He deserves to die.

That’s what he says.

Over the years, he has tried to do the job himself — seven times.

Refusing to eat, slitting his wrists, cutting his jugular vein, swallowing razor wire. Self-loathing runs deep in Jerry Buck Inman’s soul.

And all that was before he killed Tiffany Souers.

Now, two years after the brutal rape and murder that shocked Clemson University, the serial rapist and confessed killer describes himself as “scum.”

“I’m an animal,” he said when he was arrested.

Actually, he put an adjective in front of “animal,” a word that begins with “f” and cannot be printed in the newspaper.

He is asking the state of South Carolina to put him to death. After pleading guilty to Tiffany’s murder, he has made it clear to everyone from law enforcement agents to his attorneys that he prefers the death penalty rather than life in prison.

Death, at least, would end the pain — both the pain inflicted on him since infancy and the pain he inflicts on his victims.

Last week, during Inman’s sentencing hearing in a high-ceilinged Pickens courtroom, I watched as he sat impassively while lawyers argued over his fate.

In person, he’s not as menacing as he appears in news clips — slight, just under 160 pounds and 5 feet 10 inches, though he looks shorter. A white, button-down shirt hid most of his dozen tattoos, except the bat wings on his neck and his mother’s name in Victorian script — VERA — in the hollow of his throat.

On the other side of the courtoom sat Tiffany’s parents and, behind them, a small army of their daughter’s friends, classmates and sorority sisters. Most were tanned and blonde, the bloom of youth and privilege upon them. They wore orange and dabbed their eyes with tissues.

For several days, witnesses talked about the two people whose lives collided violently on the night of May 26, 2006. Tiffany’s roommates painted a portrait of an intelligent, kind-hearted young woman who made excellent grades, yet knew how to have a good time.

As photos from her life flashed on a giant screen — helping decorate homecoming floats, playing touch football in the rain — Inman glanced at the images, his face blank. Did he understand such frivolity? Happiness is an unknown in his life.

Forensic psychiatrists and relatives sketched the details: a schizophrenic mother; a father who repeatedly tied Inman, then a toddler, and his stepsister to a bunk bed before molesting them; childhood seizures for which the only treatment he received was a butter knife wrapped in tape and shoved in his mouth to keep him from biting off his tongue. After his father abandoned the family and his mother remarried, he shared a bedroom with a stepbrother and likely was molested there, for years. He started taking drugs at age 10. At 16, he left home when his grandfather — the only steady presence in his life — died. He wound up in Tampa, where he committed his first rape.

Inman has spent nearly 20 of his 37 years in prison. His violations while incarcerated are numerous, including the rape of another inmate. According to mental health experts, he suffers from several disorders, including dissociative identity disorder — multiple personalities.

Does one of those personalities commit his crimes? Is he powerless to control his actions? Do the other parts of Inman feel remorse?

When a South Carolina Law Enforcement Division officer went to Tennessee to interview him after his arrest, Inman told him bluntly, “I killed a 20-year-old college student with everything to live for. I deserve the death penalty.”

A few days before last week’s hearing, Inman was baptized by his family’s minister. Will this make a difference? If his life were spared, could his newfound faith heal the guilt and shame his attorney says “eats him from the inside out, on a daily basis”? Might he start a prison ministry and bring other lost souls to Christ? Or would his demons speak to him again, and he’d rape another inmate?

When Inman got out of prison, in late 2005, he had a plan. He was going to work for two years, save his money as a gift for his family, then “blow his head off.” Instead, a few months later, he ended up driving aimlessly until he got to Clemson.

Late last week, Inman’s hearing was derailed by legal bickering and a witness who refused to testify at the last minute. The hearing was suspended indefinitely. No one knows when the judge might rule on Inman’s fate.

I left the courtroom and drove to Central, where Tiffany lived in an off-campus apartment. The Reserve is a village of three-story buildings, half putty-colored siding and half stacked stone. A mixture of rustic and elegant. The grass is green and crape myrtles are in bloom. Students walk by barbecue grills and picnic tables on their way to a pool, sparkling blue in the afternoon sun.

I parked where Inman parked, beside a black chain-link fence bordered by trees. I sat for a few minutes, thinking of Inman in his faded red Blazer, his brain screaming orders at him.

Then I drove past Tiffany’s apartment, on the ground floor. The miniblinds were shut tight. A Pickens County sheriff’s deputy lives in one side of the apartment. He is a courtesy officer who patrols The Reserve. The other half of the apartment is used for storage. It will never again be rented to students.

There was the small porch, enclosed by a white wooden railing, where Inman first saw Tiffany. Was she grilling a hamburger, maybe? Sitting in a lawn chair, enjoying the spring evening? Talking to her mother on the phone, as she did several times a day? Did he catch her eye as he drove by?

He came back at 1 a.m. Went straight for her apartment. Swung himself effortlessly over the wood railing. Tiffany had not locked the pair of French doors that opened onto the porch. Jerry Buck Inman walked freely into her bedroom, into her life.

And now he waits for death.

Jeanne Malmgren can be reached at malmgrenjeanne@yahoo.com.