I knew Brenda Blanton Lane, the victim whose murde… February 29, 2004
I knew Brenda Blanton Lane, the victim whose murderer has been on Tennessee’s death row for fifteen years but who now has an execution date set. Brenda was a talented, gentle, quiet, and kind young woman who worked as a reporter at The Shelbyville Times Gazette when my mother was the editor there.
Brenda was abuducted from a parking lot by a crazy man, who stabbed her repeatedly with a butcher knife, ran over with his car, and left her to die in a remote middle Tennessee location on a freezing winter day. I was a teenager when Brenda was killed and her murder affected me very deeply and was hard on my mother, who was very fond of Brenda.
Today my mother is the media relations spokesperson for the Tennessee Supreme Court and as such, she is charged with handling all of the public communications regarding Brenda’s murderer’s pending execution. It’s a really sad irony and lately I have been thinking unimaginable it would have been to Brenda and my mom that one day Brenda would be long dead at the hands of a murderer and that my mother would have to discuss it with the press on a weekly basis.
So sad.
I didn’t know Brenda, I wasn’t even born at the time of her death, but my father Frankie Floied was an investigator on the case. It haunts me to think about what happened to Brenda. I can’t believe that 60 Minutes had Thompson on there. I’m sorry that everyone lost such a wonderful person.
After seeing her story on 60 minutes, my father and I were wondering about Brenda. Where she was from. I live in the Blanton’s Chapel commuity of Tennessee, and my father knows Frankie Floied. We were curious to know if we knew any of her family. Do you have any more information about her? It was scary to have seen the killer’s mug shot, and that he was arrested in Manchester. I was only 6 when she was killed, but it is still chilling none the less. I pray for her sister, who has to deal with the torment and sadness every day of her life.