The night before Robert Alton Harris was executed for the brutal murder of two teenage boys, he placed a phone call to a friend who had worked with him in prison and said, "If I had only known there was forgiveness [with God], I would never have killed those two boys." Early in his life, wrongdoing had started the downhill slide, and once he felt that there was no forgiveness and no exit to his life of crime, one thing led to another and then another. Eventually the downward spiral culminated in the murders of two young men, which eventually sent him to the gas chamber at San Quentin.