Twenty-two years after nine-year-old Rebecca O’Connell was found raped and murdered, the man convicted of the crime was executed. Witnesses Tuesday night watched Donald Moeller die by lethal injection at the South Dakota State Penitentiary.
Tina Curl walks to a podium in the media witness room carrying framed pictures of her daughter. She shows photos of Becky O'Connell when she was nine years old. She holds up snapshots of Becky's grave when she references her daughter's 32nd birthday. Curl and her husband then unwrap a large framed drawing of a dark haired young woman: a rendering of Becky at age 32.
The penciled image of what Becky would look like now is a stark reminder of a crime committed 22 years ago. The nine-year-old girl walked to a Sioux Falls neighborhood convenience store to buy some candy. Her body was found the next day in a wooded area near Lake Alvin.
"She didn’t deserve what happened to her," O'Connell says. "She was right full of life, and that dirtbag took it out of her for his own sick satisfaction."
The crime had a chilling effect on South Dakotans. Tuesday Carol Williams stood outside the penitentiary. Her son Travis was in Becky’s class and often went to the same store alone. She remembers feeling scared and over protective after Becky’s murder.
"My kids weren’t allowed out of the yard they had to be in my vision," Williams says. "I picked them up from school, and I used to tell them right there in front you be and I tell them don’t come out of school until you see me pull up."
Williams says what made that time even more difficult was that Moeller wasn’t caught for nine months. But that wait was small compared to the 20 years Moeller has been on death row.
Moeller was sentenced to die by lethal injection in 1992 and after a second trial was sentenced to death row again in 1997. Moeller denied his role in the murder until earlier this month when he stopped his appeals and admitted in federal court he killed Becky O’Connell and deserves to die.
Before his sentence was carried out, Moeller had a last meal of scrambled eggs, link sausage, tater tots and coffee.
At 9:38 p.m. Tuesday, Moeller left his holding cell and entered the execution chamber. He was restrained on a table. IVs were started in both arms, and witnesses were escorted to adjacent rooms by 9:57 p.m.
"At 10 o'clock, the secretary of corrections informed to the warden that the execution was clear to begin," Michael Winder with the Department of Corrections says. "A last statement was made at 10:01 p.m. The injections began at 10:01 p.m. Death was pronounced at 10:24 p.m., and the curtains were closed at 10:24 p.m."
Moeller said “No, sir” when asked if he had a last statement. After a pause, he asked, “They’re my fan club?”
Steve Young is a reporter for the Sioux Falls Argus Leader. He was one of two media witnesses. He speculates why Moeller asks the question.
"You know, I did hear voices. I was assuming they’re coming from maybe the victim’s family’s room. I don’t know it could have been someone talking in another room on the floor but I would doubt that," Young says. "But my impression was when he said, 'They’re my fan club?' that people were trying to say something through the class to him, and he heard it. I don’t know, but that’s what my gut reaction would be."*
Young says Moeller wore orange prison pants and a white t-shirt. Moeller’s long grey hair and beard hid his facial expressions. Young watched as Moeller stopped breathing.
"What struck me was just how quickly it all happened and beyond the deep breaths. The deep breaths are a signal to you that okay he’s getting the drugs now. Seven eight of them go and all of a sudden the breathing is over and, in about thirty seconds, he’s just laying on the table and he’s just staring straight up in the air," Young says. "And I mean literally, in about one minute, it’s all over, and you spend the next 20 minutes just staring at the warden staring at the associate warden waiting for someone to come in and declare him dead. It was very quick."
"The death of Donald Moeller is not going to give us closure," David Curl, who is married to Becky O’Connell’s mother, says. "There will never be closure for us. We remember and see everyday the pictures of Becky at the crime seen, what he did and how she suffered. But there is some form of relief."
David and Tina Curl traveled from New York to witness the execution. What Becky's mother wanted most to hear was how Donald Moeller got her daughter. It's a question that goes unanswered.
"That she’d be alive if I hadn’t let her go to that store by herself, yeah, I hold that guilt with me," Tina Curl says.
Tina Curl says she won’t return to South Dakota. She says she has no interest in coming back.
A family member has 48 hours to claim the body of Donald Moeller. If not, county officials will bury the body in an unmarked grave.
*Editor's Note: Late afternoon the day following the execution of Donald Moeller the Department of Corrections sent out the following release: "Some witnesses to last night's execution reported hearing voices or audible noises during the execution as Inmate Moeller made his last statement. Several of the other witnesses, as well as DOC and Penitentiary staff members in and near the execution chamber, have since reported that they could distinguish the voices as coming from a few inmates in a nearby housing unit. Although one can only speculate, it is our belief that Inmate Moeller's reference to a 'fan club' was intended toward the other inmates, and not those people witnessing or staffing the execution."