Death Watch Speaks

Obituary Jack Trawick, Alabama

After asking for forgiveness from those he hurt, twice-convicted murderer Jack Trawick died by lethal injection Thursday evening, as relatives of the victims watched.

Trawick, 62, who also had claimed to have committed another Birmingham-area murder and two in the Pacific Northwest, was executed for killing Stephanie Gach, 21, on the night of Oct. 9, 1992.

He had been on death row at Holman Correctional Facility since 1994, and no legal efforts were made to stop his execution.

In his final statement, Trawick spoke into a microphone: "I wish to apologize to the people who I have hurt and I ask for their forgiveness. I don't deserve it, but I do ask for it." That would be his last public statement.

Stephanie Gach's sister Heather watched Trawick die. So did Donna Middlebrooks, sister of Aileen Pruitt, 26, whom Trawick was convicted of stabbing to death a few months before Gach's death. Trawick had been sentenced to life without parole for that killing.

Both said they were surprised by Trawick's words of apology. "The Jack Trawick I've seen has been kind of unremorseful, reveling in the attention he got for being a serial killer," said Heather Gach after the execution. "But he gave no indication of that tonight."

Middlebrooks, with tears running down her face, said she was praying for Trawick as he died. "I would have told him that I had forgiven him a long time ago. I really do think he was sincere," she said referring to his apology. "I was not expecting it at all."

Prison officials said Trawick was in a good mood throughout the day, receiving visitors and eating a last meal.

Trawick's execution ended a life that his defense attorney said was plagued by mental illness, and decades of crime.

After he was convicted of Gach's murder in 1994, Trawick wrote Circuit Judge James Hard, who presided in his trial. In the letter, Trawick told Hard that if he did not sentence him to death but to time in the prison system, he would kill a prison system employee. Hard sentenced him to death.

Trawick's execution was the 5th this year in Alabama. He was the 196th inmate to be put to death by the state since 1927, the 43rd since executions resumed in 1983 after an 18-year pause, and the 19th to die by lethal injection.

(source: Birmingham News)