Va. inmate who killed 2 is executed in electric chair

By Dena Potter

JARRATT

A former Army counterintelligence worker was executed by electric chair Tuesday for killing a Virginia couple, becoming the first U.S. inmate to die by electrocution in more than a year.

Larry Bill Elliott, 60, of Hanover, Md., was pronounced dead at 9:08 p.m. at Greensville Correctional Center. He was convicted of the January 2001 shooting deaths of 25-year-old Dana Thrall and 30-year-old Robert Finch.

Prosecutors said Elliott killed the couple to win the love of former stripper and escort Rebecca Gragg, who was involved in a bitter custody dispute with Finch.

Elliott said in the death chamber that he had prepared a final statement for his attorneys to read after the execution. In the three-page typed statement, Elliott maintained his innocence, saying he hoped groups that oppose the death penalty would use his case "as a launching pad for the elimination of the death penalty."

"The very system that I spent a lifetime defending has failed me," the statement said.

When Elliott was brought into the death chamber at 8:55 p.m., he glanced at the oak chair several times before he was turned around and backed up to it and seated. Elliott looked forward or watched members of the execution team as they strapped him tightly into the chair and attached metal clamps with sea sponge soaked in a brine solution to his right calf and head, both of which had been shaved.

The team attached electric cables from the floor to the metal clamps and placed a brown strap across much of Elliott's face that was tied to the back of the chair to support his head.

When the operator in a room off to the side pushed the "execute" button, Elliott's body tensed as he received several bursts of electricity. Several minutes later, a doctor checked for a heartbeat and pronounced him dead.

Earlier in the day, Virginia Gov. Timothy M. Kaine declined to stop the execution, and the U.S. Supreme Court refused to intervene on Monday.

Two separate juries convicted Elliott of the killings. A 2002 verdict was set aside because a juror discussed the case outside of the court. He was convicted again a year later.

Elliott, who was married with three adult children and a teenager, met Gragg online when she posted an ad looking for a "sugar daddy." She told Elliott she wanted to turn her life around and that she needed financial support to help start a business designing and selling stripper costumes.

Prosecutors said that over 18 months Elliott spent about $450,000 supplying Gragg a home, private school for her two children, a car, breast enhancement surgery, and a credit card.

Prosecutors said Elliott was obsessed with Gragg and killed Finch to win her love. A court hearing in their custody case was scheduled for the week that Finch was killed.

Finch was shot three times, and Thrall was beaten before being shot several times in the face and chest while her two boys, ages 4 and 6, were upstairs in the couple's Woodbridge townhome.

At 60, Elliott was Virginia's oldest death row inmate. He was the fifth Virginia inmate to die by electrocution since lethal injection became an option for inmates to choose in 1995.

Of the 35 death-penalty states, seven Southern states still offer electrocution. Two others allow it only if lethal injection is deemed unconstitutional.

The last person executed by electrocution in the United States was James Earl Reed, who put to death in South Carolina in June 2008 for killing his ex-girlfriend's parents.

The last Virginia inmate to choose electrocution was 27-year-old Brandon Hedrick, who died in 2006 for raping and killing a young mother. Kaine gave him up until the last minute to opt for lethal injection, but he went forward with electrocution.