Execution Looms for SD Killer, Ending 22-Year Saga
Execution Looms for SD Killer, Ending 22-Year Saga
Torrential overnight rains had washed away the blood so the searchers at first thought the pale form lying on the earthen berm might be a mannequin.
“I almost didn’t believe it,” recalled former Lincoln County Sheriff Ken Albers, the first officer to approach the body of 9-year-old Becky O’Connell. “You don’t mess up a crime scene, but I had to walk over and touch the body to convince myself that it was real.”
The shocking discovery that night in 1990 began a 22-year legal and emotional saga that is expected to end Tuesday, when Donald Moeller, who was convicted of abducting and murdering the girl, is scheduled to be put to death by lethal injection in the state penitentiary.
After decades of appeals, Moeller, 60, now accepts his fate without protest. But the end leaves behind a community still marked by the crime and its experience with capital punishment.