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| Convicted Killer Executed in Delaware |
| By Associated Press |
| Published: 11/07/2005 |
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Brian Steckel, a death row inmate who called a newspaper to boast about how he had raped and killed a Wilmington woman and warn that he would kill again, was executed by lethal injection early Friday morning. Steckel, 36, was pronounced dead at 12:21 a.m. at Delaware Correctional Center. The execution was carried out after the U.S. Supreme Court refused without comment Thursday to consider a last-minute appeal, and Gov. Ruth Ann Minner declined to grant a reprieve. "I just want to say I'm sorry for the cruel things I did," Steckel said as he lay strapped to a gurney waiting for the lethal drugs to course through his body. "... I'm not the same man I was when I came to jail. I'm a better person." Steckel, who grew up in Fountain Hill, Pa., professed his love for his family, whom he had asked not to witness his death, and apologized to his mother for what he called "25 years of hell" that he put her through. He also apologized to the family of Sandra Lee Long, a neighbor who burned to death in a fire Steckel set after asking if he could use her telephone, choking her into unconsciousness, raping and sodomizing her. Witnesses entered the execution chamber about seven minutes after midnight; Steckel was pronounced dead about 14 minutes later. There were no technical difficulties, according to deputy warden Betty Burris. "There is no set time required for a final statement," said Department of Correction spokeswoman Beth Welch. "The length of the final statement is at the discretion of the warden." While waiting for the drugs to take effect, Steckel stared at the ceiling and continued talking with his cousin, Mary Kolesnik, and a friend, Sandra Jones, asking if they had received his mail and even joking with them. About 12:18 a.m., Steckel took a deep breath, gave a raspy, snorting wheeze, puffed his cheeks and blew a breath out, then was still. Steckel was the 14th inmate executed by Delaware since the state resumed executions in 1992. The execution was Delaware's first since 2001, when Abdullah T. Hameen, 37, was put to death for a 1991 drug-related murder. "The state of Delaware this morning carried out Brian D. Steckel's penalty for the murder of Sandra Lee Long," Minner said in a prepared statement. "I pray that the completion of this sentence, recommended by a jury and imposed by a judge, will bring some amount of closure to Ms. Long's family. May God have mercy on Mr. Steckel." Steckel was arrested within hours of Long's death after making several telephone calls to The Wilmington News Journal to brag about the vicious killing and to identify another woman as his next victim. While awaiting trial in prison, Steckel sent more than 75 taunting and threatening letters to prosecutors, a judge and others involved in the case. In one of seven letters sent to Long's mother, Virginia Thomas, he enclosed a copy of an autopsy report on which he had scribbled, "Happy, happy, joy, joy ... Read it and weep. She is gone forever. Don't cry over burnt flesh." After the execution, Thomas thanked judicial system officials for their help in what she described as "this terrible nightmare." "Now, hopefully, we will have some peace and closure," she said. Kolesnik, Steckel's cousin, said she doubted that his death will bring closure to anyone. About 60 demonstrators staged rallies for and against the death penalty outside the prison. Among them was Johnny Hall, 43, one of two men who tried in vain to pull Long from her burning apartment. Hall was carrying a sign that said, "I was there. I watched her die." "I feel that this man needs to die, and I'm out here to make sure that my opinion is out here," he said. |
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