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Richard Stokley Arizona Execution

Richard Stokley was executed by the State of Arizona for the kidnapping and murders of two 13 year old girls. According to court documents Richard Stokley and Randy Brazeal would kidnap the two 13 year old girls, Mandy Myers and Mary Snyder , who were driven out to the desert where they were sexually assaulted and murdered. Randy Brazeal would testify against Richard Stokley in exchange for the death penalty off the table. Richard Stokley would be sentenced to death and would be executed by lethal injection December 5 2012

Richard Stokley More News

For 20 years, Patty Hancock refused to buy new Christmas stockings for her children because they wouldn’t match the one that belonged to her slain daughter, Mandy.

After the execution Wednesday of one of the two men who raped and murdered Mandy and her friend Mary Snyder on July 8, 1991, Hancock announced she was ready to begin a new phase in her life. It is OK to get new stockings.

Richard Dale Stokley, 60, was pronounced dead at 11:12 a.m. after receiving an injection of pentobarbital.

Richard Stokley was sentenced to die in July 1992 for killing Mandy Meyers and her friend Mary. Both girls were 13.

His death was witnessed by more than a dozen family members and lawyers involved in the case.

Richard Stokley was chatty with the medical personnel who spent 52 minutes trying to find veins that could be used to administer the pentobarbital – a drug used to both sedate an inmate and stop his heart. But when Stokley was asked if he had any final words, he simply responded, “Nah.”

He warned the medical team he had hepatitis, told a phlebotomist joke and assured them he was doing fine.

“I grew up a long time ago,” Stokley said. “I do wish I could die doing something meaningful, you know. This seems like such a waste.”

After finally assessing the final vein they needed, one of the team members told Stokley he “did good.”

“Thank you,” Stokley replied. “You did too, all of you young guys and all of you all.”

The pentobarbital rendered Stokley unconscious five minutes after the first dose was administered. The second dose was then given.

At 11:03 a.m. Stokley’s body convulsed one time. He was pronounced dead nine minutes later. He never looked at the crowd watching from the other side of the glass.

Hancock said Richard Stokley should have apologized to the families but wasn’t surprised he did not. “What do you expect from a heartless man with no soul?” she asked.

Dennis Hancock married Patty Hancock, 56, exactly one week prior to Mandy’s death.

“We’ll finally have a holiday where we don’t have someone on death row or in prison,” Dennis Hancock said. “I hope it will be a joyous one, but there will always be someone missing.”

Mary’s sister, Elisha Gonzales, broke down when recounting all of the milestones her sister never got to experience.

Stokley’s execution was a “long time in coming” and now there will hopefully be a time of healing and peace, Gonzales, 39, said. Her parents were not emotionally up to witnessing the execution, but were on the grounds of the prison, Gonzales said

On July 7, 1991, Mary and Mandy went to a community celebration near Elfrida. Witnesses said they saw 20-year-old Randy Brazeal talking to the girls at their campsite and later while next to Brazeal’s father’s car with Stokley beside him.

About 1 a.m., the girls told friends they were going to the restroom, and they were never seen alive again.

The next day, Brazeal turned himself in to Chandler police and Richard Stokley was arrested in Benson.

The girls’ nude bodies were found in an abandoned mine shaft. They’d been raped, strangled, stabbed and stomped.

Brazeal was sentenced to two concurrent terms of 20 years after being allowed to plead guilty to second-degree murder. He had invoked his right to a speedy trial, and prosecutors said they offered him a plea agreement for fear they would not have the DNA evidence back from the lab before his trial date.

Brazeal was released from prison last year and is now living in another state, Hancock said. Although Stokley is now dead, there will never really be closure for her because Brazeal is out there, Hancock said.

“I’m worried I will get a phone call that he murdered someone else’s children,” Hancock said.

The U.S. Supreme Court rejected Stokley’s final appeal on Tuesday

At the time of this sentencing on July 14, 1992, Stokley said he did not deny culpability, but said there was no premeditation on his part. He also said he’d been made a scapegoat.

“What I am guilty of is being an irresponsible person for most of my life, running from responsibility, living in a fantasy world, and it was my irresponsibility on the night that this incident occurred that involved me in the incident. … There is no words that can express the grief and the sorrow and the torment I have experienced over this, but I am just going to leave everything in the hands of God because that’s where it is anyway.”

For his last meal Stokley ordered a porterhouse steak, french fries, fried okra, a salad, a 2-ounce wedge of cheddar cheese, two biscuits, a banana, an apple, a peach, chocolate ice cream and cream soda.

Stokley was the sixth person to be executed in Arizona this year.

https://tucson.com/news/local/crime/stokley-makes-no-apology-is-executed/article_5ecbefc5-9c16-568f-b2d5-90e830611585.html

Daniel Cook Arizona Execution

Daniel Cook was executed by the State of Arizona for the sexual assault and murders of two men. According to court documents Daniel Cook would sexually assault and murder two men that he worked with at a restaurant in the middle of a robbery. Daniel Cook would be arrested, convicted and sentenced to death. Daniel Cook would be executed by lethal injection on August 8 2012

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On July 19, 1987, Daniel Wayne Cook stole money from his roommate, Carlos Ramos, who was also a coworker of his at a restaurant in Lake Havasu City. When Ramos, a Guatemalan national, began searching for the money, Cook lured him into his bedroom where he and another roommate, John Matzke, tied Ramos to a chair and began a night of horrifying torture.

Over the span of six to seven hours, Cook and Matzke beat Ramos with a metal pipe and a wooden stick, Matzke cut Ramos across the chest with a knife while Cook sodomized him, burned his genitals with a cigarette and stapled his foreskin to the chair. Ramos remarkably lived through the torture before having his throat crushed by both Cook and Matzke as they pushed on it with the metal pipe.

Later that night, another coworker, 16-year-old Kevin Swaney, arrived at the home and was forced upstairs to see Ramos’ body. While Matzke slept, Cook sodomized Swaney and after Matzke woke, they strangled Swaney with a bed sheet.

On July 21, Matzke turned himself in to the Lake Havasu Police Department. Police arrested Matzke and Cook after finding the bodies of the victims in Matzke’s closet.

After his arrest, Cook was asked how the bodies got into the closet and he told police, “We got to partying, things got out of hand now two people are dead.”

The trial started on June 27 and lasted ten days. Matzke pled guilty to a second-degree murder charge and testified against Cook.

Cook was initially represented by a public defender, however prior to trial, Cook decided to waive his right to counsel and to represent himself. The trial judge strongly advised Cook against this but accepted his waiver of counsel as “knowingly, intelligently, and voluntarily” given, and appointed Cook’s former counsel to continue in the role of trial advisor.

On appeal, Cook’s appeal lawyers accused the trial lawyer of being drunk and incompetent, thus forcing Cook to represent himself. In his appeal, he reported that his attorney did virtually no investigating, and developed no “theory of defense” or “plan for mitigation.” Cook also said he smelled alcohol on his breath in court.

They also said that when Cook asked to represent himself the judge never asked him why or informed him of his option to retain a different lawyer.

Cook’s appeal attorneys won a short reprieve in April 2011, when the U.S. Supreme Court stopped the execution to consider a claim saying that he “did not have effective legal counsel.” Lawyers said previous counsel failed to present evidence that he was physically and sexually abused by family members and a foster care worker when he was a child. However, the supreme court later dismissed the appeal, clearing the way for him to be executed.

In paperwork filed at his clemency hearing Cook is shown as “a seriously mentally ill individual because, in part, he endured a childhood replete with sexual and physical abuse.” It goes on to describe the abuse he suffered, “The horrors that Dan (Cook) suffered were the same horrors that Kevin and Carlos suffered. Dan’s grandparents tied him to chairs as punishment; he was repeatedly raped as a child; his father burned his genitals with cigarettes; his sexual abuser had him circumcised as a teenager; and he was beaten with belts, boards, and fists. Each of these acts was done to one or both of the victims.”

n his adult life, his attorneys reported, Cook covered his pain with drugs, alcohol and self-inflicted injuries. Cook spent some time in the U.S. Army Reserves, but he was honorably discharged. They reported that Cook lacked the ability “to adjust to the stress of military life, as evidenced by his self-inflicted injury.”

In his clemency hearing it was reported that the prosecuting attorney Eric Larsen said: “Had I been informed of this mitigating information regarding Dan’s severely abusive and traumatic childhood and his mental illnesses, I would have not sought the death penalty in this case.”

His attorneys pleaded with the clemency board to reduce his sentence to life imprisonment without parole, but they were unsuccessful.

https://www.abc15.com/news/crime/death-row-diaries-tortured-man-tortures-co-workers-the-story-of-daniel-cook

Samuel Lopez Arizona Execution

Samuel Lopez was executed by the State of Arizona for the sexual assault and murder of a woman. According to court documents Samuel Lopez would sexually assault and murder 59 year old Estafana Holmes. Samuel Lopez would be arrested, convicted and sentenced to death. Samuel Lopez would be executed by lethal injection on June 27 2012

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Death-row inmate Samuel Villegas Lopez stared straight ahead Wednesday as he lay strapped to a table in Arizona’s execution chamber, wincing slightly as two catheters that soon would deliver a fatal drug were inserted into his veins.

Lopez’s execution was the first in Arizona history in which witnesses other than prison officials saw catheters inserted into an inmate’s veins — a move the state Department of Corrections made after a federal judge recently sided with The Associated Press and Idaho news organizations seeking full viewing access to lethal injections.

The ruling was upheld by the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco, meaning it was unlikely Arizona would have been able to keep its process limited much longer.

Until Wednesday, news media and victims’ family members entered the death chamber at the state prison only after the inmate had been injected and covered with a sheet to his chest or neck.

This time, they watched on television screens set up in the death chamber as the execution team inserted Lopez with the catheters behind a curtain. The curtain was lifted just before a fatal dose of pentobarbital was sent coursing through Lopez’s veins.

During the process, Lopez blinked often and showed no signs he was experiencing pain, although he slightly winced once.

As the execution team checked his veins, Lopez asked, “It look all right?” to which they responded: “We’re doing good.”

Toward the end, Lopez said he had a question: “Are these the only two IV lines going to be inserted in me?”

Once the curtains were pulled, Lopez stared straight ahead and ignored the nine family members of his murder victim who were in the room to watch him die. When asked if he had last words, he said in a clear voice: “No, I do not.”

As the drug was delivered, Lopez began breathing heavily, closing his eyes and yawning once before he appeared to fall asleep with his mouth slightly open. He didn’t move again after that.

The execution ended at 10:37 a.m., about 40 minutes after the insertion process began. Unlike Idaho, Arizona did not allow witnesses watch as Lopez was brought into the death chamber and strapped to the table at his ankles and wrists and over his torso.

Dale Baich, a defense attorney who witnessed the execution and represents many death-row inmates in Arizona, said the new process was a “step forward in creating transparency.” But he said he hopes the Corrections Department eventually will allow witnesses to view the process from the very beginning.

Lopez, 49, was executed three days before his 50th birthday for the brutal rape and murder of 59-year-old Estafana Holmes of Phoenix about 26 years ago.

Her brother, Victor Arguijo of Fort Worth, Texas, and other family members from Phoenix and Texas addressed members of the media after watching the execution. They said they were not there for revenge but for justice for Holmes, a poor seamstress and grandmother who lived alone and whom they called “Tefo.”

“It’s been a long and difficult and frustrating road,” Arguijo said. “We now know and have confidence that the judicial system works for victims and their families even though at times our faith has wavered.”

He said the family hopes Lopez’s death brings them closure and that Holmes’ “soul and spirit will now finally rest in peace.”

Lopez’s attorney, Kelley Henry, said in a statement that his legal team was “deeply troubled” by the execution. She reiterated her arguments that Lopez was “denied due process at every level,” from his trial until recently, as courts declined to delay the execution to hear about his abusive and difficult childhood.

That evidence was never presented at trial and could have served as a mitigating factor and gotten him a sentence of life in prison rather than death.

“If we are going to have the death penalty, we should ensure that the process, at the very least, is fair and that it follows the rule of law,” Henry said. “Sadly, that did not happen in this case.”

Lopez was the state’s fourth death-row inmate executed this year. Of the 125 inmates still on Arizona’s death row, only five have been there longer than him.

Arizona is on pace to execute three more men this year, which would match the state’s busiest year for executions and make it one of the nation’s busiest death-penalty states.

Among Lopez’s failed last-minute efforts to avoid the death penalty was a request with the Arizona Supreme Court to delay his execution until the state had a new governor, arguing Gov. Jan Brewer and the state’s clemency board were prejudiced against him.

Brewer overhauled the clemency board in April, putting three new people on the five-member panel in what defense attorneys said was an obvious effort to appoint “political cronies” who would never recommend lessening a death-row inmate’s sentence to life in prison.

Brewer has denied that allegation through spokesman Matt Benson, who has said the board was changed to bring fresh insight to the process.

Lopez’s attorneys say board members were improperly appointed and didn’t have the authority to consider death-penalty cases because of open-meetings violations, statements to members of the media that showed prejudice, and other factors.

At Lopez’s clemency board hearing Friday, board members called him the “worst of the worst” and said the brutality of his crime and Holmes’ heartbroken family members held great sway with them. They voted unanimously against recommending his sentence be reduced to life in prison or that it be delayed in any way.

In an affidavit provided to the board, Lopez wrote that he has no memory of the crime because he had been spending so much time sniffing paint that he would forget entire days.

“What happened to Ms. Holmes was so horrible and so wrong,” he wrote. “I’ve always been sorry for what she went through that night and for what her family has gone through ever since.”

Lopez’s own family did not attend the execution.

Police found Holmes’ half-naked body Oct. 30, 1986, in her small apartment.

The petite woman had three major stab wounds to her head, one on her face, and 23 in her left breast and upper chest. She had been blindfolded and gagged with her own clothing, and her throat had been slit. Blood was splattered on walls in the kitchen, bathroom and bedroom.

Semen found on her body matched Lopez’s after he was arrested in a separate rape less than a week later.

The state Supreme Court in 1993 upheld Lopez’s death sentence, saying the state of Holmes’ apartment and her body showed a “terrific struggle for life” and calling the killing a “grisly and ultimately fatal nightmare.”

Lopez, who was 24 at the time, did not know Holmes, who lived alone and was described by her family as hardworking, loving and deeply religious.

https://www.deseret.com/2012/6/27/20421226/arizona-inmate-executed-in-more-open-process

Thomas Kemp Arizona Execution

Thomas Kemp was executed by the State of Arizona for the kidnapping and murder of a college student. According to court documents Thomas Kemp and his accomplice would kidnap college student Hector Juarez who would later be robbed and murdered. Thomas Kemp accomplice Jeffrey Logan would later go to the police. Jeffrey Logan would be sentenced to life in prison and Thomas Kemp would be sentenced to death. Thomas Kemp would be executed by lethal injection on April 25 2012

Thomas Kemp More News

Arizona’s most notorious death row inmates past and present have incredible stories.

“I don’t show any mercy, and I am certainly not here to plead for mercy.” These are the words of Thomas Kemp at his clemency hearing. Kemp was a man with no regrets for taking life and no regrets for having his life taken

On July 11, 1992, college student Hector Juarez was awakened around 11:15 p.m. when his fiancée returned from work to their apartment in Tucson. Juarez was hungry and went to a fast food restaurant down the street. After Juarez had not returned for a while, his fiancée went looking for him, finding his car in the parking lot of a Jack in the Box. The car smelled of fast food and was unlocked, but Juarez was nowhere around.

Three days earlier, Kemp had met up with former prison inmate Jeffrey Logan, who recently escaped from a California “honor farm.” On July 11, the two went to a pawn shop where Logan bought a hand gun. Later that night, they saw an opportunity to get some quick cash when they saw Juarez in the restaurant parking lot and abducted him.

The pair forced Juarez to withdraw $200 from an ATM, and then drove him to the Silverbell Mine near Marana, where they stripped him of his clothes before shooting him twice in the head. They tried using Juarez’s ATM card again, but when it was refused they drove to Flagstaff, sold their vehicle, and used the money to buy another gun.

While in Flagstaff, they met a couple traveling from California to Kansas and kidnapped them, driving them to Durango, Colo. While in a motel there, Kemp forced the male victim to disrobe and sexually assaulted him. They forced the couple to continue driving with them to Denver, where the couple escaped and Logan left Kemp. Logan turned himself in to Denver police and told them of Juarez’s murder.

Logan assisted Tucson police in finding the body, and later that same day Kemp was found and arrested at a homeless shelter in Tucson.

After being told that Logan was already in custody and was cooperating with police, Kemp told officers, “I guess my life is over now.”

Logan was tried first, convicted and sentenced to life in prison.

While waiting for his trial, Kemp told corrections officials that he was in protective custody because the person he killed was Hispanic, the Hispanics in the jail were after him because they thought the crime was racially motivated, and the whites would not protect him

Kemp was convicted on June 7, 1993 and at his sentencing, he told the judge that he should have killed Logan when he had the chance, but as far as killing Juarez he had no regrets. “The so-called victim was not an American citizen and, therefore, was beneath my contempt,” he then referred to Juarez using a racial slur. “If more of them ended up dead, the rest of them would soon learn to stay in Mexico where they belong.”

Kemp was sentenced to death on July 9, 1993.

Kemp refused to plead for mercy at his clemency hearing, telling the board, “I don’t show any mercy, and I am certainly not here to plead for mercy…I spit on the law and all those who serve it.”

Kemp was executed four years ago April 25, 2012. No one from his family or the victim’s family attended.

https://www.abc15.com/news/crime/death-row-diaries-thomas-kemp-shows-no-regret-in-killing-of-tucson-man

Robert Towery Arizona Execution

Robert Towery was executed by the State of Arizona for the murder of a man during a home invasion. According to court documents Robert Towery and an accomplice would force their way into the victims home and proceeded to murder Mark Jones who Towery knew. Mark Jones was injected with battery acid and strangled to death. Robert Towery would be sentenced to death. His accomplice was under eighteen and was sentenced to life. Robert Towery would be executed by lethal injection on March 8 2012

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Robert Towery, a 47-year-old Mesa man who spent the last two decades of his life on death, was executed late this morning at the state prison in Florence.Towery’s last-minute appeals didn’t pass muster, and prison officials injected the inmate with the poisonous chemicals that killed him.
He was charged in the brutal 1991 killing of 69-year-old philanthropist Mark Jones, a Paradise Valley man known for providing dozens of University of Arizona students with scholarship funds.
Jones as we noted in a Valley Fever blog post yesterday, invited Towery–an acquaintance–and another man into his residence. The pair were there to rob Jones, and according to Towery’s accomplice, Towery also had designs on killing him.
Jones died of manual strangulation with a plastic tie, and Towery’s cohort, Randy Allen Barker, later told police (and a Maricopa County jury) that Towery had injected the victim with battery acid. Prosecutors never could definitively prove the latter, but they had more than enough evidence to win a conviction on first-degree murder and other charges.

In return for his testimony against Towery, prosecutors cut co-conspirator Barker a pretty sweet deal. Barker was released from prison in 2001 after serving about ten years.
As we wrote yesterday, Robert “Chewie” Towery, a violent criminal with a yen for meth, ad pulled himself together behind bars in recent years, and reconnected with family members, including his college-age son.
We corresponded with Towery in recent months, and he invited us to attend his execution, which he fully expected would occur as scheduled.
We declined, having no desire to watch the government stick a needle into a condemned man behind a glass retaining wall.
Our old colleague Mike Kiefer of the Arizona Republic reported that Towery’s last meal consisted of a porterhouse steak, baked potato with sour cream, asparagus, mushrooms, milk, Pepsi and apple pie a la mode.
If we still have a death penalty in place at this late date, and it is supposed to be reserved for the worst of the worst, Robert Towery had it coming to him.
He may not have died as the worst person around, but the vile and violent acts he perpetrated upon Mr. Jones put him in that category when it counted–when he chose to murder.
But, just saying, locking Towery up, throwing away the key, and letting him exist in that netherworld known as the Arizona State Prison until he died would have been just fine with us.

https://www.phoenixnewtimes.com/news/robert-towery-executed-by-lethal-injection-in-florence-murdered-paradise-valley-philanthropist-in-91-6627696