As a group of reporters chatted during a recess in the 1990 murder trial of William Earl Lynd, former WALB-TV reporter Jerry Gunn said the case was like something out of a Willie Nelson outlaw song.

Lynd was on trial for brutally shooting his girlfriend, Virginia “Ginger” Moore, during an argument two days before Christmas 1988 at their Berrien County residence.

Leaving her in a shallow grave, Lynd drove to the Ohio-West Virginia area, a region where he had lived during his youth. There, he shot a school teacher during a bungled robbery on Christmas day. The teacher died of complications from her wounds.

By then, Lynd was traveling to Texas where, according to some testimony, he considered killing a woman from his past. Instead, in Texas, he visited his brother, who talked William Earl Lynd into surrendering. Together, the Lynd brothers drove back to Georgia, where William Earl Lynd surrendered to the Berrien County Sheriff’s Department on New Year’s Eve 1988.

In jail, after taking his confession, Lynd reportedly said helping authorities find Ginger Moore’s body was the right thing to do. Throughout the first week of 1989, Lynd tried recalling where he had buried Moore on the night of Dec. 23, until finally they found her remains.

No disrespect was intended by referring to these awful events as being similar to something from a Willie Nelson song. It was merely one reporter’s attempt to get a grip on that deadly week in Lynd’s life, which led to the deaths of two women. None of the other reporters who heard Gunn’s reference disagreed with him.

Given that reporters write stories, it was a way to better understand the plot of the Lynd murder trial, which continued in the Berrien County Courthouse, every day, including a Saturday and Sunday, for nearly two weeks in late February 1990. The jury found Lynd guilty of kidnapping and murdering Moore and sentenced him to death.

Yet, for nearly 20 years, it has been a story without an end. That end likely comes this Tuesday evening when William Earl Lynd, now in his early 50s, is scheduled to die by lethal injection at the Georgia Diagnostic and Classification Prison in Jackson.

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On Monday, if all goes as scheduled, William Earl Lynd, No. 437139, will be moved from his cell on the Jackson facility’s death row, where he’s been since 1990, to a cell next to the chamber, says Paul Czachowski, Department of Corrections office of Public Affairs manager.

He will be allowed visitation with family. Lynd has children, though it is not known if they will visit. On a prison Voices from the Inside Web site, Lynd wrote in 2005, “All friends and those I cared about over the last 16 years have all slowly drifted away and out of my life.” However, on the same site, he lies about his age by a decade, claiming he was 40 years old at a time when he would have been turning 50. After he has visitors, if he has visitors, a chaplain will visit Lynd.

There will be a last meal. An inmate facing execution is allowed anything he wishes, Czachowski says, within reason. Lynd has selected and will receive two pepper-jack barbecue burgers, two baked potatoes with sour cream, bacon and cheese, and a strawberry milkshake.

As Tuesday progresses, Department of Corrections will implement what they rehearsed without Lynd this past Friday afternoon. Tuesday will be no rehearsal, and Lynd will be very much involved.

As the 7 p.m. execution draws near, Lynd will be offered a mild sedative, which he can accept or refuse. At 7 p.m. Tuesday, unless Gov. Sonny Perdue stays the execution, Lynd will be removed from his cell and placed on a gurney. He will be escorted by a team to the chamber, where officers will strap him to the gurney. A registered nurse will put a line into each of Lynd’s arms; one line serves as a back-up.