A double-murderer grimaced, waved goodbye and said ‘Let’s rock’, then bounced up and down as he was executed in an electric chair. Edmund Zagorski, 63, uttered the phrase when asked if he had any last words before being killed at his Tennessee prison Thursday night – before clenching his fists as the deadly 1,750 volts of electric current was zapped through his body. The killer’s head was shrouded with a black cloth before prison staff switched on the current, with Zagorski seen to rise up in the chair as each volt of electricity passed through his body.
Zagorski, condemned to die for the murder of two men in a drug den in 1984, did not move after the current was turned off He glanced around the death chamber and smiled at witnesses before he was killed, including relatives of his victims
Earlier that evening, he ate a final meal of pigs’ knuckles and tails, before becoming the first US prisoner to die by electrocution in five years. He asked for the chair over the more commonly-used lethal injection over fears the former would take up to 18 minutes to kill him, and leave him in agonizing pain.
Zagorski was put to death after spending almost 35 years on death row. Tennesse’s electric chair was last used in 2007, and passed an inspection last month. But its disgraced builder Fred Leuchter warned beforehand that the machine could well malfunction. Leuchter, shunned for claiming there were no gas chambers at Auschwitz, said: ‘What I’m worried about now is Tennessee’s got an electric chair that’s going to hurt someone or cause problems. ‘And it’s got my name on it,. I don’t think it’s going to be humane.’
Metro.co.uk
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