Raymond Eugene Johnson Executed For Beating Ex - Setting Her & 7MO Baby On Fire

[Sugar Cookie]

Oklahoma has executed a death row inmate nearly 20 years after he killed his ex-girlfriend and her infant daughter and set them on fire.
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news...mond-johnson-faces-may-execution/88873807007/

Raymond Eugene Johnson, 52, was executed by lethal injection and pronounced dead at 10:12 a.m. CT on Thursday, May 14. He was convicted of the brutal 2007 murders of 24-year-old Brooke Whitaker and her 7-month-old baby girl Kya. Johnson repeatedly hit Whitaker with a claw hammer before setting her Tulsa home on fire.


Kya was killed in the blaze and Whitaker − a mother of four − later died at a hospital of severe burn wounds and head injuries.

“To Brooke and Kya and your family, I want to apologize for my actions and the pain I caused you,” Johnson said from the death chamber moments before getting the lethal injection, according to the Associated Press, a news media witness. “I hope people can speak your names without my name attached to it. I hurt you. One day, I hope you can forgive me.”

Johnson had been arguing that he deserved clemency from the death penalty, saying he was a changed man.

"My crime doesn't define who I am," Johnson recently told the Oklahoma Pardon and Parole Board, which denied his clemency request in a 5-0 vote. "That defines a moment I deeply regret."

What did Raymond Eugene Johnson do?​

On June 23, 2007, Raymond Eugene Johnson attacked his ex-girlfriend, Brooke Whitaker, at her home in Tulsa, Oklahoma, according to court records and his own admissions.

Johnson told police that he and Whitaker began arguing, and that she pushed him and grabbed a knife, court records say. Johnson then grabbed a claw hammer and hit her in the head about six times, he told police.

Whitaker was still alive, begged Johnson to get her help and promised not to tell police, he said. Johnson said he was afraid of going back to jail, so he got a gas can and then doused Whitaker and the house with gasoline. He lit the fire and left.

"Johnson made the deliberate decision to kill Brooke and her infant in a way that inflicted maximum suffering," First Assistant Attorney General Amy Ely recently told the clemency board as they were considering whether to grant Johnson mercy.


"Johnson could have let the baby live without increasing the risk he'd be caught ... Instead, Johnson left Kya to die in flames," Ely told the board.

She said that in some cases, "whether to seek or impose a death penalty is a close call."


"This is not one of those cases," she added.

Why did Raymond Johnson argue to be spared?​

At the clemency board hearing, Johnson apologized for killing Brooke and Kya but spent much more time talking about how he's a changed man who has found God and helped others avoid a destructive path.

"I killed two people who I loved dearly," he said, adding that he also believed his death sentence led to his own grandmother's death from heartbreak.

Johnson described himself as "a father, a man of God, a teacher, a man who strives to do his best, be his best, and when he falls, he gets back up."

"He never stays down, because not only are my kids learning from my life lessons, but other men in these prison walls are too, and other people outside of prisons, as well," he said. "That's my legacy."

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He set fire to his ex and her baby. Oklahoma just executed him.

Raymond Eugene Johnson was convicted of the brutal 2007 murders of 24-year-old Brooke Whitaker and her 7-month-old baby girl Kya.

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Brooke and Kya