Kenneth Biros was executed by the State of Ohio for the murder of Tami Engstrom
According to court documents Kenneth Biros would leave a bar with Tami Engstrom and that was the last time she was seen alive. Biros would eventually bring police to the mutilated body
Kenneth Biros would be arrested, convicted and sentenced to death
Kenneth Biros would be executed by lethal injection on December 8 2009
Kenneth Biros Photos
Kenneth Biros FAQ
When Was Kenneth Biros Executed
Kenneth Biros was executed on December 8 2009
Kenneth Biros Case
n the last night and morning of his life, Kenneth Biros drank cup after cup of water, 12 in all, perhaps hoping to ensure that he was hydrated so that his executioners could more easily access his veins to kill him. Whether the extra water had anything to do with it or not, Biros died quietly at 11:47 a.m. yesterday, about 10 minutes after a single, large dose of thiopental sodium, a powerful anesthetic, flowed into his left arm.
He is the first person in U.S. history to be put to death using a single drug.
Ohio prisons director Terry Collins said afterward that there were “no problems whatsoever” with Ohio’s new one-drug method. “The process worked as expected.” John Parker, one of Biros’ attorneys, said Biros was concerned but not afraid of being the first person to undergo the single-drug execution protocol. “He was very much at peace with his inner self.”
Prison officials did not have to rely on a new backup method involving large doses of two high-potency painkillers injected directly into muscles on the inmate’s arms, legs or buttocks. “I am sorry from the bottom of my heart,” the Trumbull County killer said in a final statement as he lay strapped to the lethal-injection table in the Death House at the Southern Ohio Correctional Facility. “Now I am paroled to my Father in heaven, and I will spend all my holidays with my Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ,” said Biros, 51. “Peace be with you all.”
Biros’ death was too peaceful for family members of Tami Engstrom, the 22-year-old woman whom Biros raped, stabbed dozens of times, beheaded and eviscerated after taking her home from a bar on Feb. 7, 1991. “I myself think it went too smooth,” said Debi Heiss, Engstrom’s sister and one of three family members to witness the execution. “I think he should have gone through some pain for what he did.” “This is my happy day that I was here to see this execution,” said Mary Jane Heiss, the victim’s mother. She watched Biros die from her wheelchair while hooked up to an oxygen tank because of lung disease. “I’m just glad the state of Ohio came up with the procedure,” said Tom Heiss, the dead woman’s brother. “I have no thoughts for him. I’m glad he’s gone. It brought some closure to our family.” The Heiss family applauded briefly after Biros’ death was announced.
Parker said after witnessing the execution that he still has “major concerns” about the intravenous-access issue. He said he counted nine times that prison medical technicians tried before gaining access for a single IV line in Biros’ left arm. They were unable to start a line in his right arm.
Parker and co-counsel Timothy Sweeney argued unsuccessfully in the courts that the execution should be stopped because it involved “experimentation” on human beings using untried and untested procedures. The 35 other states with death-penalty laws use a three-drug protocol, which Ohio abandoned after an execution attempt failed nearly three months ago.
The U.S. Supreme Court rejected Biros’ final appeal shortly before 10 a.m. yesterday, forcing a one-hour delay in the execution.
The new protocol was unveiled Nov. 13, two months after the execution of Romell Broom was halted when medical technicians spent two hours trying in vain to attach IV lines. Broom has gone to federal court to challenge the state’s right to try to execute him a second time.
Biros was the fourth person to be executed in Ohio this year and the 33rd to die since the state resumed capital punishment in 1999.
