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Killer who cited Metallica lyrics executed 09:58 PM CST on Tuesday, January 25, 2005 Associated Press Excerpt from http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/dn/latestnews/stories/012605dntexexecute.4995f.html HUNTSVILLE – A condemned killer who twice avoided execution last year when courts halted his punishment on the day he was to die was executed Tuesday for a slaying in Corpus Christi more than 20 years ago. The execution came after the U.S. Supreme Court refused on a narrow 5-4 vote to block Troy Kunkle's execution. Kunkle was contrite as he looked toward the daughter and son-in-law of his victim, Stephen Horton, and sought their forgiveness. "I would like to ask...

BEIJING (AFP) - An entertainment and property tycoon in southeast China has been sentenced to death for running a prostitution and gambling ring in a case that exposes the close ties between organized crime and officialdom. AFP Photo Chen Kai, who also sought a political career, was sentenced over the weekend at a court in Fuzhou, the city where he committed his crimes and bribed 50 officials to look the other way, Monday's China Daily reported. He was found to be the head of a 21-member gang that ran thinly disguised casinos and brothels catering to newly-rich customers. In what...

HUNTSVILLE - Troy Kunkle met his death Tuesday for the 1984 abduction and fatal shooting of Corpus Christi resident Steven Wayne Horton. Kunkle, 38, was put to death by lethal injection after having faced the chamber on five previous occasions. He was the 338th inmate on Texas' death row to die by lethal injection, the second this year. While strapped to the gurney, Kunkle asked for forgiveness from Horton's daughter, Shawni, then told his family and friends that he loved them. He then recited the Lord's Prayer. "I made a mistake, and I am sorry for what I did," he...

HUNTSVILLE, Texas (Reuters) - A Texas man was executed by lethal injection on Tuesday for the robbery and murder more than 20 years ago of a man carrying $13 in his wallet. Troy Kunkle, 38, was condemned for killing Steven Horton, 31, in Corpus Christi, Texas, after robbing him on Aug. 12, 1984. Kunkle's execution was delayed for two hours as the U.S. Supreme Court considered last minute appeals by his lawyers. In 1984, Kunkle and three accomplices offered Horton a ride in their car as he walked down a Corpus Christi street. When Horton refused to give up his...

HER dusty file was one of hundreds of thousands of documents stacked in a house in a wealthy neighbourhood of Baghdad. Asma Rasheed married a pilot, lived comfortably in the presidential compound of Saddam Hussein and directed a microbiology programme that was not supposed to exist. Rasheed’s light blue folder has emerged from a huge archive seized by forces loyal to Ahmed Chalabi, the leader of the Iraqi National Congress, which opposed Saddam. The archive — a dark who’s who of Iraq — reveals the tiniest details of blandishments and humiliations by a paranoid regime that shared the Nazis’ obsession...

HARTFORD -- At 2:01 a.m. Wednesday, an executioner chosen by the state of Connecticut is scheduled to send a lethal flow of three drugs into the veins of Michael B. Ross, a sexual sadist who murdered six teenagers and two young women in the 1980s. The drama that precedes executions in the United States usually involves head-to-head combat between supporters and opponents, as appeals make their way through the courts. But here, the death row inmate himself holds the most dramatic card: whether to go through with the execution, as he has said he wants, or to make an 11th-hour...

Notwithstanding former President Jimmy Carter's recent statement to the contrary, Undersecretary of State John Bolton's remarks about Cuba's biological weapons capabilities underscore lingering concerns with the rogue island only 90 miles from the United States. Bolton, on May 6, told an audience at the Washington, D.C.-based Heritage Foundation that the U.S. is suspicious about Cuban biomedical laboratories and their ability to transfer biological weapons technology to Iraq, Syria and Libya, all countries that Cuban President Fidel Castro visited last year. Bolton also made remarks, which may be interpreted as a clear signal of hardening State Department policy toward Cuba, faulting...

Donald Beardslee's execution at San Quentin Prison Wednesday morning was a struggle for dignity. The five guards who labored 16 minutes to insert the lethal injection needles into his arms struggled for composure, their lips tightening as they undoubtedly realized this was taking twice as long as usual. The 30 witnesses gathered in the observation room to watch through the thick glass of the apple-green death chamber struggled to keep their cool as the minutes dragged on, shifting uncomfortably on their feet, crossing and uncrossing their arms. Nervous coughs were the only sounds breaking the tension. And there, being put...

Condemned murderer Donald Beardslee, who killed two young Peninsula women in 1981 while on parole from an earlier murder conviction, was executed by lethal injection early today at San Quentin State Prison. Beardslee spent the last hours before his execution talking with his spiritual adviser and members of his legal team. He skipped the traditional last meal and only drank grapefruit juice before his death. No members of Beardslee's family were present for the execution, and the sole person who attended on his behalf was his attorney, Jeannie Sternberg. Beardslee, of Redwood City, was convicted of the shotgun killing of...

HARTFORD, Conn. (CNS) -- As the date neared for Connecticut's first execution in nearly 45 years, the state's Catholic conference joined forces with the Connecticut Network to Abolish the Death Penalty in a petition drive to end the death penalty. The petition was distributed to every parish in the Hartford Archdiocese, along with a letter from Archbishop Henry J. Mansell of Hartford reminding Catholics, "The Gospel mandates us to respect human life from conception to natural death." Michael Ross, 45, is scheduled to be executed Jan. 26. He was sentenced to death in 1987 for murdering four teenage girls in...

HUNTSVILLE -- A condemned killer was executed Tuesday night for the fatal prison beating of a convicted child molester. James Porter, who dropped his appeals and ordered nothing be done to stop the first execution of the year in the nation's most active capital punishment state, apologized to relatives of his victims and expressed love for his family. "I am sorry for the pain I have caused you," he said in a brief final statement. "I know it is a great loss and I want to apologize. I am sorry. And to my family I love you and I will...

Joanne Baribeault Welch wants to look into Michael Ross' eyes when they strap him into the death gurney. She wants to see the needle disappear into his arm. And she wants to see the life drain from his body. "It'll be good for him," says Welch, 45, whose sister Wendy Baribeault was 17 when she was raped and strangled in 1984 by Ross, an Ivy League serial killer who is waiting to die on Connecticut's gone-to-seed Death Row.

Saudi executed and crucified Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, Dec. 31 (UPI) -- Saudi Arabian authorities Friday beheaded and crucified a Saudi national convicted of killing and robbing his mother. The Saudi Press Agency quoted an Interior Ministry statement that said the convict was executed and crucified in public in the southern province of Baha. Friday's beheading brought to 34 the number of people executed this year in Saudi Arabia, mostly smugglers. Earlier this month an Iraqi and three Pakistani drug smugglers were beheaded in the Red Sea port city of Jeddah. Executions of people convicted of murder, rape, armed robbery and...

Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, Dec. 31 (UPI) -- Saudi Arabian authorities Friday beheaded and crucified a Saudi national convicted of killing and robbing his mother. The Saudi Press Agency quoted an Interior Ministry statement that said the convict was executed and crucified in public in the southern province of Baha. Friday's beheading brought to 34 the number of people executed this year in Saudi Arabia, mostly smugglers. Earlier this month an Iraqi and three Pakistani drug smugglers were beheaded in the Red Sea port city of Jeddah.

Brain defects caused him to follow orders, attack pair, they say: Lawyers for Donald Beardslee, scheduled to die by lethal injection Jan. 19 for the murders of two young women in San Mateo County in 1981, appealed to Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger for clemency Thursday, arguing that Beardslee is a mentally impaired dupe who is facing execution for crimes orchestrated by others. "The jury was unaware of the extent to which his actions and conduct were controlled by severe brain damage that impaired his functioning since birth,'' attorneys Michael Laurence and Susan Garvey said in a 48-page petition to Schwarzenegger. They...

Public defender's office still seeking to represent killer The state Supreme Court has agreed to hear arguments on whether a lower court erred in denying the state public defender's request to litigate on behalf of serial killer Michael Ross. The court set the hearing for Wednesday. Gerard Smyth, the state's chief public defender, said his office filed the appeal because New London Superior Court Judge Patrick Clifford made a mistake when he refused to let the public defenders represent Ross as his “next friend.” “It's so important that we pursue this and make sure that, whatever the outcome, that it's...

Redwood City killer's execution date set for Jan. 19 A federal appeals court late Wednesday upheld the death sentence of Donald Beardslee for murdering two young women in San Mateo County in 1981, moving him one step closer to execution on Jan. 19. A day after hearing arguments on a last-ditch appeal by Beardslee's attorneys, the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco ruled that errors in his penalty trial did not affect the jury's verdict. Beardslee can still ask the full appeals court for a rehearing and appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court, which has previously refused...

HARTFORD, Conn. -- The Connecticut Civil Liberties Union is entering the legal fray over next month's scheduled execution of serial killer Michael Ross, challenging lethal injection as cruel and unusual punishment. The CCLU lawsuit was filed Tuesday in U.S. District Court on behalf of Ross' father, Dan Ross, acting as "next friend" to his son. The lawsuit cites an anesthesiologist's critical report of Connecticut's death penalty procedures and his conclusions that the process could inflict severe pain and trauma on Ross. "Media witnesses or family witnesses are being misled [about the procedure ], because it looks like the person is...

Termination of bL&Z, 29Dec04 Almighty God, we approach your throne in humbleness of heart because we see these days how quickly lives can be lost in natural disaster. Our lives are brief, and we are unwise not to admit that fact. Nonetheless, our lives are assigned by Your Almighty Hand, and, therefore, they are not unjustly to be despised, debased, or destroyed by the hand of man. Your command to us is this: "Thou shalt not murder." That is why we lift our voices imploring for the soon termination of binLaden and alZarqawi. These have unjustly taken into their own...

NEW LONDON, Conn. - A judge ruled Tuesday that a confessed serial killer — set to become the first inmate executed in New England in 40 years — is mentally competent and can forgo further appeals of his death sentence. Michael Ross, 45, is scheduled to be executed Jan. 26 for killing four young women in eastern Connecticut in the 1980s. He has admitted to killing a total of eight women and raping several of them. Superior Court Judge Patrick Clifford ordered Ross to testify in court and be examined by a psychiatrist to ensure he was competent to decide...