News

Alabama Executes Jack Trawick, Who Taunted His Victim's Mother Online, for the 1992 Murder of Stephanie Gach

Trawick, 62, apologized in his last words. He had confessed to the college student's killing in 1992 and was also charged that year in two other deaths.

Published

Illustration of a road through pine woods leading to a fenced prison compound in the morning mist. Not an actual scene from the case.

Jack Harrison Trawick confessed in 1992 to killing a 21-year-old Birmingham college student, and years later taunted her mother with writings and drawings posted online. On June 11, 2009, Alabama executed him.

Trawick, 62, was pronounced dead by lethal injection at 6:17 p.m. CDT. In his last words he apologized to the people he had hurt and asked their forgiveness, the Associated Press reported. He had been arrested on October 29, 1992, for a parole violation and confessed to the murder of Stephanie Gach, a Jefferson State College student. He told police he had followed her from Eastwood Mall to her apartment. His trial began on March 21, 1994, he was convicted of capital murder two days later, and the jury voted 10 to 2 for death. He arrived on death row on May 11, 1994. State courts upheld the conviction, and in March 2008 a federal appeals court affirmed the denial of his habeas petition.

Trawick had been paroled in 1990 after serving seven years of a burglary sentence. In November 1992, he was also charged in the deaths of Aileen Pruitt, 26, killed that June, and Betty Jo Richards, 17, killed in 1972. He also claimed two killings in the Pacific Northwest in 1977 or 1978 but gave no names. His writings were later posted on the internet by a prison pen pal.

The Alabama Court of Criminal Appeals and a federal appeals court spelled the victim's name Stephanie Gash, while the Associated Press spelled it Gach.

Sources