Face off - Spread in the Guardian.
This is a story about a lethal injection, a body in the back of a hired car, a cabin in the wilds of Texas, a gallery of death masks, the theme song of the TV series The Sopranos, the son of the mastermind of the great train robbery and an artist baroness from Chiswick who wears a bra made out of latex pigs' heads.
Last things first. John Joe "Ash" Amador, a 30-year-old American, was executed last month in Huntsville, Texas for the 1994 murder of a San Antonio taxi driver. He went to his death, still protesting his innocence, with an armful of lethal sodium pentathol and the words, "God forgive them, for they know not what they do" on his lips.