Mississippi authorities released details Wednesday about the last wishes of an inmate who was executed for the rape and murder of a 16-year-old girl in 2000.
Thomas Loden, 58, was sentenced to death by lethal injection at the Mississippi State Penitentiary in Parchman. He had been on death row since 2001, when he pleaded guilty to capital murder, rape and four counts of sexual assault against Leesa Marie Gray.
He was pronounced dead at 6:12 p.m. Loden was wearing a red prison jumpsuit and was covered by a white sheet during the execution. Brown leather straps held him down on a stretcher.
Before the injection began, Loden said he was “deeply sorry.”
KNOWLEDGE OF THE LAST MEAL” INSIDE THE CAPTIVATING CULINARY RITUAL BEFORE THE VICIOUS KILLERS FACE THEIR DEATH
Thomas Edwin Loden Jr., died by lethal injection at the Mississippi State Penitentiary in Parchman, Mississippi, on Wednesday. He had been on death row since 2001, when he pleaded guilty to capital murder, rape and four counts of sexual assault against 16-year-old Leesa Marie Gray.
(Mississippi Department of Corrections via AP, File)
“For the past 20 years, I have tried to do a good deed every day to make up for the life I took from this world,” he said. “If nothing else brings you today, I hope you have peace and closure.”
His last meal included two fried bone-in pork chops, fried okra, a baked sweet potato with butter, Pillsbury Grands cookies with butter and molasses, peach cobbler with French vanilla ice cream and Lipton sweet tea, the Mississippi Department of Corrections told Fox. News. Digital.
“He has a full belly because he ate a lot,” MDOC Commissioner Nathan “Burl” Cain said at a news conference Wednesday. “She liked the okra, she liked the pork chops… I think she ate it all.”
The food was served around 4 p.m., authorities said. Loden requested to see four visitors and a mental health officer and was “upbeat and in a good mood,” Cain said.
“He has expressed some remorse,” said Assistant Commissioner for Institutions Jeworski Mallett. “We spoke to him at 12:45 and he was sorry to the family.”
Last week, a federal judge refused to block Mississippi from carrying out the execution amid a pending lawsuit by Loden and four Mississippi death row inmates over the state’s lethal injection protocol.
The front gate of the Mississippi State Penitentiary in Parchman, Mississippi.
(AP Photo/Rogelio V. Solís, File)
During the summer before what should have been Gray’s Last year of high school, she had worked as a waitress at her uncle’s restaurant in northeast Mississippi. On June 22, 2000, she left work after dark and was stranded with a flat tire on a country road.
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Loden, a Marine Corps recruiter With relatives in the area, he met Gray on the road around 10:45 p.m. He stopped and began talking to the teen about the flat tire. “Don’t worry. I’m a Marine. We do this kind of thing,” she said.
Loden told investigators that he became angry after Gray allegedly said he would never want to be a Marine and that he ordered her into his truck. He spent four hours sexually assaulting her before strangling and suffocating her, according to an interview he gave to investigators.
Associated Press contributed to this report.
