August 28
OKLAHOMA----execution
Man executed for 2 stabbing murders
Jack Dale Walker was executed by lethal injection Tuesday, almost 13
years after he stabbed his estranged girlfriend and her uncle to death.
Walker was pronounced dead at 9:09 p.m. at the Oklahoma State
Penitentiary.
Several members of the victims' families watched the execution, including
some who witnessed the vicious attack by Walker at a mobile home in Bixby, a Tulsa suburb.
Shelly Ellison and Donald Epperson suffered deep wounds from a hunting
knife wielded by Walker, 35, on Dec. 30, 1988.
Ellison, 17-year-old mother of Walker's 3-month-old son, suffered 32 stab
wounds. Epperson was stabbed 11 times.
During 20 minutes of terror that began about 8 a.m., Ellison broke free to dial 911. "I need help. He's stabbing me. I'm dead. Please," she told
the dispatcher.
Children were yelling and a baby could be heard crying in the background.
Juanita Epperson, mother of Donald Epperson, also was severely stabbed, but survived.
At a clemency hearing, Walker apologized to the victims' family "for all the pain I've caused them and for this whole ordeal that has been tragic for a lot of people."
His plea for a life sentence was rejected after several family members gave eyewitness accounts of the vicious attack and said Walker had been violent in the past and would be a continuing threat.
Walker, the product of a broken home, had a history of drug and alcohol abuse. The week before his execution, he told a Tulsa World reporter that psychological treatment could have prevented the slayings.
Born in Claremore, he attended Bixby High School. Unlike many convicted murderers, Walker had no felony convictions, but was prone toward violence, according to Ellison's relatives.
He was only 22 when he went to the Bixby home to try to persuade his girlfriend to leave with him by threatening suicide.
But on a police tape immediately after his arrest, Walker said he went to the home with "the full intention of either taking the baby or murdering her or whoever got in the way."
Walker's son, now 13, wrote a letter to the clemency board in support of his father's execution.
"Sometimes I think about what life would be like if my mom were alive, but then I come to my senses and realize that was destroyed by one man, Jack Walker," wrote Joshua Ellison, who has been adopted by his maternal grandparents.
"I think Jack Walker should pay for what he did to my mother. I think he should die for taking my mom away from me."
Walker said he hopes his son will forgive him when he is older.
A Jehovah's Witness, he said he did not fear death, calling it merely unconsciousness. "God has forgiven me of my sins, not mankind," he said.
Walker becomes the 15 condemned inmate to be put to death this year in Oklahoma, and the 45th overall since the state resumed capital punishment
in 1990.
Walker becomes the 47th condemned inmate to be put to death this year in
the USA and the 730th overall since America resumed executions on January
17, 1977.