Ohio executed a man last week for raping and strangling a woman he grew up with and a woman he met at a concert in a five-month spree of assaults while on drugs.
Glenn L. Benner II, 43, died by injection at 10:15 a.m. at the Southern Ohio Correctional Facility. He assaulted two other women in 1985 and 1986 in the Akron area in northeast Ohio.
Benner smiled at relatives and nodded toward the victims' families when he entered the execution chamber.
"Over the last 20 years I've caused you unimaginable pain and I'm sorry," he said just before he died.
He said of his victims, "Trina and Cynthia were beautiful girls who didn't deserve what I done to them. They are in a better place. I pray that God will grant you peace."
Bradley Bowser, one of Trina Bower's three brothers who witnessed the execution, said softly, "That won't get you into heaven, ace."
Ohio Gov. Bob Taft accepted the unanimous recommendation against clemency by the Ohio Parole Board, with one member calling the crimes "pure evil." Benner had admitted committing horrific crimes while under the influence of drugs. He refused to ask for his life to be spared because he said the process does not consider whether a person changes in prison.
He was convicted of kidnapping, raping and murdering Trina Bowser, 21, leaving her body in the trunk of her car along a highway in Tallmadge, Ohio, the town where they grew up across the street from each other. Her brother, Rodney, and his parents discovered her car along the highway on a winter night after the young secretary didn't return from visiting a girlfriend. Rodney Bowser, 48, is still haunted by nightmares of what he saw in the trunk.
Benner was convicted of the same charges for strangling Cynthia Sedgwick, 26, of Cleveland Heights, Ohio, in the woods near after a George Thorogood concert.
A three-judge panel sentenced him to death for the two murders.
Benner killed to avoid getting caught so he could continue assaulting women, said Phil Bogdanoff, an assistant Summit County prosecutor, who called Benner a serial rapist and killer at his clemency hearing last month.