Kenneth Cummings Jr

Kevin Cummings Jr. (1961 - June 4, 2007) a gay man from Pearland, TX, was last seen alive on June 4,
2007. Terry Mangum, 26, was arrested and later confessed to stabbing Cummings to death after luring
him from a gay bar. Mangum said he had gone out intending to target a gay man.
Mangum told police that he had met Cummings at E.J.'s bar in Houston and followed Cummings' back to
his home in Pearland, where they continued to party and drink. Mangum said that before he left
Cummings gave him his wallet, credit cards, car keys, checkbook, and cash and told him to “go have
fun.” Mangum said that his boots got muddy when he did some yard work for his mother. He used the
same explanation for the cuts on his thumbs. Later, he changed his story, saying that he'd borrowed
a shovel from his landlord to dig mushrooms in the

Mangum later admitted that he lied in his explanation of the cuts on his thumbs, and admitted that
he had killed an old acquaintance with a knife and buried the knife along with the body.

On July 11, 2007, The Facts reporter John Tompkins interviewed Mangum at the Brazoria County jail,
he would later testify that Mangum confessed to Cummings' murder during the interview. “As I was
explaining, he cut me off and said he planned to plead guilty,” Tompkins would later say. “He
said, 'I did it. The bottom line is that I stabbed him in the head with a knife.” Mangum and
Tompkins were separated by glass and spoke via the jailhouse phone. Tompkins took one page of notes
during the interview, which was not recorded.

Mangum said he did not seek out Cummings specifically, but he did go to a gay bar in South Houston.
“It just happened to be the one I bumped into,” he told the reporter. Tompkins were later
clarify that Mangum said “it,” not “he.” Mangum reportedly believed he was the biblical
prophet Elijah. He did not say that God told him to kill, but said to Mangum “my belief of God was
judging him,” and said more than once that he was sacrificing the body.
In several jail house interviews, Mangum discussed his motive for killing Cummings. He told The
Houston Chronicle that he had studied the bible for “thousands and thousands and thousands” of
hours, and that God appeared to him in a dream or “visitation” during a prison stay in 2001 and
commanded him to kill. After six months of planning, he went to E.J.'s, where he met Cummings. The
two went back to Cummings' home, where Mangum said he stabbed Cummings in the head with a 6”
blade.

“I believe I'm Elijah, called by God to be a prophet,” he told reporters. ”…I believe with
all my heart that I was doing the right thing.
Mangum said he went to a gay bar specifically for the purposes of targeting a gay man, and that
Cummings “just happened to be the one that I bumped into.”
The Facts reporter John Tompkins did ask Mangum about his sexual orientation, during his jailhouse
interview with Mangum, but Mangum went out of his way to tell the reporter that he was not
homosexual and that he thought homosexuality was an abomination. “I asked him if killing him was
like stomping on a bug,” Tompkins would later testify.”He looked at me kind of confused and I
rephrased, “Like swatting a mosquito?' “He said, 'Yes.'”