This week in 1998

“For seventeen years the attorney general has been pursuing the wrong man. In time he will come to know this. I don’t want anyone to avenge my death. Instead I want you to stop killing people. God bless.”

— Thomas Martin Thompson, convicted of murder, lethal injection, California.
Executed July 14, 1998

Farmworkers found the body of Ginger Lorraine Fleischli, who had been stabbed and raped. Genetic material implicated Thompson, who had escaped to Mexico. Authorities located him there, made the arrest, and brought him back to the United States. He claimed innocence at the trial, but inmates claimed he had made a full confession. An accomplice, David Leitch, received fifteen years to life on a conviction of second- degree murder.