Death Row inmate Thomas Edwin Loden Jr “was really up and in good spirits and he has a full belly” after his final meal, a Mississippi official said before he was given a lethal injection.
Loden, who had pleaded guilty to the rape and killing of 16-year-old girl Leesa Marie Gray, became the second inmate executed in the state in 10 years on Wednesday.
A coroner pronounced Loden, 58, dead at 6.12 pm at the Mississippi State Penitentiary at Parchman.
He has been on death row since 2001, when he pleaded guilty to capital murder, rape and four counts of sexual battery against Ms Gray.
Loden was given a last meal that included two bone-in fried pork chops, fried okra, a baked sweet potato with butter, Pillsbury Grands biscuits with butter and molasses, peach cobbler with French vanilla ice cream and Lipton sweet tea.
In a press conference Mississippi Department of Corrections Commissioner Burl Cain said how much Loden enjoyed his last meal after starting off by saying that the prisoner was with a priest. The execution took place shortly afterwards at 6pm local time.
“He was really up and in good spirits and he has a full belly, he ate a lot and seemed pretty cool as far as this and so, he was complaining because he had too much syrup, but he was complaining good, he was too full, he couldn’t eat it but he wanted to eat the ... syrup but anyway he had his biscuits, that was part of his meal," said Mr Cain.
"The okra was good, he liked that, he liked the pork chops … he liked the vanilla ice cream God knows he ate every bit of it up, he enjoyed it, he’s in good spirits as far as I can tell.”
“He was concerned about what he had done and he was ready to do what he had to do, he was accepting and he is in good spirits considering what’s about to happen," another official added.
“He asked for a lot of sweets, he ate everything he could and I even ended up giving him mine."
After the meal Loden will have had the chance to see his family and lawyers as well as have a shower before returning to his cell.
Loden, a Marine Corps recruiter with relatives in the area, encountered Ms Gray on the road around 10.45 pm, on June 22, 2000. He stopped and began speaking with the teenager about the flat tyre. "Don't worry. I'm a marine. We do this kind of stuff," he said.
Loden told investigators he became angry after Ms Gray allegedly said she would never want to be a marine, and that he ordered her into his van. He spent four hours sexually assaulting her before strangling and suffocating her, according to an interview he gave to police.
Court records show that on the afternoon of June 23, 2000, "Loden was discovered lying by the side of a road with the words `I'm sorry' carved into his chest and apparent self-inflicted lacerations on his wrists."
After pleading guilty in September 2001, Loden told Gray's friends and family during his sentencing: "I hope you may have some sense of justice when you leave here today."
