[Naked Girls Executed By Stabbing
Melvin Amey
(AP) SIOUX FALLS, S.D. - A South Dakota inmate was executed Tuesday night for the 1990 rape and murder of a 9-year-old girl who disappeared after leaving her home to buy sugar at a nearby store so she could make lemonade.
Donald Moeller, 60, received a lethal injection at the state penitentiary in Sioux Falls, marking South Dakota's second execution this month in an unusual surge for a state that has carried out just two other death sentences since 1913. He was pronounced dead at 10:24 p.m.
Moeller kidnapped Becky O'Connell from a Sioux Falls convenience store, where she'd gone to buy sugar to make lemonade at home. He drove her to a secluded area near the Big Sioux River, then raped and stabbed the girl. Her naked body was found the next day; investigators said her throat had been slashed.
Becky's mother, Tina Curl, has been steadfast in her wish to watch Moeller die, even raising funds to cover the expenses to make the 1,400-mile trip from her home in New York state to Sioux Falls for the execution.
Moeller initially was convicted in 1992, but the state Supreme Court overturned it, ruling that improper evidence was used at trial. He was again convicted and sentenced to die in 1997. The state Supreme Court affirmed the sentence, and Moeller lost appeals on both the state and federal levels.
Though he fought his conviction and sentence for years, Moeller in July he said he was ready to accept death as the consequence of his actions. He admitted for the first time in court that he killed the girl.
Earlier this month, a federal judge dismissed a pending suit challenging South Dakota's execution protocol after Moeller insisted he wanted no part of it. Moeller also distanced himself from a motion filed by a woman with loose family ties who argued that his decades in solitary confinement had made him incapable of voluntarily accepting his fate. That motion was dismissed Monday.
Moeller's execution comes just two weeks after the Oct. 15 execution of Eric Robert for killing South Dakota prison guard Ronald "R.J." Johnson during a failed escape attempt. Before that, the last execution in South Dakota was in 2007, when Elijah Page died by lethal injection for the murder of Chester Allan Poage, who was abducted and killed in a scheme to burglarize his mother's home.
Investigators said they found the teen girl naked in bed with her boyfriend and co-conspirator, Caleb Barnes, hours after discovering the poorly buried body of the girl's mother, 54-year-old Cheryl Silvonek, on the 5700 block of Haasadahl Road in South Whitehall Township on March 15.
Barnes, of Fort Meade, Maryland, had previously been charged for his role in the stabbing death of the girl's mother. However, prosecutors filed a new criminal complaint against Barnes, who turns 21 on Sunday, charging him with the same offenses as his teen girlfriend.
He previously faced one count of statutory sexual assault of a juvenile, but that charge has been withdrawn since "Silvonek is now a defendant in the homicide, and the Commonwealth cannot prove that charge without her testimony," the DA's Office said.
"She cried incessantly and told me how much she missed her mom and told me she was coerced, she was afraid she was going to be killed, she was afraid her dad was going to be killed," Waldron said. "So there's a lot of things we have to decipher here."
Meanwhile her daughter had been sending texts to Barnes -- allowing investigators to compare the exchanges with video surveillance to piece together a timeline for the night of the woman's death, according to the Lehigh County District Attorney's Office.
Investigators tracked the car's path on the Pennsylvania Turnpike and used surveillance footage from the Scranton Hilton, where the concert took place, to determine the victim was no longer with the suspects when they entered Chris' Family Restaurant on Tilghman Street in Allentown just after midnight on March 15.
"At no time does Jamie Silvonek appear to be under duress or coercion," the DA's office said. "Jamie Silvonek is observed physically directing Caleb Barnes by reaching out to grab his arm inside the Walmart. Silvonek and Barnes purchased multiple items including gloves, bleach, rubbing alcohol, a box cutter and a file."
Authorities discovered the 54-year-old woman's body in the early morning hours of March 15 when they returned to the 5700 block of Haasadahl Road -- where they observed a suspicious vehicle earlier, according to reports. Officers noticed that dirt had been disturbed and found the victim's body buried -- stab wounds to her neck.
Authorities determined that Barnes stabbed the woman in her driveway and ditched the car while with the 14-year-old girl. Prosecutors said Barnes had sexual relations with the girl on at least three occasions in recent weeks.
Tales of Saddam's Brutality
The Iraqi people talk about mass graves and Saddams crimes against humanity U.S. Marine Corps photo by
Lance Cpl. Christopher Graham Remains found at mass gravesites, located near a farm on the outskirts of Al Mahawil, Iraq, May 7, 2003.The cruelty of Saddam's regime is evident in its brutality toward Iraqi citizens. Mass grave sites across Iraq provide further evidence of Saddam's atrocities. Below, the Iraqi people share their stories of brutality, torture, fear, and death.
"The prison was a terrible, miserable place. I saw my relatives being tortured. One time, they buried my uncle in the sand up to his neck and left him in the heat. It was awful to watch. But the worst day was when they came for my father. Even then, I knew I would never see him again. I could feel it."
-- Khairiya Hatim, Iraqi town councilor who was imprisoned with her family because of their allegiance to a banned opposition party, Sunday Telegraph (London), September 28, 2003 "When Saddam Hussein's government went on an anti-inflation tear in 1992, it rounded up, tried and executed 42 food merchants in one day, including Tabra's father, the wealthy patriarch of a well-known trading family. 'Whenever there was a merchant, a famous name in any sector, the old regime tried to stop them,' Omar Tabra [Iraqi food merchant] said. 'They did it by killing.'"
-- Bill Glauber, Chicago Tribune, September 27, 2003"Most afternoons, among the market stalls leading to the old city of Najaf young men set up TV sets in the street showing grotesque scenes of cruelty. Handcuffed prisoners are executed with sticks of dynamite shoved into their pockets. Screaming men plead for their lives as they are beaten by Saddam Hussein's secret police. Crimson fragments of bodies lie in the street, moments after a huge explosion, to the soundtrack of an Arab lament. The crowds gather round. People mutter and shake their heads. Then they queue to pay 1,000 Iraqi dinars (about 33p) [50 cents] for laser discs containing footage of the appalling scenes. These are the atrocity discs of Iraq, a booming mini-industry in a country still stricken by the consequences of the war. They are produced in home factories, with the simplest computer equipment."
-- The London Times, September 20, 2003
"The day after the liberation, my aunt put out a black banner--an Arab mourning ritual--with the names of all her relatives who had been murdered by the regime on it. And she looked down her street, and there were black banners on almost every house. On some houses it looks like a long shopping list. She said to her neighbour, 'You too?' Under Saddam it was a crime to mourn people killed by the regime--it made you seem suspicious too. Everyone was suffering terribly, but they were suffering alone. They just didn't know that everyone else was hating it too."
-- Yasser Alaskary, co-founder of Iraqi Prospect Organisation, an Iraqi freedom group, The Independent (London), September 18, 2003
"Virtually every athlete at the club has physical or mental scars inflicted by Saddam Hussein's older son, Uday, who took control of Iraq's Olympic Committee in 1984 and began a terrifying campaign of torture and humiliation. Many fled the country, including Mr. [Ahmed] Samarrai....
"'The system of the regime started in primary school,' said Mr. Samarrai, who defected on a trip to Switzerland in 1983 and returned here after the war. 'It was exactly like the Nazis in the 30's.'...
"'Uday played hell with sports,' said Immanuel Baba Dano, a revered figure in Iraq who was coach of the national soccer team for most of the last three decades....
"Some athletes were humiliated, he said. Others were smeared with feces and jailed. Some were placed in a sarcophagus with nails pointed inward so that they would be punctured and suffocated, he said. At least a few were set in front of wild dogs to be torn to pieces. How many were executed is still not clear.
"'Nobody knew what was in his mind,' Mr. Dano said. 'But there was no pity.'"
-- The New York Times, August 17, 2003
"'We smelled something rotten, and when we breathed in, we couldn't breathe out. The sky was full of smoke, and someone said it was chemicals. People started crying and running toward the mountains. I was burning and I became blind, but someone led me out. After walking for two days, we reached Iran.' [Wais Abdel] Qadr was the only member of his family to survive the gassing of Halabja by the Iraqi military on March 16, 1988."
-- The Washington Post, August 7, 2003
"Freed in April after 13 years in prison, [Dr. Ibrahim] Basri [Saddam's former physician] is now reaching out to register and help as many victims of the regime as he can find. They stream to a clinic attached to his house, a sad collection of former political prisoners, relatives of the executed, and maimed men who cannot work because they lost an arm, an ear, or a foot to the torturer's knife. 'All the time in prison, I think, "What can I do to help these people?"' he said. ... 'For the first five years, he put me in a cell by myself, 2 meters by 2 1/2 meters, where I didn't know if it was day or night. I was so dirty with lice. There were cockroaches in my mouth at night. And they came to beat you in the morning and at night for nothing, nothing.' Once, he continued, the guards beat him in front of 300 inmates until they broke his legs. 'I never said, "Mercy." I just said, "Iraq."'"
-- The Boston Globe, August 7, 2003