Considering the crimes and the defendant, we find the sentences of death are not excessive or disproportionate to the penalty imposed in similar cases. OCGA § 17-10-35(c)(3). According to O'Kelley's statement to police, while "[c]omplete[ly] sober," he and Stinski turned off the power to the Pittmans' house and broke into the home sometime after midnight, where, by the light of a flashlight, O'Kelley beat his own neighbor with a cane as she lay asleep in bed while her young daughter, guarded by Stinski, listened, terrified, in the next room. When "[Ms. Pittman] wouldn't die," O'Kelley sent Stinski outside with Kimberly to turn the power back on so he could see to kill her. O'Kelley admitted "stabb[ing] Ms. Pittman repeatedly with a knife retrieved from the Pittmans' kitchen, cut[ting] at her [as s]he tried to fight back... [and as she] ask[ed him], 'Why? Why?' " O'Kelley told the police that there was "[a] lot of stabbing, cutting, hitting, and fighting for about an hour" before he finally slit Ms. Pittman's throat to make her die. After O'Kelley had murdered her mother, Stinski took Kimberly upstairs and tied her up, and O'Kelley "sat there on the bed and ... smoked one of" Ms. Pittman's cigarettes before washing the blood off himself in the bathroom. Then he drank a ginger ale he found in the kitchen to calm his nausea and went "around the house collecting stuff, throwing stuff in the bags." Eventually deciding to kill Kimberly together, O'Kelley and Stinski beat her in the head with a baseball bat, stabbed her repeatedly, threw bricks at her, and slit her throat as the child, clad only in a shirt, kneeled helplessly on her knees. Finally, knowing that "[Kimberly] was still alive and breathing when [they] left the room" but that "[s]he was just unable to move[,]" O'Kelley helped set the Pittman residence on fire, leaving her to burn alive. The evidence at trial showed that O'Kelley bragged about his crimes to a friend, claiming to have raped Kimberly, calling it "special" and "just for him," and showing off like a trophy the tooth he knocked out of Kimberly's mouth. The evidence further showed that, after his arrest and incarceration, O'Kelley boastfully detailed in a twenty-four page letter to a fellow inmate his part in Kimberly's torture and murder.