Man Allegedly Bragged About Role in Death

BRYAN, Texas — A white supremacist charged with dragging a black man to his death was so proud of his participation in the gruesome act that he bragged in a jailhouse letter that it was a “rush” and “I’m still licking my lips for more,” a prosecutor said Monday as the man’s murder trial began.

“I’m the . . . hero of the day,” Lawrence Russell Brewer wrote to another inmate while being held at the Jasper County Jail in the June 1998 slaying.

Brewer is the second of three white men charged with killing James Byrd Jr., 49, by dragging him behind a pickup truck. One of the men has already been convicted and sentenced to death.

“Well, I did it,” Brewer wrote in the July 1998 letter, which was intercepted by a deputy. “And no longer am I a virgin. It was a rush . . . “

In the letter, Brewer referred to “rolling a tire.” A witness described “tire” as a derogatory jailhouse term for a black person.

“He sees himself as a hero, a star, that he’s really accomplished,” Jasper Dist. Atty. Guy James Gray said in his opening statement.

Defense attorney Doug Barlow, who declined to make an opening statement, said Brewer was writing about sex and not a slaying.

Brewer, 32, could get the death penalty if convicted.

Brewer and John William King and Shawn Allen Berry, both 24, are accused of abducting Byrd, 49, chaining him and dragging him. Byrd’s shredded torso, minus a head and right arm, was left on the bumpy country road between a black church and black cemetery.