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Ohio Executes Frank Spisak, a Hitler Admirer Who Killed Three People at Cleveland State University in 1982

Spisak spent more than 27 years on death row. Before he died he read Bible verses in German; the youngest victim's mother said justice had been served.

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Illustration of a fenced prison complex in wooded hills on a frosty winter morning. Not an actual scene from the case.

In 1982, Frank Spisak, an admirer of Hitler, shot five people on and near the Cleveland State University campus, killing three. On February 17, 2011, Ohio executed him.

Spisak, 59, was pronounced dead at 10:34 a.m. at the Southern Ohio Correctional Facility near Lucasville. The 27 years between his crimes and his execution were the longest gap in Ohio's 42 executions since 1999. Before the drugs began, he recited in German the first seven verses of the 21st chapter of the Book of Revelation. Between February and August 1982, he killed the Rev. Horace Rickerson, 57; Timothy Sheehan, 50; and Brian Warford, a Cleveland State student, and wounded a man and shot at a woman. He said he had gone on "hunting parties" and hoped to start a race war. Convicted in 1983 and sentenced to death, he lost a federal appeal when the U.S. Supreme Court reversed a grant of habeas relief in January 2010.

Gov. John Kasich agreed with the Ohio Parole Board's unanimous recommendation against clemency. Spisak was the last person in Ohio executed with sodium thiopental, which the state stopped using after its sole U.S. manufacturer ended production. "In memory of my baby boy, Brian Warford, I can finally say justice has been served," said Warford's mother, Cora Warford.

The execution file's summary gave Brian Warford's age as 17, while the Columbus Dispatch reported that he was 18.

Sources