Westley Allan Dodd
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Westley Allan Dodd (July 3, 1961-January 5, 1993) was a serial killer and child molester from Richland, Washington. His execution on January 5, 1993, was the first legal hanging in the United States since 1965.
Dodd began sexually abusing children when he was 13 years old; his first victims were his own cousins. All his victims (over 50 in all) were children below the age of 12, some of them as young as 2 years old. Dodd became more deranged the older he became (he wrote about wanting to eat the genitals of his victims). When he was arrested, the police found with him a homemade torture rack, as yet unused.
Dodd was sentenced to death for molesting and then stabbing to death Cole Neer (11) and his brother William (10) near a Vancouver, Washington, park in 1989 as well as for the separate rape and murder of Lee Iseli (4).
Less than four years elapsed between the murders and Dodd's execution. He said that he "should be punished to the full extent of the law, as should all sex offenders and murderers." He refused to appeal his case or the capital sentence, stating "I must be executed before I have an opportunity to escape or kill someone within the prison. If I do escape, I promise you I will kill prison guards if I have to and rape and enjoy every minute of it." He chose hanging as the method of his execution "because that's the way Lee Iseli died." While in court he said that, if he escaped from jail, he would go back to killing kids. He also requested that his hanging be televised, to serve as an example, but this request was denied.
