A man convicted of murdering his girlfriend and her three young children has been executed despite claiming he was in a different state at the time of the quadruple murder.
Raheem Taylor, 58, kicked his legs as he was injected with 5 grams of pentobarbital. He took his last five or six deep breaths on Tuesday afternoon.
“Death is not your enemy, it is your destiny. Can’t wait to meet it. Irene!’ wrote Taylor, who went by the name Leonard, in his latest statement.
He also wrote that Muslims do not die but rather “live on forever in the hearts of our family and friends”.
Taylor, from Missouri, claimed he was in California when his live-in girlfriend Angela Rowe, her son Tyrese Conley, 10, and her daughters AcQreya Conley and Alexus Conley, 6 and 10 respectively, were found dead.
It is known that Taylor flew to California on November 26, 2004. However, it is unclear when the family was killed.
Police responded to the family’s home in the St. Louis suburb of Jennings on December 3 of that year. There, they discovered the bodies of Rowe and her three children, shot to death.
A medical examiner’s initial findings indicated that the four were killed within days of their bodies being discovered while Taylor was in California. But coroner Phillip Burch said during the trial that the family could have been killed two to three weeks before their bodies were found.
The district attorney at the time, Bob McCulloch, said evidence suggested Rowe and her children were murdered on Nov. 22 or 23, when Taylor was in St. Louis. McCulloch called Taylor’s claims “nonsense”.
Efforts to grant Taylor clemency or a hearing before a judge were rejected despite support from the national NAACP, the Midwest Innocence Project and about three dozen civil rights and faith-based organizations.
After Taylor’s execution, Rowe’s sister, Gerauan Rowe, said coming forward is still difficult, more than 18 years after the quadruple murder.
“I’m at a point in my life right now — I’m fine, but I’m not,” she said. “But I know justice was served. It’s kind of hard trying to move on, but I think I can do it.’
Taylor is the third Missouri death row inmate to be executed since November at Bonne Terre State Prison.
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