Death Row killer Roy Lee Ward was executed for the brutal murder of 15-year-old Stacy Payne, a Heritage Hills High School cheerleader and honour student whose life was cut short in her own home
In the early hours of Friday, October 10, convicted killer Roy Lee Ward faced the moment that had been two decades in the making. For the third time in less than a year, the state prepared its death chamber, this time for the Perry County man whose name has haunted Dale, Indiana, since the summer of 2001.
Ward, now 44, was sentenced to die for the brutal murder of 15-year-old Stacy Payne, a Heritage Hills High School cheerleader and honour student whose life was cut short in her own home. On July 11, 2001, Ward knocked on her door pretending to look for a lost dog.
Minutes later, Payne was dead and her small hometown forever changed.
After years of legal wrangling and appeals, all attempts to halt his execution failed. Ward’s fate was sealed. His final hours unfolded behind the same walls where Joseph Corcoran and Benjamin Ritchie met their own ends earlier this year.
As required by Indiana Code 35-38-6-6, a select few witnessed Ward’s final moments: the prison warden, doctor and chaplain, along with Payne’s grieving family members and a handful of Ward’s own supporters.
Ward was escorted into the room where he had planned for a prepared statement to be read out but state officials belatedly posted it online saying they “came into possession” of it after the execution.
In their execution notification IDOC officials reported Ward’s last words as, “Brian is going to read them.” They did not explain at the time.
Ward intended as his final words to be: “I wish I could go back and change things, but I can’t. I hate myself for what I did. If I could take with me every bit of pain I have caused Stacy and her family, I would. There is no excuse. I also hurt my family, I wish I could take that away. I have asked God for forgiveness, even though I feel I do not deserve it and cannot forgive myself. I hope my execution gives Stacy’s family some peace.”
The process started shortly after midnight and Ward was pronounced dead at 12:33 a.m. he was the third carried out in Indiana within a single year.
Stacy Payne’s mother Julia Payne once told the court: “She was determined to always do her personal best. She had so much potential.”
Meanwhile, a Death Row killer found guilty of murdering a woman during a petrol station robbery in 1997, was executed despite the victim’s son pleading for his life to be spared. Geoffrey Todd West, aged 50, was put to death at William C. Holman Correctional Facility using nitrogen gas, a method introduced by Alabama last year.
This was one of two executions carried out across the country that night, with Texas also executing a man convicted of killing his girlfriend’s 13-month-old daughter.
Strapped to the gurney and wearing a blue-rimmed gas mask, he gave a thumbs-up towards his lawyer as the execution commenced around 5.56pm. During the first two minutes, West’s eyes remained open as he seemed to gasp and struggle for breath. His head moved from side to side, his left fist clenched, and there appeared to be slight foaming at the mouth.
Around 6:01, he began taking long breaths with lengthy pauses in between, before becoming still at approximately 6:07. He was declared dead at 6:22.
In a final statement given by his lawyer, West said: “I have apologized privately to the family of Margaret Parrish Berry, and am humbled by the forgiveness her son, Will, has extended.”
He added that he had been baptised in the Catholic Church this year and was “at peace because I know where I am going.”
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