Jess Gillies was executed by the State of Arizona for the murder of Suzanne Rossetti.
According to court documents Suzanne Rossetti locked herself out of her car and Jess Gillies and Mike Logan would help her out. Suzanne Rossetti would buy the men a six pack for their help and offered them a ride. Along the way Suzanne Rossetti would be forced to drive to her apartment where she was sexually assaulted. Suzanne Rossetti would then be driven to a cliff where she would be pushed off. The two men would climb down and kill her with a rock
Mike Logan would cooperate and receive a life sentence
Jess Gillies would be convicted and sentenced to death
Jess Gillies would be executed by lethal injection on January 13 1999
Jess Gillies Photos
Jess Gillies Case
A man convicted of kidnapping, raping and killing a woman in 1981 by shoving her off a cliff and then bashing her head with rocks was executed by injection today. Jess James Gillies, 38, offered no last words. He and his friend Mike Logan were convicted of abducting, raping and murdering Suzanne Rossetti, 26. She had bought them a six-pack of beer and given them a ride as a reward for opening her car after she locked the keys inside at a Phoenix convenience store on Jan. 29, 1981. Authorities said she was thrown off a 40-foot cliff but did not die immediately. Prosecutors said Rossetti begged for mercy before the men stoned her and buried her under boulders and rocks. A coroner said she probably was still alive when she was buried. Logan, now 45, cooperated with prosecutors and was sentenced to life in prison with a chance for parole after 25 years. Gillies’s was the 13th execution since Arizona reinstated the death penalty in 1992. Later today, Texas executed a former truck driver who killed a police officer during a drug deal 15 years ago. Troy Farris, 36, denied shooting Tarrant County sheriff’s deputy Clark Rosenbalm Jr., who was killed in 1983 after he happened upon a drug deal along a stretch of road northwest of Fort Worth