Made by HBO in cooperation with Blowback Productions.

Troy Michael Kell.

He is an inmate on death row in Utah.
Kell was sentenced to life in prison by the State of Nevada for the 1986 murder of James “Cotton” Kelly.
Shortly after his sentencing, he was transferred to the Utah State Prison as part of an inmate exchange program, and on July 6, 1994, Kell attacked and killed inmate Lonnie Blackmon at the Gunnison Correctional Center, which is operated by the Utah Department of Corrections.
Kell stabbed Blackmon a total of 67 times while his accomplice, Eric Daniels, held him down.
Kell was sentenced to death by firing squad for that murder.
In 2003, Kell was one month away from being executed by firing squad after initially withdrawing his appeals, but he ultimately decided to file an appeal.
As of April 2024, Kell remains on death row while his appeal process continues.

Kell was initially incarcerated in the state of Nevada for the murder of 21-year-old James “Cotton” Kelly.
Although he was tried for killing “Kelly,” the victim’s real name was James Thiede, a Canadian citizen who was under investigation by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police for drug trafficking.
In 1986, Kell, who was 18 at the time, was asked by his lifelong friend, 15-year-old Sandy Shaw, to beat up Cotton Kelly for harassing her.
Her mother had previously gone to the police, but at that time there were no laws against harassment.

Sandy says:
"Cotton Kelly had been hassling me and pestering me to go out with him and to pose for nude pictures.
He would call our house at all hours of the day and was so persistent that my mom phoned the police to request that they keep him away from me.
But they didn't have stalking laws in place then like we have today."

Cotton Kelly drove with Shaw, Kell, and a third young man (William “Billy” Merritt) out to the desert, where Kell shot Kelly six times in the face, killing him.
The Las Vegas media dubbed the murder the “Show and Tell Murder” because Shaw and another teenager (David Fletcher) allegedly returned to the crime scene with their friends to look at the body.
One of the friends eventually reported the incident to the police, leading to the arrests and convictions of Shaw, Kell, and Merritt.