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Thread: Richard Wade Cooey II - Ohio Execution - October 14, 2008

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    Richard Wade Cooey II - Ohio Execution - October 14, 2008


    Wendy Offredo, 21, and Dawn McCreery, 20


    Richard Cooey (L) and Clinton Dickens (R) in their original mugshots in 1986




    Facts of the Crime:
    On September 1, 1986, Cooey and an accomplice, Clint Dickens, murdered 21-year-old Wendy Offredo and 20-year-old Dawn McCreery in a wooded area in Norton. Ms. Offredo and Ms. McCreery were forced to stop their car on I-77 after Cooey dropped a chunk of concrete onto the car from an overpass. Cooey and Dickens took Ms. Offredo and Ms. McCreery into the woods, raped them, robbed them, beat them with a nightstick, and strangled them with shoelaces. Cooey later bragged to friends about the murders.

    Dawn McCreery, 20, and Wendy Offredo, 21, 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 19 and on leave from the U.S. Army, was hanging out with a longtime friend, Kenny Horonetz, and Dickens. The three got into a car 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.

    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 and Cooey both raped the two girls. Dickens then suggested 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. Dickens was sentenced to life in prison for the crimes, in which both girls suffered through more than three hours of torture.

    Victims: Wendy Offredo and Dawn McCreery

    Time of Death: 10:28 am

    Manner of Execution: Lethal Injection

    Last Meal: a T-bone steak with A1 sauce, french fries and onion rings, four eggs over easy, hash browns, buttered toast, bear claw pastries, a pint of Rocky Road ice cream and Mountain Dew

    Final Words: ''You [expletive] have not paid attention to anything I've had to say for the past 22 years. Why would you pay attention to anything I have to say now?''

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    October 14, 2008

    Cooey executed by lethal injection

    Richard Wade Cooey was executed at 10:28 this morning for the murders of two University of Akron students 22 years ago.

    His final statement was: ''You [expletive] have not paid attention to anything I've had to say for the past 22 years. Why would you pay attention to anything I have to say now?''

    Cooey paced for much of the night, sleeping for less than 90 minutes and turning down breakfast as his execution drew near.

    Cooey's attorneys arrived at the prison this morning, but a spokeswoman for the Ohio Public Defender's Office last night said that he appeared out of appeal options.

    Cooey, 41, formerly of Akron, was sentenced to die in 1986 for the murders of Wendy Offredo and Dawn McCreery, two UA juniors. He was within 12 hours of being executed in 2003 before a judge granted him a stay.

    Prison spokeswoman Andrea Carson told reporters this morning that Cooey was quiet overnight inside the death house at the Southern Ohio Correctional Facility near Lucasville.

    He finished his last meal around midnight, appeared sleepless, and paced his cell. Around 4:06 a.m., he fell asleep only to awaken at 5:20 a.m. He showered and is visiting now with his attorneys.

    About 9:50 a.m., Warden Phillip Kerns approached Cooey and read the state's death warrant. Cooey was then fitted with shunts in each arm that were used to transfer the lethal drugs into his system.

    http://www.ohio.com/news/top_stories/30943114.html

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    Clinton Dickens in a recent mugshot



    ‘Pure Evil’ Ohio Man Convicted of Raping and Murdering Two College Students in 1986 Is Denied Parole

    By Colin Kalmbacher
    Law & Crime

    Clinton Dickens, 53, was 17 years old when he and an accomplice raped and murdered two college students in the woods back in 1986. A recent change in law recently allowed him to petition the state for parole. Last week, the Ohio Parole Board denied that request.

    According to Summit County Prosecuting Attorney Sherri Bevan Walsh, Dickens was originally eligible for parole in 2071.

    In 2021, however, Ohio passed a law that gave those who were children when they committed their offense the opportunity to apply for parole after serving between 18 and 30 years of their sentence, depending on the crime they committed. The law also outlawed the state from sentencing children to life without the possibility of parole.

    “This was a horrible crime, which is still being felt to this day nearly 36 years later,” Bevans said in a Friday press release. “Wendy and Dawn were loved by everyone who knew them. It absolutely sickens me to think about what they went through.”

    In August 1986, 21-year-old Wendy Offredo and 20-year-old Dawn McCreery were driving through Akron, Ohio when a large chunk of concrete was tossed from an overpass and hit the windshield of McCreery’s car. The men responsible were quick on the scene to offer their aid and assistance. Dickens, since-executed Richard Cooey–who was 19 years old at the time–and another teenager first drove the victims to a nearby payphone down the Interstate Highway 77 where Offredo would reassure her mother that everything was okay, according to Cleveland-based Fox affiliate WJW-TV.

    The third teen left before the violence began. But two of them stayed, taking the University of Akron students into a nearby wooded area where they were both raped and brutally murdered over the course of three-and-a-half hours. Both of the women were brutally beaten and bludgeoned. The assailants carved Xs onto their victims’ abdomens. Offredo was strangled to death. McCreery was stabbed in the neck.

    A hiker discovered their bodies the next day. The crime scene didn’t originally offer much in the way of direct leads. Police did notice that the women had their jewelry stolen as well. A criminal informant eventually revealed that Cooey had been selling the jewelry–and bragging to others about having had committed the slayings.

    Authorities then connected Dickens to the crime by way of Cooey. Both men also tested positive against DNA evidence recovered from the grisly field behind the since-demolished Rolling Acres Mall.

    “Cooey and Dickens are pure evil and Dickens should never be let out of prison,” the prosecutor’s statement continued. “We will continue the fight to keep him locked up and to keep the community safe.”

    Cooey was killed by the state for his crimes in 2008. He filed a failed appeal that his obesity, which he blamed on prison food, made death-by-lethal-injection a form of cruel and unusual punishment, due to severely clogged arteries, under the Eighth Amendment, the Associated Press reported at the time of his death.

    Dickens will be eligible for parole again in November 2026. He is currently incarcerated in the Marion Correctional Institution.

    https://lawandcrime.com/crime/pure-e...ce=mostpopular
    "I realize this may sound harsh, but as a father and former lawman, I really don't care if it's by lethal injection, by the electric chair, firing squad, hanging, the guillotine or being fed to the lions."
    - Oklahoma Rep. Mike Christian

    "There are some people who just do not deserve to live,"
    - Rev. Richard Hawke

    “There are lots of extremely smug and self-satisfied people in what would be deemed lower down in society, who also deserve to be pulled up. In a proper free society, you should be allowed to make jokes about absolutely anything.”
    - Rowan Atkinson

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