Jerald Harjo was executed by the State of Oklahoma for the murder of Ruth Porter
According to court documents Jerald Harjo would break into the home of sixty four year old Ruth Porter. Harjo would strangle Porter to death before stealing a number of items from her home
Jerald Harjo would be arrested, convicted and sentenced to death
Jerald Harjo would be executed by lethal injection on July 17 2001
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When Was Jerald Harjo Executed
Jerald Harjo was executed on July 17 2001
Jerald Harjo Case
Teachers and staff who worked at Sasakwa Schools remember Jan. 16, 1988, very well. But they remember the 18th – a Monday – even better. That was the day they took time out of their busy schedules to comfort and console students who learned a beloved school secretary would no longer be there. Ruth Marie Porter, a secretary at Sasakwa Elementary School for 19 years, was dead at 64; murdered in her Seminole County home. The man who killed her, 40-year-old Jerald Wayne Harjo, is scheduled to die by lethal injection Tuesday.
In a letter to the Oklahoma Pardon and Parole Board, Porter’s daughter remembered her mother, the murder and its aftermath. Porter, Mary Branscum wrote “provided many children with a Band-Aid, a pat on the head, a kind word or just a little extra attention when they were needy. Suddenly she was no longer there to do those things. “Even now young adults who were in elementary school at the time will mention how they missed ‘Mrs. Porter’ after she died.”
“She was like a mother to the students,” former superintendent Samuel G. Barnes recalled. “I never knew a person who worked in schools who was better liked and respected than she was.” Another former school employee, whose signature is illegible, wrote “(Porter) was everything to those students – nurse, grandma and friend. Her death left quite an empty spot at Sasakwa Elementary School and the community. “She was one of a kind.”
Friends and family members recall Porter as a kind, gentle and loving woman. She had served in the Womens’ Army Corp in World War II, had been a treasurer in her church and had cared for her quadriplegic husband since a car accident in 1960 left him paralyzed. “Those in our family of six girls and two boys always considered Ruth to be our family treasure,” Porter’s sister, Mary K. Smith said. “She was that good of a person.” When Branscum and her husband visited Porter’s home the morning of Sunday, Jan. 17, 1988, they found the “family treasure” dead, lying on her back with a pillow over her face. She had suffered scratches to her face, chest, arms and vaginal area. Police also found Porter’s windpipe had been crushed, her lower dentures had been displaced and her pubic hair was singed.
“It was so unreal we didn’t know what to do or even feel at that time,” Branscum recalled. But she and her husband went through the motions; calling family members and letting them know what had happened. None of the calls were easy, but the hardest telephone call was the one she had to make to her father. John Porter was in the Veteran’s Hospital in Memphis, Tenn., when his wife was killed. “My father didn’t have the same light in his eyes and joy in his heart after his wife was murdered,” Branscum said.
According to court documents, Porter’s Ford Mustang was missing when her body was discovered. Police found the Mustang at the home of Harjo’s brother. They also found a bicycle Harjo had been riding in a ditch near Porter’s home. After being questioned by police, Harjo confessed to the murder. According to court documents, he had piled two cinder blocks on top of each other and entered the home through a back window. Once inside, he tore eyeholes in a pillowcase and put it over his head before entering Porter’s bedroom. When Porter woke, Harjo put a pillow over her face and strangled her with his hands.
Bill Peterson, the Seminole County District Attorney who prosecuted Harjo, said Harjo showed no visible emotion when he was found guilty and sentenced to death.
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