Richard Cooey was executed by the State of Ohio for two murders
According to court documents Clint Dickens (17) would drop a cinder block onto the car which contained Dawn McCreery, 20, and Wendy Offredo, 21. The two college students would pull over and were offered a ride by Richard Cooey (19) and Dickens
The women would be driven to a remote location where they were repeatedly sexually assaulted, tortured and then murdered
Richard Cooey and Clint Dickens would be arrested and convicted
Clint Dickens was sentenced to life with no parole for 30 years, he is eligible for parole in 2027
Richard Cooey would be sentenced to death and executed by lethal injection on October 14 2008
Richard Cooey Photos
Clint Dickens Photos
Richard Cooey FAQ
When Was Richard Cooey Executed
Richard Cooey was executed on October 14 2008
Where Is Clint Dickens Now
Clint Dickens is incarcerated at Marion Correctional Institution
Richard Cooey Case
The anger and uncertainty were over for Richard Wade Cooey III at 10:28 a.m. yesterday as he lay motionless on the lethal-injection table at the Southern Ohio Correctional Facility. Cooey’s long fight to avoid execution for murdering Wendy Offredo, 21, and Dawn McCreery, 20, was punctuated by last words of defiance. But as he lay dying, the three execution drugs flowing into his veins, the 41-year-old Summit County man was calm and quiet, showing no outward signs of pain.
Cooey’s death — the first in Ohio in 18 months and the 27th since capital punishment resumed in 1999 — will ease but not erase the pain for the families of Offredo and McCreery. Offredo’s family chose not to attend the execution, but Mary Ann Hackenberg and Robert McCreery Sr., the victim’s parents, were witnesses, along with her brother and three cousins.
Likewise, the execution did not banish the suffering of Katherine Miracle, Melissa Wilkinson and Tammy Brown, three of the victims’ Alpha Delta Pi sorority sisters in the mid-1980s at the University of Akron. Miracle, Wilkinson and Brown pulled up their sport-utility vehicle to the Lucasville prison early yesterday, parking a few hundred yards from a circle of capital-punishment protesters. They opened the tailgate and set up an impromptu display that included a composite sorority photo with McCreery’s picture; Offredo graduated the previous year. For Miracle, the past two decades have been scarred by thoughts of the abduction, rape and murder of her friends in a deserted area of Norton, in northeastern Ohio, on Sept. 1, 1986. Miracle was supposed to ride along with Offredo and McCreery to the Harbor Inn, an Akron-area bar. But Miracle and McCreery argued, and Miracle drove separately from her “little sister” in the sorority.
Offredo and McCreery never made it to the bar; Cooey and two accomplices dropped a 35-pound chunk of concrete onto their car from an I-77 overpass. “I was supposed to guide and protect her,” Miracle said. “There were a lot of times over the years that I didn’t feel I did that. I would wake up and think, ‘Why am I here and she’s not?’ “
At the other end of the prison parking lot, Sister Alice Gerdeman, president of Ohioans to Stop Executions, prayed with about 30 people. “The crime that was committed was horrendous,” she said in an interview. “I pray for the victims’ families and for Richard Cooey and his family. “There is no happiness here, just deep, deep pain.”
Inside the prison, Cooey was being prepped in his cell by medical technicians who inserted intravenous needles into both arms. In a flurry of lawsuits during the past few months, Cooey’s attorneys alleged that finding a suitable vein could be a problem because of his obesity; he weighed 275 pounds and was 5 feet 7 inches tall. The prison technician, as observed by witnesses on a monitor, had trouble inserting the first needle, prompting Cooey to call out loudly, “I want to talk to Greg Meyers!” Meyers, one of Cooey’s public defender attorneys, was a witness but was not allowed to respond to his client.
Meyers told The Dispatch later that Cooey cried out because the first needle missed the vein and had to be reinserted. “He was afraid he was going to have a botched execution like the others,” Meyers said, referring to two problematic lethal injections in Ohio since 2006. However, IV lines in both arms eventually were established.
Cooey spat out his last words: “You (expletive) haven’t paid any attention to anything I’ve said in the last 22 years, why would you pay any attention to anything I say now?”
On his last night, Cooey had a big meal: a T-bone steak with A1 sauce, french fries and onion rings, four eggs over easy, hash browns, buttered toast, bear claw pastries, a pint of Rocky Road ice cream and Mountain Dew. The prison waived its nonsmoking policy, allowing him to smoke in his Death House cell.