John Thanos
John Frederick Thanos (March 28, 1949 - May 17, 1994)[1] was convicted in 1992 of the September 1990 murders of Billy Winebrenner, Gregory Allen Taylor, and Melody Pistorio. At his trial he taunted the families of his victims, saying he wished he could dig up their bodies and defile their corpses. Thanos stated: "their cries bring laughter from the darkest caverns of my soul. I don't believe I could satisfy my thirst yet in this matter unless I was to be able to dig these brats' bones up out of their graves right now and beat them into powder and urinate on them and then stir it into a murky yellowish elixir and serve it up to their loved ones" during his sentencing hearing for the murder of Winebrenner and Pistorio.
His attorney later said of Thanos: "What he did was reprehensible, that's true... the other thing is, he is extremely damaged. He is an extremely damaged human being. And really, in our society we should not kill sick people. He really is a sick person."
Thanos waived all of his appeals and refused to fight his death sentence after he was convicted and sentenced to death. He was executed in 1994 by the state of Maryland by lethal injection, age 45, becoming the first person to be executed in Maryland since 1976 when the death penalty was reinstated. His last words were "Adios!"
See also
References
- Sources
- Capital Punishment History – Persons Executed in Maryland since 1923. Maryland Department of Public Safety & Correctional Services. Retrieved on 2007-11-11.
- Capital Punishment History – A Historical Perspective. Maryland Department of Public Safety & Correctional Services. Retrieved on 2007-11-11.
- U.S. Executions Since 1976. The Clark County Prosecuting Attorney. Retrieved on 2007-11-11.
- Kuntz, Tom. Word for Word: The Condemned; As Executions Mount, So Do Infamous Last Words. The New York Times (1994-07-31). Retrieved on 2007-11-11.
- McMenamin, Jennifer. Key death penalty dates. The Baltimore Sun (2007-01-26). Retrieved on 2007-11-11.