Ohio convicted killer of 3 faces execution date

[February 17, 2011]  LUCASVILLE, Ohio (AP) -- A Nazi sympathizer convicted of killing three people on an Ohio college campus during what he called "hunting parties" targeting blacks faces his execution date Thursday.

Frank Spisak has been on Ohio's death row for more than 27 years since his conviction for the 1982 deaths of two men and a teenager during the months-long spree on the campus of Cleveland State University. All three victims were black.

Spisak, 59, blamed his actions on his hatred of gays, blacks and Jews and on mental illness related to confusion about his sexual identity. Spisak identifies himself as a woman and refers to himself in correspondence as Frances Spisak, a name his attorneys also use.

A final appeal in his case was pending before the U.S. Supreme Court. He asked for a delay so he could argue the death penalty's constitutionality based on recent comments by a state Supreme Court justice criticizing capital punishment in Ohio. Two lower courts have rejected the appeal.

Last month, his attorneys asked the Ohio Parole Board to spare his life, saying Spisak suffers from a severe bipolar disorder that was not diagnosed until years after he was convicted.

But both the parole board and Gov. John Kasich, making his first decision on a condemned killer's request for mercy, rejected Spisak's plea.

Cora Warford, whose son Brian Warford was 17 when he was fatally shot in the head Aug. 30, 1982, says she's making an exception to her opposition to capital punishment after talking with her pastor. Brian Warford's brothers, Jeffery Duke and Eric Barnes, were among those scheduled to view the execution.

Brian Warford was taking classes at Cleveland State as an alternative education student earning his high school degree when he was shot and killed in 1982.

Prior to his slaying, Rev. Horace Rickerson, 57, was killed Feb. 1 in a campus bathroom where he rebuffed Spisak's sexual advances. The following Aug. 27, Timothy Sheehan, 50, who worked in Cleveland State's maintenance department, was killed because Spisak believed Sheehan might have witnessed Rickerson's shooting.

John Hardaway was shot seven times as he waited for a commuter train by a man he later identified as Spisak. He survived and had planned to witness the execution. On Aug. 9, 1982, Coletta Dartt, a white university employee, was shot at as she exited a bathroom stall. She pushed Spisak away and ran.

Spisak was caught in early September 1982 after he was found firing a gun out of his apartment window. He told investigators he went on "hunting parties" to shoot black people.

During his 1983 trial, Spisak grew a Hitler-style mustache, carried a copy of Hitler's book "Mein Kampf" and gave the Nazi salute to the jury.

Last weekend, Spisak met with his daughter. He was calm as he arrived at the death house at the Southern Ohio Correctional Facility in Lucasville on Wednesday morning, said Carlo LoParo, spokesman for the Department of Rehabilitation and Correction. He had no visitors scheduled there.

If executed as scheduled, Spisak will be the last Ohio inmate to die from a dose of sodium thiopental. The drug is scarce and Ohio is giving up its use in favor of a more readily available substitute.

[Associated Press]

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