Durlyn Eddmonds was executed by the State of Illinois for the murder of Ricky Miller
According to court documents Durlyn Eddmonds would lure nine year old Ricky Miller into his apartment where the little boy would be sexually assaulted and murdered
Durlyn Eddmonds would be arrested, convicted and sentenced to death
Durlyn Edmonds would be executed by lethal injection on November 19 1997
Durlyn Eddmonds Photos
Durlyn Eddmonds Case
A convicted rapist who lured a 9-year-old boy to his apartment and killed him was executed by injection early Wednesday, an hour after a jewelry store thief who killed two men was put to death. It was the second double execution in Illinois since the U.S. Supreme Court reinstated the death penalty in 1976.
Durlyn Eddmonds, 45, who was convicted of killing the boy who had gone to his apartment for help after being raped, did not make a final statement before he was put to death. About an hour earlier, Walter Stewart, 42, died in similar fashion. “I love Jesus Christ my Lord,” Stewart said before the lethal dose of drugs entered his system.
Prosecutors said Eddmonds saw the boy, who had just been raped by two other men, covered in blood and feces in the alley below his Chicago apartment the morning of Oct. 27, 1977. He summoned the boy to his apartment. Eddmonds, who had three prior rape convictions, cleaned the boy with a wet cloth and toilet tissue, laid a sheet of plastic on the bed and began to sodomize him. The weight of Eddmonds’ body smothered the boy. Defense attorney Richard Cunningham had argued against an execution, saying Eddmonds suffers from schizophrenia. “He tried to resuscitate him,” said Cunningham, who represented Eddmonds since his first appeal. “He’s not very articulate, but he has great shame and great guilt about everything.”
On a February afternoon in 1980, Stewart walked into Empire Jewelers in the Chicago suburb of Berwyn posing as a customer. He came back several hours later with a revolver, grabbed $40,000 worth of watches, bracelets and rings and opened fire. Danilo Rodico, 39, and Thomas Pavlopoulos, 27, were killed. Prosecutors said Stewart would have killed a woman and a 9-year-old girl hiding behind a counter had he not run out of ammunition. They said he later told the sister of one of the victims: “So what? I wish it had been your mother.”
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