Jesse Bishop
Jesse Walter Bishop (March 1, 1933 – October 22, 1979) was an American criminal convicted of the December 1977 murder of David Ballard during a robbery at a Las Vegas Strip casino. Bishop was executed in 1979 by the state of Nevada via gas chamber, becoming the first person to be executed in Nevada since 1961. He was also the first person to be executed in Nevada since the reinstatement of capital punishment, and the third (after Gary Gilmore and John Spenkelink) in the United States. Bishop had spent twenty years of his life incarcerated for various felony offenses and bragged about having committed an estimated eighteen homicides. Early life Bishop was born on March 1, 1933, in Glasgow, Kentucky. One of four children, Bishop's parents separated when he was 5, resulting in him moving in with his father in East Los Angeles, California. According to Bishop, his father beat him twice a year regardless of whether he had done anything wrong or not. At age 15, Bishop joined a street gang and committed his first armed robbery in Southern California. Two years later, he joined the Air Force as a paratrooper. He served in the Korean War where he