Triple murderer Thomas Warren Whisenhant's long stay on Alabama's death row ended peacefully this afternoon, in stark contrast to the horrific violence he inflicted on his victims.
Whisenhant, dressed completely in white, was already strapped to a bed in the execution chamber when Holman prison officials pulled back the green curtains on a pair of adjacent witness rooms at 6 p.m. Warden Tony Patterson read the execution order from the Alabama Supreme Court and asked Whisenhant if he had anything to say. He declined.
Then, the three-drug cocktail of lethal drugs began flowing through intravenous tubes from a rectangular slot in the wall. Brian Eskelinen, the chaplain at Fountain Correctional Facility, knelt by Whisenhant and said a prayer while the life slowly slipped from his body.
A witness room containing three reporters, three of Whisenhant's friends, his lawyer and a colleague at the Southern Poverty Law Center, was utterly quiet except for a few muted sobs.
Family members of Whisenhant's victims watched from the other room.
Whisenhant fidgeted uncomfortably before closing his eyes and half opening his mouth. After several tense minutes, he chest stopped moving. Corrections officers drew the curtains, and a doctor pronounced him dead at 6:20 p.m.
The 63-year-old Prichard native had been a condemned man for 32 years, 8 months and 20 days, longer than any prisoner has ever spent on death row in Alabama. He became the 241st prisoner executed in the state, and the first since Max Landon Payne was put to death in October.
Before prison officials began administering the drugs, Whisenhant's supporters waved to him. He raised his immobilized left hand as far as it would to and smiled several times.
Relatives of his last victim, Cheryl Lynn Payton, interpreted that as hostility.
"He had no remorse -- none," said her widower, Douglas Payton. "He died a much easier death than my wife."
Added the victim's brother, Edward Gazzier: "There really wasn't justice served today. We watched a him die an easy death."
Attorney Richard Cohen spent 23 years on Whisenhant's case, arguing that his client should not be executed because he was insane. He noted that federal prison doctors, while Whisenhant was imprisoned in the 1960s for attempting to murder a fellow member of the U.S. Air Force, diagnosed him as a psychotic with paranoid schizophrenia.
"I know there are a lot of people in Mobile who are jubilant and are saying this is a long time coming," said Cohen, who later read a letter from Whisenhant's sister. "But upon reflection, this is a sad day for the state of Alabama because the state is executing a man who is clearly mentally ill, and it's very, very sad."
Cohen also said that it is not Whisenhant's fault that the appeals took so long. He said the blame for that lies at the feet of Mobile County Preisding Circuit Judge Charles Graddick, who as district attorney and later as attorney general, made improper statements to juries that led to two separate reversals.
Today, according to officials from the state Department of Corrections, Whisenhant spent the day reading the Bible and visiting with friends. That included Bill Hodel, a death penalty opponent who began corresponding with Whisenhant and visited him for nine years
before moving from Mobile to St. Louis.
One of the other visitors was Mara Tillman, whose uncle, Larry Tillman, arrested Whisenhant in 1976.
Cohen said Tillman wrote to Whisenhant trying to understand his actions and gradually transformed from someone who hated him to someone who regularly visited. Corrections spokesman Brian Corbett said Whisenhant designated her in his will as the recipient of all his belongings and the $96.24 in his inmate account.
Cohen said Whisenhant recently was baptized. He expressed concern for his two children and sister, Cohen said. In the visitation room before the execution, Cohen said, the group sang "Amazing Grace."
Corbett said Whisenhant declined breakfast. He requested a last meal of chicken leg quarters, french fries, American cheese, orange drink, coffee and chocolate pudding.
A lifetime ago, Whisenhant was a vicious killer. The crime that led to his execution involved the Oct. 16, 1976, kidnapping, rape and shooting of Payton, a Theodore convenience store clerk and mother to two young sons who was days away from her 24th birthday.
Whisenhant returned two days later to the field where he had left Payton to die and mutilated her body, removing a wristwatch that he gave to his wife as a present.
After his arrest, Whisenhant confessed and later pleaded guilty to killing two other women -- Venora Hyatt and Patricia Hitt. In addition to the assault on Air Force member, Whisenhant also confessed to attacking two others, including his own wife.
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