Kenneth Wilson was executed by the State of Virginia for the murder of Jacqueline Stephens
According to court documents Kenneth Wilson would go to the home of Jacqueline Stephens who would be sexually assaulted and murdered.
Kenneth Wilson would be arrested, convicted and sentenced to death
Kenneth Wilson would be executed by lethal injection on November 17 1998
Kenneth Wilson Photos
Kenneth Wilson Case
Kenneth Wilson, convicted of murdering his neighbor by stabbing her to death after tying her to a bed and attempting to rape her, was executed by injection tonight after appeals to Gov. James S. Gilmore III (R) and the U.S. Supreme Court failed.
Wilson, 34, who also abducted and stabbed the woman’s daughter and a friend of the daughter’s, was pronounced dead at 9:09 p.m. at the Greensville Correctional Center.
In denying clemency today, Gilmore noted that Wilson was on parole at the time of the March 27, 1993, slaying of Jacqueline M. Stephens in Newport News.
“He also bound, stabbed and, for three hours, terrorized Ms. Stephens’ 12-year-old daughter and another 14-year-old girl who was spending the night in Ms. Stephens’ home,” Gilmore said. “There never has been any question as to Wilson’s guilt.”
The U.S. Supreme Court voted 7 to 2 on Monday to deny Wilson a stay of execution.
The clemency petition urged Gilmore to commute the sentence to life without parole.
“Losing a parent to execution is different than losing a parent another way. When a parent dies from illness or even homicide, sympathy and community support for the children of the deceased abounds. Not so with the children of a person who is executed,” the petition said.
Armed with a knife, Wilson entered the home of Stephens, whom he knew because his cousin was her boyfriend. Wilson ordered Stephens, 31, her daughter and the daughter’s friend to take off their clothes, blindfolded the girls and tied them to a bed in the daughter’s room.
Over several hours, Wilson threatened the girls and Stephens. On one visit to the daughter’s room, he cut the girls. He then went into Stephens’s room, and the girls heard her scream as he demanded her car keys
Police found Stephens tied to her bedposts, stabbed more than 10 times. The daughter’s friend had a stab wound on her neck, and the daughter was stabbed near her carotid artery and jugular vein.
Wilson was convicted of capital murder, attempted rape, three counts of abduction, two counts of malicious wounding and grand larceny. Wilson’s execution was the 12th of the year in Virginia and the state’s 58th since the U.S. Supreme Court reinstated the death penalty in 1976. Only Texas, with 160, has executed more people.