Idaho killer Creech has now outlived one victim’s children | Opinion
Edward Thomas Arnold was a wanderer by nature, a characteristic imbued in him while growing up. His family traveled the country as migrant workers, following the crops and doing seasonal work, from picking fruit or cotton in the summer to cutting cedar posts in the winter or hauling hay in the fall.
By the time he was 34, Arnold, who went by his middle name Thomas, had been to all 48 states in the continental U.S., according to his half-brother John Parker.
So it made sense to his family that Arnold, who was working as a house painter at the time, had picked up two hitchhikers on Highway 55 near Donnelly, Valley County, in November 1974.
“Because Thomas hitchhiked so much, he always depended on rides, and so he felt comfortable giving other people rides,” Parker told me in a phone interview from his home in Illinois.
On that fateful night, though, the two hitchhikers whom Arnold and his fellow house painter John Bradford picked up were Thomas Creech and Carol Spaulding.
The next day, the bodies of Arnold and Bradford were found, both shot in the head, in a barrow pit off the highway, along with the blood-spattered car Arnold was driving, a 1956 Buick Roadmaster that Arnold had restored, Parker said.
Creech was caught, tried and found guilty of first-degree murder, for which he was sentenced to death by hanging, an automatic sentence for first-degree murder at the time. The U.S. Supreme Court ruled that automatic death sentences, such as Idaho’s, were unconstitutional, so Creech was resentenced to life in prison.
While Creech was serving that life sentence, he killed a fellow prisoner, 23-year-old nonviolent car thief David Dale Jensen, in a particularly brutal fashion by repeatedly beating Jensen with a sock filled with batteries and kicking him in the head. Jensen had a plastic plate in his head from an earlier injury.
It was for that murder in 1981 that Creech was sentenced to death. By this time, Creech also had admitted to as many as 42 murders and admitted to being a serial killer. He’s been convicted in five murders.
But Idaho’s longest serving death row prisoner has evaded execution ever since, most recently a February 2024 failed execution attempt, at which I was a witness.
Creech has outlived victim’s children
Creech has been on death row for so long, he has now outlived Arnold’s two daughters, one who died several years ago and one who died just a couple of months ago from cancer, according to Parker.
“He may seem like a harmless old man now, but in truth he is a vicious killer,” Parker wrote in a letter to the Idaho Statesman after we ran an editorial about the firing squad in Idaho. “He took my brother’s life and has now outlived his entire family because my brother’s last living child died of cancer a few months ago.”
Parker was 14 at the time of Arnold’s murder, but he remembers Arnold as a “cool cat,” always fun to be around and had a story about every place he’d been, including being an extra in a John Wayne movie in which Arnold got shot off a horse.
“He was always a lot of fun,” Parker said. “And he was always cool with his kids. You know, having older brothers, they can be kind of cruel sometimes, but he was one of my cool, cool brothers. He wasn’t around very much, so it was always a treat to see him.”
Like me, Parker said he’s divided on the death penalty.
“I have mixed emotions about the death penalty, which I’m sure any thinking person does,” Parker said. “I understand, but I do feel that it’s appropriate in certain cases, like this one.”
Perspective on the death penalty
I’ve written before that I’m mostly opposed to the death penalty, but I wonder if that’s how I’d feel if the victim were my wife or my son. So it’s hard for me to tell someone who’s lost their loved one to be against the death penalty.
So I thought it was important to talk to someone who lost a loved one to get their perspective on the death penalty and Idaho’s new law requiring the firing squad.
Parker said he’s always been bothered by the thought that innocent people might be wrongly executed.
“But this case (Creech) is not that,” Parker said. “This person is admittedly guilty. And I just think he needs to pay the price that the courts say he should pay.”
Parker said he began to follow Creech’s case when he became an adult. He wrote to the governor supporting the death penalty for Creech, and then a victims advocate contacted Parker. Parker said he would check in every year or so to see if there were any updates on the case.
Creech was scheduled to be executed in February 2024 by lethal injection, but after eight unsuccessful attempts to find a vein suitable for an IV over an hour, officials called a halt to the execution. Creech remains on death row.
In the meantime, the state Legislature passed a law making Idaho the first state in the nation to require the firing squad as the primary method of execution, and Idaho Department of Correction officials are working on a $1 million firing squad chamber at the state prison near Kuna.
Whether Creech is executed by firing squad remains to be seen. And whether it’s legal to execute someone by firing squad without providing a choice of method also remains to be seen and could be a point for further appeals.
Justice or vengeance?
I asked Parker if he thought the death penalty served justice or served vengeance.
“Well, that’s probably a little of both,” he said. “I feel that Thomas (Arnold) deserved more than what he got, and he should have been allowed the opportunity to live. And that guy took that, so he forfeited his right.”
Parker said he thinks life in prison, in some ways, is worse than the death penalty, and he would accept it as just punishment for Creech if that were the only option.
But he also recognizes that the death penalty is the law of the land in Idaho, and it has been for the more than 40 years Creech has been on death row.
“Whatever the law is, let’s do what the law says,” Parker said. “I understand that there should be … appeals. … But once it’s determined, if you have the law, then use the law, and don’t let people just sit for decades waiting.”
He said he feels for the family of Jensen, whose murder is the one that Creech is supposed to be executed for.
“Gosh, and this Creech thinks he has the right to end that person’s life,” Parker said.
At the time of Creech’s scheduled execution, the Idaho Attorney General’s Office put out a letter from Jensen’s daughter, Brandi Jensen.
“My dad was full of good, and Thomas Creech is a manipulative serial killer who only values his own life and continues to believe he should never pay the price for his horrific crimes,” Brandi Jensen wrote. “Our family members do not matter? We are only out for vengeance? Thomas Creech is afraid to die but wasn’t afraid to kill.”
Question about the firing squad
I also asked Parker about the argument that Creech isn’t the same person as he was 40 years ago.
“That’s all well and good,” he said, recognizing that people mellow out and slow down and change as they get older. “But he took all of that from the people he killed, too. I mean, I’m glad that they can see that in him, but I still think he owes a debt.”
So what about this new wrinkle of Idaho requiring the firing squad instead of lethal injection for executions?
He said the people he feels most sorry for are the guards who would have to shoot someone.
“I guess I would say a firing squad would be, in my mind, better (than lethal injection),” Parker said. “At least you’re not putting a doctor on that spot.”
Parker also makes a valid point about whether we should be squeamish about the firing squad.
“Creech wasn’t too squeamish about using a gun.”
Scott McIntosh is the opinion editor of the Idaho Statesman. You can email him at smcintosh@idahostatesman.com or call him at 208-377-6202. Sign up for the free weekly email newsletter The Idaho Way.
This story was originally published September 10, 2025 at 4:00 AM.
