imagine that like shutting down your whole body while you're still coherent and everything with the lethal injection would also be terrible i mean i would assume it'd be kind of like suffocating i might be wrong on that but maybe and nobody wants to drown like drowning sounds like the worst thing ever right so you just you know have a bunch of people with guns and and you don't know which bullet's gonna kill you nobody does and then boom you're

dead that's probably the way to go. Unless these people are a terrible shot. If they're a terrible shot, then that's fucking terrible. Like, you have like five guys, pow, pow, pow. And you're like, I'm still alive. But I'm very, very badly burned. But anyway. All right.

We shall continue.