Virginia Executes Alfredo Prieto for the 1988 Reston Murders of Two College Students
Already on death row in California, Prieto was put to death for killing Rachael Raver and Warren Fulton III after a last-day fight over drugs from Texas.
Published
Alfredo Rolando Prieto's last words were addressed to the people who had fought for him. "I would like to say thanks to all my lawyers, all my supporters and all my family members," he said, according to a Virginia corrections spokeswoman, Lisa Kinney. Then: "Get this over with." He was pronounced dead at 9:17 p.m. on Thursday, October 1, 2015, at the Greensville Correctional Center in Jarratt. He was 49, and his was Virginia's first execution in three years.
He was executed for two murders committed twenty-seven years earlier. Rachael Raver and her boyfriend, Warren Fulton III, were students at George Washington University in 1988, when they were killed and their bodies were left in a field in Reston, in Fairfax County. Raver had been raped. The case went unsolved for years. By the time DNA evidence linked Prieto to the killings, the El Salvador native was on death row in California for raping and murdering a 15-year-old girl. Virginia tried him for the Reston murders and sentenced him to death a second time.
Investigators connected him to more. He was charged with raping and murdering Veronica Jefferson, 24, in Arlington in 1988, but prosecutors dismissed the indictment, saying a fourth death sentence did not justify the expense. He was also linked to the death of Manuel Sermeno, 27, who was found shot in a burning car in Prince William County in 1989. Authorities linked him to several other killings as well. He was never prosecuted for any of them, because he had already been sentenced to death.
The last hours were a fight over the drugs. Virginia had obtained pentobarbital from the Texas prison system to replace its supply of the sedative midazolam, which expired the day before the execution. Prieto's lawyers wanted the name of the supplier and proof that the drug was sterile and potent, warning that it might cause him "gratuitous and unnecessary pain." Texas allows its prison officials to keep the source of execution drugs secret, and Virginia did not provide it. On Wednesday a federal judge issued a temporary order halting the execution. On Thursday Judge Henry E. Hudson in Richmond lifted it, ruling that the lawyers had not shown the drugs were unsafe. Prieto had also argued that he was intellectually disabled and could not lawfully be executed. That evening the United States Supreme Court refused to stop it.
"It is time for this to end," Margaret O'Shea, a lawyer in Attorney General Mark Herring's office, had told the court, reminding it how long ago Raver and Fulton had died. "It is time for the carousel to end." Before the execution a clergy member, Brent Epperson, spoke with Prieto and asked whether he had offered or asked for absolution for his crimes. "He would not confirm or deny that, of course," Epperson said.
What this story covers. Every detail here comes from the Associated Press report of the execution as published by NBC4 Washington on October 1, 2015. Veronica Jefferson's and Manuel Sermeno's deaths were never tried; they are described here only as the charges and links the report records, not as proven crimes. The Virginia Department of Corrections execution page could not be opened for this story. The image is an illustration of a prison corridor, not the real Greensville Correctional Center.
Sources
- Serial Killer Alfredo Prieto Executed in Virginia, NBC4 Washington (Associated Press)