On this date, 18 March 2010, Paul
Warner Powell, was executed by the electric chair in Virginia. He was put to
death for the murder of Stacie Reed on 29 January 1999. Let us hear from the
victim’s family before we give our condolences and comfort.
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Stacie Reed
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Summary: Powell described how he
went to the home of 16 year old Stacie Reed because he was angry at her for
having a black boyfriend. He attempted to rape her and then stabbed her in the
heart when she fought off his advances. Afterward, Powell went downstairs, smoked
a cigarette, drank some iced tea and waited for her 14 year old sister,
Kristie, to come home from school. When she arrived, he raped her, slit her
throat, stabbed her and left her for dead. When police reached her, they asked
who had done this to her. Kristie mouthed two words: "Paul Powell."
Kristie survived and testified against Powell. Powell's first capital murder
conviction was thrown out on appeal when the court ruled that there was
insufficient evidence to prove that he had attempted to rape Stacie. Believing
he no longer could face a death sentence, he wrote the Prosecutor an abusive
letter in which he admitted he attempted to rape Stacie and boasted about the
crimes in horrific detail.
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Kristie and Lorraine
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In
January 1999, Robert Culver and his fiancée, Lorraine Reed, lived together in a
small brick home on McLean Street in Manassas, Virginia, with Reed's two
daughters, Stacey Lynn Reed and Kristie Erin Reed. On January 29, 1999, Paul
Warner Powell, then 20, went to visit the Reeds' home. Powell was carrying two
knives and a 9 mm handgun. Stacey, then 16 years old, left home to go to work,
and Powell remained there alone with Kristie, who was 14. That afternoon,
Kristie called her mother by telephone and informed her that Powell refused to
leave the home. Kristie's mother told Kristie to order Powell to leave. Kristie
was concerned because Powell "kept walking back and forth down the hallway
looking in the rooms."
On
the afternoon of January 29, 1999, Kristie arrived home from school and was
startled to find Powell in her house. She asked Powell "where Stacey
was." He replied, "she was in her room." Kristie walked to
Stacey's room, but Stacey was not there. Then, Kristie turned to enter her own
room and saw Stacey's body lying on the floor. Powell, who had followed Kristie
to the bedroom ordered Kristie to go downstairs to the basement. Kristie knew
that Powell customarily armed himself with a knife. She had previously observed
Powell with a butterfly knife and "another long knife that was in a brown
pouch type thing."
Powell
forced Kristie to accompany him to the basement, where he ordered her to remove
her clothes. She took her clothes off because she "didn't want to
die." Powell told Kristie to lay on the floor, and then he raped her.
After Powell raped Kristie, he dressed himself, and he used shoelaces taken
from Kristie's shoes to tie her feet together. He also used shoelaces to tie
her arms behind her back. Someone knocked on the door to the house, and Powell
went upstairs, leaving Kristie naked and bound on the basement floor. While
Powell was upstairs, Kristie was able to free her hands, and she tried to
"scoot" across the floor and hide beneath the basement steps. Powell
returned to the basement, removed Kristie's eyeglasses, and strangled her until
she was unconscious. Powell stabbed Kristie in the stomach, and the knife
stopped within a centimeter of her aorta. He slashed her in her neck numerous
times, and the repair of the knife wounds required 61 sutures. She had multiple
stab wounds to her neck and abdomen. She also had wounds on her wrists.
Robert
Culver arrived at the home at 4:15 p.m. on January 29, 1999. He could not
locate Kristie or Stacey. He went to the girls' bedrooms and saw that Stacey's
room was in disarray. He entered Kristie's room, turned on the lights, and
found Stacey's body on the floor. He observed blood on her body and saw that
she was not breathing. When Culver went to the basement in search of a
telephone, he discovered Kristie lying naked and bound on the floor, bleeding
from her neck and stomach. He saw that she had been stabbed in the stomach and
her "throat was slit pretty severely, many times." Culver found a
telephone, dialed 911, and spoke to emergency response personnel.
In
a recent interview, Robert Culver said the worst part for him are the regrets
of that day. He says he had a cold and that his boss told him he could leave
early on that day. He almost took him up on the offer, but didn't want the
girls to think he came home early because he didn't trust them to be alone.
"Little things like that," he said. "I should have been
home." Although Kristie was experiencing life-threatening injuries, she
was able to tell police officers and paramedics that Paul Powell was her assailant.
Stacey's
death was caused by a stab wound to her chest. The wound pattern indicated that
the blade of the knife pierced her heart and was twisted upon withdrawal. The
blade of Powell's knife was consistent with the stab wounds. There were
numerous bruises on Stacey's head, neck, chest, abdomen, back, arms, and legs.
She suffered stab wounds in her back and arm. She also had abrasions on her
left hand and wrist that were characterized as defensive wounds. Stacey's body
contained bruises on her lower neck that were consistent with someone stepping
or stomping on her face and neck. Police officers arrested Powell on January
30, 1999 at the home of a friend. The police officers also located a blue
sports bag that belonged to Powell. A nine-millimeter semiautomatic pistol with
a full magazine containing 10 Winchester nine- millimeter cartridges was in the
bag. The bag also contained a survival knife with a five and one-half inch
blade inside a black sheath and a butterfly knife with a five inch blade. The
survival knife sheath contained a dark reddish-brown stain. The DNA profile
obtained from the stain on the sheath was consistent with the DNA profile of
Stacey Reed and different from the DNA profile of Kristie Reed and Paul Powell.
The probability of selecting an unrelated individual with a matching DNA
profile is approximately one in 1.1 billion in the Caucasian population.
After
his arrest, Powell consented to several interviews with police officers. During
one interview, he stated that he had been at the Reeds' home on January 29,
1999 and that Stacey was dead because "she was stupid." Powell told
the police officers that he and Stacey had an argument because she had a black
boyfriend, and Powell "didn't agree with interracial dating." Powell
claimed that during the argument, Stacey attacked him and scratched his face,
and then he pushed her to the floor. He claimed that Stacey attacked him again,
and that she "got stuck" on his knife. Powell also initially denied
raping Kristie.
In
a second statement to police officers, Powell admitted that he raped Kristie.
The detective who interviewed Powell testified that Powell stated that he had
to kill Kristie because "she was the only witness and he would have to go
to jail." Powell was sentenced to death in August, 2000. In 2001, the
Virginia Supreme Court overturned his death sentence, saying that prosecutors
had failed to prove that Powell had raped Stacey which was part of the reason
for defining the case as a capital murder. A murder that is committed in
conjunction with another felony is one of the requirements for a death sentence
and the appeals court felt that the rape of Stacey's sister Kristie was a
separate act.
Under
the erroneous assumption that this meant he could no longer face the death
penalty, Powell wrote two letters to the Commonwealth's Attorney of Prince
William County, Paul Ebert. Below is the content of a letter that Powell wrote,
dated October 21, 2001. "Mr. Ebert, Since I have already been indicted on
first degree murder and the Va. Supreme Court said that I can't be charged with
capital murder again, I figured I would tell you the rest of what happened on
Jan. 29, 1999, to show you how stupid all of y'all mother f*ckers are. Y'all
should have known that there is more to the story than what I told by what I
said. You had it in writing that I planned to kill the whole family. Since I
planned to kill the whole family, why would I have fought with Stacie before
killing her? She had no idea I was planning to kill everybody and talked and
carried on like usual, so I could've stabbed her up at any time because she was
unsuspecting. I had other plans for her before she died.
"You
know I came back to the house after Bobby's lunch break was over and he had
went back to work. When I got back, she was on the phone so I went inside and I
laid down on the couch. When the cab came to bring me my pager, I ran out of
the house and she jumped and got off the phone and came off the porch to see
why I ran out of the house like I did. When the cab left we went in the house.
I laid on the couch again and she went to her room and got her clothes and went
downstairs to do her laundry. When she went downstairs, I got up and shut and
locked the back door and went downstairs. We talked while she put her clothes
in the wash. We continued talking when she had everything in the wash and I
reached over and touched her ti+ and asked if she wanted to f*ck. She said no,
because she had a boyfriend. I started arguing with her because she had never
turned anybody down because of having a boyfriend. We started walking upstairs,
arguing the whole time. When we got upstairs we went to her room and she turned
the radio off. After she turned the radio off I pushed her onto her bed and
grabbed her wrists and pinned her hands down by her head and sat on top of her.
"I
told her that all I wanted to do was f*ck her and then I would leave and that
we could do it the easy way or the hard way. She said she would f*ck me so I
got up. After I got up, she got up and started fighting with me and clawed me
face. We wrestled around a little and then I slammed her to the floor. When she
hit the floor I sat on top of her and pinned her hands down again. She said she
would f*ck me and I told her that if she tried fighting with me again, I would
kill her. When I got up she stood up and kept asking me why I was doing this
and all I kept saying is take your clothes off. Finally she undid her pants and
pulled them down to her ankles. She was getting ready to take them the rest of
the way off and the phone rang. When she heard the phone she pulled her pants
back up and said she had to answer the phone. I pushed her back and said no.
She said that she wouldn't say anything about me being there and I told her no
and to take her clothes off. She tried to get out of the room again and I
pushed her back and pulled out my knife. I guess she thought I was just trying
to scare her and that I wouldn't really stab her because she tried to leave
again. When she got to me and tried to squeeze between me and the door jam I
stabbed her. When I stabbed her, she fell back against the door jam and just
looked at me with a shocked look on her face. When I pulled the knife out she
stumbled a couple steps and fell in her sister's room. I walked over and looked
at her. I saw that she was still breathing so I stepped over her body and into
the bedroom. Then I put my foot on her throat and stepped up so she couldn't
breathe. Then I stepped down and started stomping on her throat. Then I stepped
back onto her throat and moved up and down putting more pressure to make it
harder to breathe. When I didn't see her breathing anymore, I left the room and
got some iced tea and sat on the couch and smoked a cigarette.
"You
know the rest of what happened after that point. I would like to thank you for
saving my life. I know you're probably wondering how you saved my life, so I'll
tell you. You saved my life by f*cking up. There were 2 main f*ck-ups you made
that saved me. The first was the way you worded my capital murder indictment.
The second was the comment you made in your closing argument when you said we
won't know because he won't tell us. One more time, thank you!
"Now
y'all know everything that happened in that house at 8023 McLean St. on Jan.
29, 1999. I guess I forgot to mention these events when I was being questioned.
Ha Ha! Sike! I knew what y'all would be able to prove in court, so I told you
what you already knew. Stacey was dead and no one else was in the house so I
knew ya'll would never know everything she went through unless she came back to
life. Since the Supreme Court said I can't be charged with capital murder
again, I can tell you what I just told you because I no longer have to worry
about the death penalty. And y'all are supposed to be so goddamn smart. I can't
believe that y'all thought I told you everything. Well, it's too late now.
Nothing you can do about it now so f*ck you you fat, c*cksucking, c*m guzzling,
gutter slu+. I guess I'll see your bi+ch a$$ on Dec. 18 at trial because I'm
not pleading to shi+.
"Tell
the family to be ready to testify and relive it all again because if I have to
suffer for the next 50 or 60 years or however long then they can suffer the
torment of reliving what happened for a couple of days. I'm gone. F*ck you and
anyone like you or that associates with people like you. I almost forgot, f*ck
your god, too. Jesus knows how to suck a d*ck real good. Did you teach him?
Well, die a slow, painful, miserable death. See ya punk. Do you just hate
yourself for being so stupid and for f*ckin' up and saving me? Sincerely, Paul
Powell."
In
a statement to a police officer on November 2, 2001, Powell gave the following
description of Stacey's murder: "She walked over to and uh I pushed her
back. And then she walked over to me again I think and then I pulled my knife
out and you know, and she looked at me you know. I guess she thought I wouldn't
stab her or whatever. So she tried to leave and go to answer the phone. That's
that. . . . . After she got stabbed, she just looked at me for a minute you
know and then you know, she . . .she was surprised and them um, I pulled the
knife out, you know she stumbled a few steps, fell down in Christy's doorway. I
just walked over and looked at her. And I stepped over top of her and stepped
on her throat and then stood on her throat and then stomped on her throat . . .
then I stood on her throat until I didn't see her breathing no more. . . .
.What I'm saying I was stepping on her. I'm saying I put all my weight on her.
I'm saying that I put my foot there you know and then I lifted myself up to
where I was standing on top of her. Started stomping on her throat. And then
man, I just stood on her throat again until I didn't see her breathe no
more." Before he raped Kristie, Powell knew that he intended to kill her.
In response to a police officer's question: "Before you raped Kristie, you
knew you were going to kill her; didn't you?", Powell responded: "I
really didn't have a choice; did I?"
While
incarcerated in jail awaiting his capital murder trial, Powell sent a letter to
Lorraine Reed, the mother of Stacey and Kristie. Powell enclosed a photograph
of a partially nude woman. Powell wrote: "Lorraine, I was wondering if you
might be able to help me think of something. I found this picture in a magazine
and it kinda looks like someone I know or used to know, but I can't think of
the persons name. I think you know the person too, so I was wondering if you
could tell me the name of the person this picture resembles so I can quit
racking my brain trying to think of it? I would appreciate it. If you don't
know the person I'm talking about, ask Kristie or Kelly Welch because I know
they know who I'm thinking of. If you talk to the person I'm talking about,
please give her my address and tell her to write me." The partially nude
woman shown in the photograph resembled Lorraine Reed's daughter, Stacey.
Powell
wrote a letter to a friend while he was incarcerated. He stated: "About
when you asked me why I wouldn't do to you what I did to Stacie, I couldn't
ever hurt you because you mean to much to me. See Stacie didn't mean anything
to me. She was a ni**er lover and some of her wannabe skin head friends were
supposed to kill me. That's part of the reason why she died. Almost everything
that happened in that house was planned. The only thing that wasn't planned was
trying to f*ck Kristie. What was supposed to happen was, Stacie was supposed to
die, and did, Kristie was supposed to die and then I was going to wait for
their mom and stepdad to get home and I was going to kill them and then I was
going to take their moms truck and then I was gonna go to North Carolina and
knock this dude off that stole all of my clothes and everything else I owned. I
had been thinking about doing it for along time but I could never bring myself
to do it. I don't know what happened to make me finally do it. I feel bad for
doing it. Stacie was a good kid."
Powell
wrote, in another letter: "Hey babe, what's happening? Not too much here.
I writing you to see if you could get one of your guy friends to do me a favor.
You know that Kristie is telling the cops things and that she is going to
testify against me in court. I was wondering if you could get somebody to go to
a pay phone and call Kristie and tell her she better tell the cops that she
lied to them and tell her she better not testify against me or she's gonna
die."
Powell
sent the following letter to the Commonwealth's Attorney of Prince William
County: "Fat Ebert, "What's up you fat head f*cker? I'm just writing
to tell you, since you want to kill me so Goddamn bad for killing your ni**er
loving whore, set up a court date closer than Oct. 25 so I can go ahead and get
this bullshi+ over with and plead guilty so you can kill me and get it over
with, unless you want to let me out so I can kill the rest of the ni**er lovers
and all the ni**ers, Jews, Sp*cs and everybody else in this f*cked up country
that's not white. That includes you because you are a ni**er loving Jewish
f*cking fa**ot. I will see you in hell bi+ch. your buddy, Paul Powell - P.S.
Watch your back!"
The
jury viewed writings and drawings taken from Powell's jail cell that
demonstrated his hatred of people who were not Caucasian. Additionally, the
jury heard evidence that Powell told police officers that he was a racist and
described his violent racial views. He stated, "everybody that ain't white
shouldn't – he needs to die." Powell had told a police officer that he
wanted to purchase a gun to "kill somebody. Kill a lot of somebodies . . .
just for something to do." The jury was aware of Powell's criminal record,
including three convictions for contributing to the delinquency of a minor, two
larceny convictions, and three felony convictions for abduction, rape, and
attempted capital murder of Kristie.
In
supporting the jury's finding that Powell's conduct was "outrageously or
wantonly vile, horrible or inhuman in that it involved . . . depravity of mind
and. . . aggravated battery to the victim beyond the minimum necessary to
accomplish the act of murder, the criminal appeals court in Virginia commented,
"The day before Powell committed these gruesome crimes, he went to the
victims' home and surveyed the interior of the house. He returned the next day
and tried to rape Stacey, who struggled with him. He stabbed her in the heart,
twisted the knife, and reinserted the knife in her heart. He stomped upon her
throat and he placed the entire weight of his body on her throat until she
died. Next, he drank a glass of iced tea, smoked a cigarette, and waited for
Stacey's younger 14-year-old sister to return home. When Kristie arrived,
Powell directed her to her sister's body, forced her downstairs into the
basement, and raped her on the floor. He then tied her hands and feet while she
was naked, choked her until she was unconscious, stabbed her in the stomach,
and slashed her neck numerous times in an attempt to kill her." After the
vicious attacks, Powell had snuck out the back door, leaving Kristie for dead.
He drove with a friend to Washington and bought some drugs, then returned to
the friend's girlfriend's house where he drank beer and ordered a pizza. They
were still waiting for it to be delivered when police knocked on the door.
Powell did not know his younger victim had survived and identified her
attacker.
Besides the savage attacks, the case
was known for Powell's boastful jailhouse letter to Prince William County's
chief prosecutor, which provided the crucial evidence that resulted in
Thursday's execution. But it was Kristie Reed's eyewitness account that led to
Powell's arrest and admission just hours after the slaying. She is left with
decade-old memories of her sister and a neck laced with what she calls
"battle scars." Formerly against the death penalty, Kristie eagerly
awaited Powell's execution.
"I need to know that
he's gone, that we don't have to deal with this anymore," said Kristie Reed, now 25
and an advocate for rape victims. "I was totally
against the death penalty before this happened, and I didn't know why people
would want to do it. But those people haven't been through what we've been
through. Now I'm totally for it. He definitely deserves to die. He needs to die
for what he did to Stacie."
COMMENTS
AND CONDOLENCES
My condolences to Kristie and
Lorraine for the loss of Stacie. We, Victims’ Families For the Death Penalty,
know your pain and grief. We are thankful that the State of Virginia had fried that
killer on the Old Sparky. We do hope you can move on with your life.
Like Kristie, I also changed from
being a strong opponent of the death penalty to a strong supporter because of
the murder of Sally Anne Bowman and the execution of that smiling terrorist,
Amrozi.
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