This week in 1989

“I hope and pray that all the new and reopened wounds will be healed quickly after my passing. My death is the Lord’s will and I am now with my Lord and Savior Jesus Christ in Heaven.”

— Aubrey Adams JR., convicted of murder, electric chair, Florida.
Executed May 4, 1989

Adams, a prison guard at the time of his arrest, was sentenced to death for smothering eight-year-old Trisa Gail Thornley. He had made an obscene phone call to the child’s home and then took her from the residence. Naked and mutilated, her body was found two months later in a plastic bag.

Outside the prison, Thornley’s mother told reporters: “It’s a decade too late, but we finally got justice today. I wish my husband were here today. This killed him.”