Lester Bower Jr. was executed in Texas Wednesday as punishment for killing four men 31 years ago.
Bower was executed by lethal injection during the evening in Huntsville, Texas, after the Supreme Court denied his late appeal three hours before being
taken to the death chamber, The Associated Press reported.
While Bower still denies he took part in the fatal shootings, he has admitted he was at the airplane hangar on the B&B ranch outside Sherman, Texas, the night the men were killed in 1983.
“I didn't think I was a bad person when I came in here, and I don't think I've changed,” Bower
told the AP in May prior to his execution. “I'm a little wiser, and a little older.”
The 67-year-old former chemical salesman is the oldest inmate executed in the state since Texas resumed administration of the death penalty in 1982.
“The 31 years have not been fun,” Bower said. “So if they come and decide to execute me, in a way it's almost a release.”
Prosecutors argued Bower shot the victims and stole a plane he was supposed to buy, the AP reported. Pieces of the aircraft were found at Bower’s home.
“I bought it, I just can't prove it,” Bower said. “They can't prove it was stolen and I can't prove I bought it.”
The defense suggested others involved in a failed drug deal were responsible for the fatalities, according to the the AP.
Five years following Bower’s sentence, documents challenging the prosecution were discovered and a woman came forward saying she knew who killed the men, and
it was not Bower, according to The Intercept.
Bower’s wife and two sisters watched him in the death chamber Wednesday night, according to The Intercept.
“I have fought the good fight, I held the faith,” Bower said to his family. “I am not going to say goodbye, I will simply say until we meet again. I love you very, very much.”
Bower and his attorneys had appealed to the Supreme Court, but the case did not receive the four votes needed for it to be heard in March, the AP reported.
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