On this date, September 1, 1986,
Wendy Jo Offredo and Dawn McCreery were murdered by Richard Wade Cooey II. He
was executed by lethal injection in Ohio on October 14, 2008. Let us remember
them and hear from Dawn McCreery’s family members.
Wendy Jo Offredo
|
INTERNET
SOURCE:
http://www.clarkprosecutor.org/html/death/US/cooey1124.htm
Condemned inmate Richard Cooey said he
won't make a final statement if his execution moves forward as scheduled on
Thursday. Cooey said he may write a statement that would be handed out after
his death by injection at the maximum-security prison near Lucasville.
"What could I possibly say?" Cooey said yesterday, in what may be his
last interview from death row. "Other than what I have said with regards
to just give me a shot in the courts, and I feel I have been wronged in the
courts. "And with regards to the victims' families, I am truly sorry for
what happened. But like I said, there are no words they could possibly accept,
in my opinion, or even believe," he added.
Cooey, 36, is on death row at the
maximum-security prison in Mansfield for kidnapping, raping, assaulting, and
murdering 20-year-old Dawn McCreery and Wendy Offredo, 21, on Sept. 1, 1986.
They were University of Akron sorority sisters who were leaving their jobs as
waitresses when 17-year-old Clint Dickens threw a chunk of concrete off an I-77
overpass, striking the windshield of the car that Ms. Offredo was driving.
Cooey, who was on leave from the Army, was hanging out with a longtime friend,
Kenny Horonetz, and Dickens. The three got into the car Cooey had borrowed from
his grandmother and offered the two women help.
The five drove to a shopping mall and
Ms. Offredo used a pay phone to call her mother. "I'm game if you're
game," Cooey said as Dickens suggested they rob the two women, according
to court records. They had $37. Cooey pulled a knife on the women when they
realized they were not being driven back to their car. Horonetz demanded to be
let out of the car after Cooey told him to tie Ms. McCreery's hands. Driving to
a wooded area in nearby Norton, Dickens raped Ms. Offredo. "Hey Clint, put
on the Bad Company tape," Cooey said, court records say. That led Dickens
to say the women should be killed because they knew his name, records show.
Dickens grabbed Ms. Offredo in a
chokehold, and Cooey used a shoelace to strangle her as Dickens strangled Ms.
McCreery with his other shoelace. Cooey beat both women with a club, court
records say. A coroner's report said they died from the blows. In yesterday's
interview, Cooey maintained that Dickens, who could not receive the death sentence
because he was 17 at the time of the murders, killed the two women. Dickens is
serving two life sentences at the Ross Correctional Institution. Cooey claimed
that his attorney let a plea agreement fall through in which he would have
pleaded guilty to lesser charges. Cooey said he raped Ms. Offredo, but he said
it was "rape under duress." "I was looking at it - you know when
you're a kid and you're high and bombed - I was looking at it at the time as
getting laid. In hindsight now, I've matured and I've got a clear head and I've
seen that it wasn't," he said. Cooey said he had drunk a dozen beers,
snorted cocaine, and smoked opium and marijuana that night.
Yesterday, he said Horonetz, who
served eight months in prison on a felonious assault and obstructing justice
conviction, probably could have prevented the killings if he had "talked
some sense into me." Mark Gribben, a spokesman for the state attorney
general's office, said there is no doubt about Cooey's involvement in the
robbery, the assaults, the rapes, and the murders. "The judicial process
in this matter has been exhausted and complete. His case has been considered by
state and federal appellate courts, as well as the state parole board,"
Mr. Gribben said.
Cooey said he is spending most of his
time in his death row cell, drafting appeals on an electric typewriter that his
public defenders gave him. Asked if he has any hope he won't be executed on
Thursday, Cooey replied: "Not much, but there's always hope," and
then he laughed. He said he has not received many visits on death row over 16
years, with the exception of his father, Richard Cooey, Sr., and grandmother,
Audrey. Cooey said he keeps to himself on death row and does not get in the
"mix of the rat race." Asked to elaborate, he said: "To be point
blank, messing with the homosexuals, gambling, and stuff like that. I don't
partake in any of it. " Cooey said he won't need a sedative as the state
prepares to execute him. "You've got to face it. It comes with being an
adult. It comes with owning up to what society wants," he said.
UPDATE: A federal judge last night
postponed the execution of Richard Cooey, a convicted murderer who was
scheduled to be put to death this morning. Judge Dan Aaron Polster of U.S.
District Court in Cleveland granted the request of Cooey's lawyer for more time
to study the case. Polster appointed Gregory Meyers of the Ohio Public
Defender's office to take over the case after an appeals court dismissed
Cooey's previous attorneys. ''Ultimately, I have concluded that the integrity
of the federal court would be impugned if the state of Ohio executes Richard
Cooey tomorrow,'' Polster said. Cooey, 36, was scheduled to die by injection
today at the Southern Ohio Correctional Facility in Lucasville. He arrived from
death row in Mansfield yesterday morning, said Andrea Dean, a prison system
spokeswoman. Attorney General Jim Petro's office said it would appeal Polster's
ruling. ''We respectfully disagree with the judge's ruling and we are currently
working on an appeal with the 6th Circuit,'' Mark Gribben, a spokesman for
Petro, said late yesterday. ''That appeal will be filed tonight. The judges
will make their decision when they decide.''
Gov. Bob Taft on Tuesday denied
Cooey's request for clemency. Cooey admits he kidnapped, robbed and raped
University of Akron sorority sisters Wendy Offredo, 21, and Dawn McCreery, 20,
of North Ridgeville, in September 1986. He denied he killed them, but says he's
''morally'' responsible for the murders. According to court documents, Cooey
was on leave from the Army when he and a friend, Clint Dickens, attacked the
women. Dickens was 17 then and could not be sentenced to death. He is serving a
life sentence.
QUOTE 1: Richard Wade Cooey II died peacefully Tuesday with
a lethal combination of drugs administered through two needles inserted gently
into veins in each arm.
He was
executed by the state of Ohio for the rape and murders -- by bludgeoning and
strangulation -- of two college students who were not afforded such comfort in
their deaths.
"It's
done," said Mary Ann Hackenberg, mother of one of the
victims, Dawn McCreery, who said she could sense her daughter's presence in the
death chamber.
"I
know she was there," she said. "I felt her
there."
Hackenberg,
of Rocky River, one of six witnesses from the McCreery family, said, "They got it," when the needle was inserted.
QUOTE 2: "Just being spiteful
to the very end," said McCreery. "It
just shows how much this was warranted and justified."
QUOTE 3: "The thing that's
going to now give us the greatest comfort is knowing that he now has to be
accountable to a power greater than himself and now he's got to reckon with
that," said Dawn McCreery's cousin, Kathy Miska, one of the
execution witnesses.
QUOTE 4: Rob McCreery said he had hoped for the execution
for so long -- he was 17 when his big sister was killed -- that he's not sure
where to turn his attention now.
"But
I can tell you it was a nicer day coming out of there than it was going
in," he said.
QUOTE 5: Rob McCreery said he had hoped for the execution
for so long -- he was 17 when his big sister was killed -- that he's not sure
where to turn his attention now.
"But
I can tell you it was a nicer day coming out of there than it was going
in," he said.
QUOTE 6: Perfect for execution day. "You reap what you sow," said Nicole McCreery, Rob's
wife.
I was one of ricks best friends ,He wanted too take me and my best friend too cedarpoint same night he murdered the girls I said no we are not going my dad asked me after what happened how did i know too say no ,i dont know had a bad feeling I still wonder if we wouldve went would it have been us or no one only God knows
ReplyDelete