William Ray Irick ( , August 26, 1958 – August 9, 2018) was an American convicted murderer from Tennessee who was sentenced to death and executed for the 1985 murder of 7-year-old Paula Dyer in Knoxville. Irick, then aged 26, had been living with Dyer's family for over a year, and was babysitting five of the family's children (including Paula) on the night of the girl's murder. Irick was the first inmate executed in Tennessee in almost a decade.
Irick's background
Irick was born on August 26, 1958, in Knoxville, Tennessee. He allegedly suffered extensive abuse from his family from a young age, including one incident where a neighbor witnessed Irick's father clubbing him with a piece of lumber. His mental health was reportedly first questioned in March 1965, when he was 6. A psychological evaluation was subsequently performed at the request of his school's principal, owing to his "extreme behavioral problems."
Nina Braswell Lunn, a clinical social worker, performed the subsequent evaluation of Irick when he was in the first grade. Lunn noted that he had shared stories with her about being tied up and beaten at home because his parents could not control him. Lunn later testified that Irick may have been suffering from mild organic brain damage since birth.
Irick was briefly institutionalized before being sent to an orphanage for emotionally disturbed children. During an arranged visit to his parents' home in 1972, Irick (then aged 13) reportedly hit the household's TV set with an axe of some description, destroyed flower beds, and cut up the pajamas his sister was wearing with a razor blade.
Relationship with the Jeffers family
In 1983, while working as a dishwasher at a truck stop in Knoxville, Irick met and befriended Kenny Jeffers, an auto mechanic who lived in nearby Clinton. Jeffers later introduced Irick to Kathy, his wife whom he had married the previous year, and ultimately in 1984 Irick moved in with the couple and five of the eight children between them. (Seven of the children, including Paula Dyer, were the offspring of previous relationships, while the Jeffers' first child together was born in 1983.) Irick frequently babysat the children while the Jeffers parents worked long hours. At the start of April 1985, the family home in Clinton burned down, an ordeal during which Irick saved two of the boys from the burning building. Nobody was severely injured or killed during the fire; however, the family had to live in separate abodes as a result of difficulty in finding a house big enough for all eight of them. Thus, Irick moved to the Western Heights neighborhood with Kenny Jeffers, where they lived with Kenny's parents, while Kathy and the children moved to a small rental home on Exeter Avenue in Knoxville.
Paula Dyer
Paula Kay Dyer (March 5, 1978 April 16, 1985) was described by her mother as a positive young girl who saw the best in others and was extremely trusting of people. Her mother claimed that, when told she could not randomly try to hold hands with strangers, Paula replied with: "Why, mommy? Jesus loves everybody. Why can't I?"
Paula's kind personality quickly made a positive impression on the neighbors of their new home. Her mother recalled one instance of Paula befriending a next-door neighbor shortly after their arrival at the address, after presenting the neighbor with flowers she had picked from the flower beds at the very front of the house.
Dyer's murder
On the morning of Monday, April 15, 1985, following an argument, Kathy Jeffers kicked Irick out of the Exeter Avenue home. That night, because the family's regular babysitter was unavailable, Kenny Jeffers dropped Irick off at the same house to babysit the children. When Kathy left for work at 10 pm, the children were asleep, and she felt uncomfortable leaving the children in Irick's care, on account of the argument earlier that day, Irick's behavior, and her suspicions that he had been drinking.
At around midnight, Kenny Jeffers received a call from Irick, telling him to come because Irick was unable "to wake [Paula] up". Upon arriving at the Exeter Avenue address, Kenny found Irick standing in the doorway looking vacant, before finding Paula unconscious on the living room floor in a pool of her own blood. After finding a pulse, Kenny wrapped Paula in a blanket and took her to the nearest children's hospital, where a doctor attempted unsuccessfully for 45 minutes to revive her. The same doctor, Jim Kimball, pronounced Paula dead of asphyxiation in the early hours of April 16, 1985. She was 7 years old.