Death Row Killers | Murder Database

Jess Gillies Executed For Suzanne Rossetti Murder

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

https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/1999/01/14/man-who-raped-killed-woman-is-executed/f83679c7-d7a6-4d3b-8595-064fabfeda0b/

Kelvin Malone Executed For Three Murders

Kelvin Malone was a spree killer who would be executed by the State of Missouri

According to court documents Kelvin Malone would murder William Parr in St Louis Missouri during a robbery. Malone would then murder James Rankin in California and then would murder Myrtle Dee Benham

Kelvin Malone was arrested, convicted and sentenced to death in both Missouri and California

Kelvin Malone would be executed by lethal injection on January 13 1999

Kelvin Malone Photos

Kelvin Malone Case

On March 18, 1981 at around 12:40 a.m. Kelvin Malone arrived in St. Louis, Missouri from Los Angeles, California at the downtown Greyhound Bus station. He had a .25 caliber Raven automatic pistol and a Galesi .25 caliber pistol in his suitcase.

Around the same time, Mr. William Parr, a taxi driver for Yellow Cab, received a call for him to pick up a package at the First National Bank in downtown St. Louis. About four minutes after Parr left for his delivery, a second cab driver, Mr. Richard Eder, passed by the First National Bank building on his way to pick up an order and observed Mr. Parr’s cab parked out with the dome light on. A short distance away Mr. Elder observed an individual with a suitcase attempting to hail a cab. This person was later identified as Kelvin Malone. Mr. Daniel Ward, an employee of the First National Bank, testified that at around 1:00 a.m. as he left the bank building he observed a man with a suitcase sitting in the back seat of Mr. Parr’s cab. Mr. Parr picked up the package shortly after 1:00 a.m., but never arrived at his destination in St. Louis County.

In the early morning hours of March 18, 1981, the body of Mr. William Parr was found at Entrance Park in Berkeley laying face down. Mr. Parr was transported to the hospital where he was pronounced dead of a gunshot wound to the head.

Police later discovered an abandoned Yellow Cab in Berkeley a short distance from the home of Michael Crenshaw. Emanual Bego, who lived with the Crenshaw family in Berkeley, said that at around 1:30 a.m. he heard a knock at the door and that when Michael Crenshaw answered the door he greeted the visitor as “Kelvin”. Bego testified that later that day Malone and Crenshaw left the house to return to Los Angeles. Bego also reported that he found a Greyhound Bus ticket at the Crenshaw house later identified as one from Los Angeles to St. Louis dated March 15, 1981.

On March 24, 1981, officers of the San Jose, California Police Department found Kelvin Malone and Michael Crenshaw asleep in a mercury Capri. The two refused to provide identification and then attempted to get away from the officers. A high speed chase followed and the pair was apprehended. Recovered was a .25 caliber Raven pistol and a .25 caliber Galesi pistol and small suitcase.

Ballistics experts in California fired three test shots from the Galesi and mailed the projectiles to the Berkeley Police Department. The projectiles and a bullet taken from murder victim William Parr were identified by a Federal Bureau of Investigations firearm expert as being fired from the same Galesi .25 caliber pistol.

https://missourideathrow.com/2008/12/malone_kelvin/

Dobie Williams Executed For Sonja Knippers Murder

Dobie Williams was executed by the State of Louisiana for the murder of Sonja Knippers

According to court documents Williams would break into a home where he attempted to sexually assault Sonja Knippers before stabbing her repeatedly with a knife and fleeing

Dobie Williams would be arrested, convicted and sentenced to death

WIlliams would be executed by lethal injection on January 8 1999

Many believe that Dobie Williams was not responsible for the murder of Sonja Knippers until this day

Dobie Williams Photos

Dobie Williams Case

Dobie Gillis Williams, who stabbed a woman to death during an attempted rape in 1984, was executed by lethal injection Friday, prison authorities said.

Williams, the first prisoner executed in Louisiana in more than a year, was convicted of stabbing Sonja Merritt Knippers eight times in the bathroom of her home in Many, La., as her husband Herbert tried to break through the locked door to help the screaming woman.

Williams, who never admitted guilt for the crime, was on furlough from another prison sentence at the time.

Williams’ attorneys won an 11th-hour stay of execution last autumn after saying DNA testing on a drop of blood found on the bathroom window could prove his innocence. But the DNA tests concluded it was Williams’ blood.

Herbert Knippers and the victim’s son, Monte Knippers, witnessed the execution

https://www.chicagotribune.com/news/ct-xpm-1999-01-10-9901100117-story.html

Ronnie Howard Executed For Chinh Thi Nguyen Le Murder

Ronnie Howard was executed by the State of South Carolina for the murder of Chinh Thi Nguyen Le

According to court documents Ronnie Howard and an accomplice would bump into a vehicle driven by Chinh Thi Nguyen Le. Chinh Thi Nguyen Le would get out of her car when a bag would be placed over her head and she was fatally shot

Ronnie Howard would confess to another murder

Ronnie Howard would be arrested, convicted and sentenced to death

Ronnie Howard would be executed by lethal injection on January 10 1999

Ronnie Howard Case

A career criminal was executed by lethal injection on Friday for killing a Vietnamese refugee while stealing her car in 1985, a state prison spokesman said. Ronnie Howard, 40, who with an accomplice strangled Chinh Thi Nguyen Le, a 34-year-old mother of three, was the fifth death row inmate executed in South Carolina in the past five weeks and the first of two scheduled to die in January. As witnesses filed into a room adjoining the death chamber at the Broad River State Prison in Columbia to witness the execution, they heard Howard’s minister tell him: We’ll see you on the other side.

I’m on my way, Howard said, then began quietly singing to himself before he was injected with a dose of lethal chemicals. He died at 6:28 p.m. EST (1128 GMT). The execution drew protests from the NAACP, which argued that Howard, who was black, did not get a fair trial because blacks were excluded by prosecutors from serving on a jury that convicted Howard in 1988.

In an appeal rejected on Tuesday by the state Supreme Court, defense attorneys and the NAACP said that prosecutors dismissed six of seven potential black jurors in the trial, while only four of 35 potential white jurors were dismissed. Prosecutors said Howard and his accomplice, Dana Weldon, who was 39 at the time, bumped Le’s car after she stopped at an intersection on her way home from work.

The men held her at gunpoint while Howard slipped a plastic bag over her head, and Weldon pun Ronnie Howard, on parole for bank robbery at the time of Le’s murder, confessed to the killing. He also admitted to another, similar murder, for which he received a life sentence. Howard also confessed to being involved in 72 armed robberies, primarily of Pizza Hut and Taco Bell restaurants in the Carolinas. Weldon’s death sentence was overturned on appeal in 1988, and he has been awaiting a new sentencing hearing on death row.

https://www.tehrantimes.com/print/26307/Convicted-Murderer-Executed-in-South-Carolina

John Castro Executed For 2 Oklahoma Murders

John Castro was executed by the State of Oklahoma for two murders

According to court documents John Castro would murder Beulah Grace Sissons Cox, 31 after he was picked up hitch hiking

Four months later John Castro would murder Rhonda Pappan, 29, during a robbery

John Castro would be arrested, convicted and sentenced to death

John Castro would be executed by lethal injection on January 7 1999

John Castro Case

John Walter Castro Sr., a twice convicted murderer who said he likely would have killed more people had he remained free, was executed by injection early today.

Castro, 37, was declared dead at 12:22 a.m. at the Oklahoma State Penitentiary. He became the third killer executed in Oklahoma in a month and the 14th put to death by the state since the death penalty was reinstated in 1977.

Before the execution began, Castro turned to look toward a room where relatives of his victims were watching and said, “I don’t who’s behind that one-way glass but whoever is here from the Cox family, I am sorry for what I did. And anybody who is here from the Pappan family I am sorry. For the people who are here for me, thank you.

Castro also made mention of the death penalty opponents praying for him outside the prison and of Sean Sellers, who faces execution Feb. 4 after being convicted in three 1986 killings at age 16.

“My son wanted to be here,” he said. “They say he can’t because he’s 16 and that’s too young to witness an execution. if that is so, why can the state of Oklahoma convict, sentence to death and execute a 16-year-old child. I just don’t understand

Castro then glanced at his witnesses and said, “I love you. Let’s do it.”

Moments later, he said “I feel it,” then closed his eyes and was pronounced dead several minutes after that.

The U.S. Supreme Court rejected Castro’s last appeal more than a month ago, and the state Pardon and Parole Board voted 4-0 to deny him clemency last month

Juries condemned Castro in the unrelated murders of two women, but one death penalty was later overturned.

Castro was executed for the April 18, 1983, death of Beulah Grace Sissons Cox, 31, near Stillwater. Castro, who was hitchhiking, stole her car at gunpoint. Castro assured Cox that he wouldn’t kill her but shot her in the head several times

About three months later, Castro killed Rhonda Pappan, 29, while robbing the Hobo-T Restaurant in Ponca City. Pappan, the owner-manager, picked up a knife but was overpowered by Castro, who stabbed her in the neck, back and chest.

In a joint statement, members of the victims’ families said Cox left behind children ages 6 and 10, and Pappan’s children were 8 and 11.

“These four young children were forced to grow into young adults without the love, care and understanding of the mothers whom they loved very much,” the statement said. “Although nothing can change the fact that our loved ones are gone, we can feel some form of closure in the fact that the judicial process has finally concluded.”

For his last meal, Castro ate a large thick-crust pizza with everything but anchovies, a strawberry milkshake and a half-dozen glazed doughnuts.

Castro requested five witnesses, including his attorney, Robert Jackson, Vicki Werneke and Kim Marks of the federal public defender’s office, and two women he has corresponded with, Karen Woo of England and Patricia Peck of West Virginia

https://www.oklahoman.com/story/news/1999/01/07/state-puts-to-death-convicted-murderer/62257054007/