John Thanos
John Frederick Thanos (c. 1951 – May 17, 1994) was convicted in 1992 of the 1990 murders of Billy Winebrenner, Gregory Allen Taylor, and Melody Pistorio. At his trial he taunted the families of his victims, saying he wished he could dig up their bodies and defile their corpses. "Their cries bring laughter from the darkest caverns of my soul.... I don't believe I could satisfy my thirst yet in this matter unless I was to be able to dig these brats' bones up out of their graves right now and beat them into powder and urinate on them and then stir it into a murky yellowish elixir and serve it up to those loved ones," Thanos said during his sentencing hearing for the murder of Winebrenner and Pistorio.
Thanos waived his appeals and refused to fight his death sentence after he was convicted and sentenced to death. He was executed in 1994 by the state of Maryland by lethal injection, aged 43, becoming the first person to be executed in Maryland since 1976 when the death penalty was reinstated. His last word was "Adios."
See also
References
- Capital Punishment History – Persons Executed in Maryland since 1923. Maryland Department of Public Safety & Correctional Services. Retrieved on 2007-11-11.
- Capital Punishment History – A Historical Perspective. Maryland Department of Public Safety & Correctional Services. Retrieved on 2007-11-11.
- U.S. Executions Since 1976. The Clark County Prosecuting Attorney. Retrieved on 2007-11-11.
- Kuntz, Tom. Word for Word: The Condemned; As Executions Mount, So Do Infamous Last Words. The New York Times (1994-07-31). Retrieved on 2007-11-11.
- McMenamin, Jennifer. Key death penalty dates. The Baltimore Sun (2007-01-26). Retrieved on 2007-11-11.