A death-row inmate convicted of kidnapping, raping and killing a 17-year-old girl in suburban St Louis was executed early today in Missouri, marking the state's fifth execution in as many months.
Jeffrey Ferguson abducted Kelli Hall as she finished her shift at a Mobil gas station in St Charles on February 9, 1989.
Hall's naked, frozen body was found 13 days later on a St Louis County farm, and investigators determined she had been raped and strangled.
Ferguson, strapped to a hospital gurney, was animated in the moments before his midnight execution at the state prison in Bonne Terre. He made funny faces and mouthed words to relatives sitting in the observation room to ease the tension.
As the lethal drug was administered, he took a few deep breaths, then became still. The 59-year-old was pronounced dead at 12:11 am. It was not immediately clear if he had offered a final statement.
In an attempt to spare his life, Ferguson's attorneys had made last-minute court appeals challenging, among other things, the state's refusal to disclose where it gets its execution drugs.
Supporters said Ferguson, who expressed remorse for the crime, became deeply religious in prison, counselled inmates and helped start a prison hospice program.
"Society doesn't gain anything by his execution," Rita Linhardt of Missourians for Alternatives to the Death Penalty, said yesterday.
"He is not the same man he was 24 years ago."
His attorney also said Ferguson was an alcoholic who blacked out the night of the murder.
But St Louis County prosecutor Bob McCulloch said Ferguson's good deeds in prison didn't make up for the senseless killing of an innocent teenager. Calling the crime "unspeakable," he noted that it took several minutes for Hall to die.
"She gets abducted, abused in an unspeakable manner by this guy and then slowly murdered and dumped in a field like a bag of garbage," McCulloch said.
