Alabama executes Jack Trawick

Twice-convicted murderer Jack Trawick died by lethal injection tonight [June 11, 2009], as relatives of the 2 murder victims watched.

Trawick, 62, who also had claimed to have committed another Birmingham area murder and 2 in the Pacific northwest, was executed at 6:17 p.m. for abducting, stabbing and strangling Stephanie Gach, 21, of Irondale on the night of Oct. 9, 1992. He had been on death row at Holman Correctional Facility since 1994, and no legal efforts were made to stop his execution.

In his final statement, Trawick said: "I wish to apologize to the people whom I have hurt and I ask for their forgiveness. I don't deserve it but I do ask for it."

Stephanie Gach's sister Heather watched Trawick die. So did Donna Middlebrooks, sister of Aileen Pruitt, 26, whom Trawick was convicted of stabbing to death a few months before Gach's death. Trawick had been sentenced to life without parole for that killing.

Trawick's witnesses were 2 of his cousins, Rebecca and Norman Sudduth; James Slack, a UAB faculty member who has been a spiritual adviser to Trawick, Randy Susskind, an attorney with the Equal Justice Initiative, Ben Sherrod of the Kairos prison ministry, and Tod Bohannon, the operator of a Web site that auctions memorabilia from notorious criminals.

Stephanie Gach's mother, Mary Kate, who had planned to give a statement after Trawick's execution, chose not to come to Atmore after hearing that Trawick was planning to give his possessions to Bohannon. "That sort of threw her for a loop," said Janette Carr, victims advocate for Atty. Gen. Troy King.

Prison officials said Trawick had decided to give Bohannon a Bible, a dictionary, a wallet, a television, and assorted photos and cosmetics. He also planned to give pictures and a Bible to a cousin, Mary Anne Pearson.

Department of Corrections spokesman Brian Corbett said authorities were going to examine all of the items before releasing them.

Essays attributed to Trawick that detail the Gach murder, and a drawing, also attributed to him, that shows the mutilated body of a young woman, have been for sale on the Web.

An envelope signed by Trawick is listed on Bohannon's Web site, with a starting bid of $15.

Prison officials said Trawick was in a good mood throughout the day, receiving visitors and eating a last meal of fried chicken, French fries, onion soup and a roll. Though Trawick was sentenced to life without parole for Pruitt's murder, a new state law allowed up to 2 of Pruitt's family members to witness Trawick's execution because only Heather Gach was on hand for the Gach family.

A provision in that law basically states that if an inmate has another murder conviction on his record, two immediate family members of the victim of that crime can witness his death. That only applies if the 6 available family witness spaces are not taken by those with immediate family ties to the crime for which the inmate is being executed. Joshua Pruitt, Aileen Pruitt's son, had been planning to come and witness Trawick's death, but chose not to.

Eliot Kew, a British filmmaker who plans to make a movie about people who collect items from serial killers was in the Atmore area. Prison officials said he was not allowed to be near the execution site or around relatives of Trawick's victims while they were on state property.

Trawick's execution ended a life that his defense attorney said was plagued by mental illness, and decades of crime that included burglaries he said he committed to terrify women he found attractive. In an interview after the Gach and Pruitt murders, Trawick said he cut up women's undergarments and left menacing lipstick messages on mirrors.

After he was convicted of Gach's murder in 1994, Trawick wrote Circuit Judge James Hard, who presided in his trial. In the letter, Trawick told Hard that if he did not sentence him to death but to time in the prison system, he would kill a prison system employee. Hard sentenced him to death.

Trawick's execution was the 5th this year in Alabama. He was the 196th inmate to be put to death by the state since 1927, the 43rd (in Alabama) since executions resumed in 1983 after an 18-year pause, and the 19th to die by lethal injection.

Trawick becomes the 32nd condemned inmate to be put to death this year in the USA and the 1168th overall since the nation resumed executions on January 17, 1977.

Sources: Birmingham News & Rick Halperin, June 12, 2009