IN LOVING MEMORY OF WENDY JO OFFREDO & DAWN MCCREERY (DIED: SEPTEMBER 1, 1986) (KILLER, RICHARD WADE COOEY II WAS EXECUTED IN OHIO ON OCTOBER 14, 2008)

         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. 

 

Dawn McCreery

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.