Tuesday a former soldier who said an obsession with witchcraft led him to kill a Georgia nurse he believed had put a spell on him was executed. William Emmett LeCroy, 50, was pronounced dead at 9:06 p.m.
LeCroy broke into the home of Joann Lee Tiesler on Oct. 7, 2001, and waited for her to return from a shopping trip. When she walked through the door, LeCroy struck her with a shotgun, bound and assaulted her. He then repeatedly stabbed her in the back.
As the curtain rose across glass windows separating witnesses from the death chamber, LeCroy lay strapped to a cross-shaped gurney, with IVs in his forearms and hands. He kept his eyes fixed firmly on the ceiling.
The witnesses included the father and fiancé of Joann Lee Tiesler.
LeCroy’s spiritual adviser, Sister Barbara Battista, stood a few feet away inside the chamber, her head bowed and reading softly from a prayer book.
A prison official leaned over him and asked if he had any last words, LeCroy responded calmly and matter-of-factly. His last and only words were: “Sister Battista is about to receive in the postal service my last statement.”
