WASHINGTON (Sputnik) — Texas has executed Lester Leroy Bower Jr, oldest person to be put to death after he spent 31 years on death row, local media reported following his execution on Wednesday night.
“Lester Leroy Bower, Jr. has been executed in Huntsville, TX. Prison officials say official time of death was 6:36 p.m.,” KTEN News announced via Twitter on Wednesday.
67-year-old Bower was sentenced to death in 1984 after being convicted of the 1983 fatal shooting of four men, two of whom were law enforcement officers.
Bower said he met the four men at an aircraft hangar near his home in Arlington, Texas on a ranch where he intended to buy an ultralight aircraft. He claimed the men were still alive when he left them.
In 1989, a woman identified by the court as “Pearl,” claimed after reading about Bower’s case, that her ex-boyfriend and his friends had killed the four men during a drug deal. Defense attorneys had previously made the case that the four men Bower was accused of killing were killed in a drug deal.
Bower’s execution date has been postponed six times, before he was executed on Wednesday night.
