BONNE TERRE, Mo., March 26 (Reuters) – Missouri officials executed a man early on Wednesday who was convicted of abducting a teenage girl at the gas station where she worked, then raping and strangling her.
Jeffrey Ferguson, 59, was pronounced dead at 12:11 a.m local time (0511 GMT) at a state prison in Bonne Terre, said Mike O’Connell, a spokesman for the Missouri Department of Public Safety. He was the third man executed in Missouri this year.
Ferguson was twice convicted of killing 17-year-old Kelli Hall, whom he kidnapped with an accomplice as she ended her evening shift at a metropolitan St. Louis service station on Feb. 9, 1989. The girl’s naked body was found less than two weeks later.
Ferguson was given a lethal injection of 5 grams of pentobarbital, a fast-acting barbiturate at 12:01 a.m. local time, O’Connell said.
Ferguson, covered neck to toe with a white sheet and strapped to a gurney, mouthed words and seemed to smile as a group of friends and family blew him kisses just as the drugs began to flow, said a Reuters reporter at the prison.
His legs made a flurry of kicking motions under the sheet but he quickly appeared to slip into unconsciousness and took only a few shallow breaths before becoming still. Two young women in the family witness room began to cry.