A person who confessed to brutally raping and killing a teenage girl stranded on a Mississippi road greater than 20 years ago was executed by the state on Wednesday.
58-year-old Thomas Edwin Loden Jr. became the second inmate executed within the state in 10 years when he was pronounced dead at 6:12 p.m. after being injected with a lethal cocktail of medicine at Mississippi State Penitentiary in Parchman.
Loden pleaded guilty to manslaughter, rape, and 4 counts of sexual assault within the June 2000 murder of 16-year-old Leesa Marie Gray. He has been on death row since 2011, when he pleaded guilty.
Loden, a former US Marine Corps recruiter, said he felt “deep remorse” for the murder of Gray, who was about to be a highschool senior.
The teenager was returning home from a waitress shift at her uncle’s restaurant on the night of June 22, 2000, when she got a flat tire. Loden spotted her on the side of the road and stopped the automotive, apparently offering to assist.
“Don’t be concerned,” Loden reportedly told Gray. “I’m a marine. We do this stuff.”
But as an alternative of helping the girl, he told her to get into his van after he got upset when she allegedly said she would never need to be a marine, he said.
Loden sexually abused Gray for a horrific 4 hours into the early morning before he strangled and strangled her to death, he told investigators.
The following day, Loden was found “lying on the side of the road with the words ‘Sorry’ carved into his chest and self-inflicted injuries on his wrists”, in keeping with court records.
The convicted killer said he knows he won’t ever undo the heartbreak he brought on by killing the teenager in his last words on Wednesday.
“For the last 20 years, I actually have tried daily to do an excellent deed to make up for the life I took from this world,” he said. “I do know these are only words and they cannot erase the damage I’ve done. If today doesn’t bring you anything, I hope you get some peace and closure.
Loden, who was wearing a red prison jumpsuit and was covered with a white sheet and tied to a stretcher, concluded by saying “I really like you” in Japanese, officials said.
Gray’s mother, Wanda Farris, attended the execution. She said she forgave Loden a few years ago but believes within the death penalty.
“I do not actually need to see anyone die,” she said. “But I think within the death penalty. … I think in justice.”
Farris said her daughter was a “glad” teenager who was at all times smiling and desired to be an elementary school teacher.