Warden Raymond Muncy's keys to the death chamber and electric chair.

The Virginia State Penitentiary Collection includes some unique items related to executions in Virginia in the late 1980s and early 1990s:  keys to the electric chair control panel, head electrodes, and death chamber at the Penitentiary.  These items were owned by Raymond M. Muncy, who served as warden from February 1987 until the Penitentiary closed in December 1990. They were donated to the Library of Virginia by Richard Oliver, a former Virginia Department of Corrections official.  Other records include execution files for Earl Clanton (14 April 1988), Alton Wayne (30 August 1989), Richard Boggs (19 July 1990), Wilbert Evans (17 October 1990), and Buddy Justus (13 December 1990); and four audio cassettes describing the executions of Richard Whitley (6 July 1987), Wayne, Boggs and Evans.  The recordings, made by unidentified Department of Corrections staff members in the death chamber, provide a chilling step-by-step description of each execution as it happened: the reading of the death sentence by the Warden,  administration of last rites, final statement by the prisoner, attachment of the prisoner to the chair, administration of electric voltage, time of death, and removal of the body from the death house.