UPDATE: RICHARD COOEY EXECUTED.

Richard Cooey, a convicted rapist and murderer now currently on death row, says he’s so fat that Ohio executioners would have trouble finding his veins and he might not be properly anesthetized ensuring a humane death. His execution is scheduled for October 14th.

Richard Cooey
Richard Cooey




Richard Cooey age 41, was sentenced to die for raping and murdering two University of Akron students in 1986. A federal judge granted him a last-minute reprieve in 2003. In April, he lost a challenge to Ohio’s lethal injection process when the US Supreme Court said he had missed a deadline to file a lawsuit.

And now his lawyers argue in a federal lawsuit filed today that Cooey who is 5′7 and 267 pounds had poor veins when he faced execution five years ago and the problem has been worsened by weight gain. The lawsuit also says a drug Cooey is taking for migraine headaches could diminish the effectiveness of the first of three drugs Ohio uses in its execution process. Therefore, for all these reasons, he should receive a stay of execution - again.

Cry me a river. Let’s talk about what he did.

On Sept. 1, 1986, the bodies of two Akron University coeds, 20-year-old Dawn McCreery and 21-year-old Wendy Offredo, were found in a field behind Rolling Acres Mall.

They had been tortured, raped, beaten and then strangled to death.

Here are a few of the details that should not be overlooked:

A chunk of concrete dropped from an Interstate 77 bridge crashing onto Offredo’s black Pontiac Fiero as she and McCreery were returning from a waitressing shift in the wee hours of the morning.

The concrete had been dropped by then 17 year old Clint Dickens, who along with Cooey and Kenneth Horonetz jumped into Cooey’s car and pretended to rescue the women. Instead, the three men took McCreery and Offredo to a wooded area. Horonetz got “scared” and fled, after which Cooey and Dickens subjected McCreery and Offredo to 3½ hours “of fear and torture and agony,” Summit County Prosecutor Sherri Bevan Walsh testified at the trial.

Another prosecutor, Tim Prichard of the Ohio attorney general’s capital crimes section, said the sheer savagery of the attack was “unlike anything I’ve ever seen before.” By the time McCreery and Offredo were dead, they had been repeatedly raped, stabbed with a pocket knife and bludgeoned with a nightstick. Cooey then carved the letter X into the stomachs of both women.

Dawn McCreevy was a voracious reader who planned a career in fashion and marketing and longed to travel to London. Wendy Offredo was a National Honor Society scholar who aspired to be a fashion model and actress. Both girls, loved and missed terribly to this day, by family and friends.

Clint Dickens was sentenced to 99 years in prison. The other attacker and leader of the crime, Richard Cooey was condemned to death. For all these years, Cooey has tried to dodge the death penalty he received by using legal loopholds over and over again.

If we are going to have a death penalty in this country, these are the kinds of people the death penalty is for. Execute him.

UPDATED 9/2/08: The Ohio Parole Board recommended today that Death row inmate Richard Wade Cooey should be executed for killing two University of Akron students in 1986. The board unanimously rejected Cooey’s request for clemency.

At his clemency hearing last week, Cooey’s attorneys did not deny that their client was guilty but argued he did not get a fair trial, which might have kept him off death row. They also said that he is now remorseful.

The families of Offredo and McCreery said Cooey has never expressed remorse. They asked the parole board to deny his request for life in prison as opposed to death by lethal injection.

Governor Strickland could reject the parole board’s recommendation, though that appears unlikely.

Cooey also has filed a pending federal lawsuit, claiming that — at 5 feet 7 inches and at least 275 pounds — that he is too fat to be executed. It is unclear if that matter will be addressed before Oct. 14.

Let’s hope the clock finally runs out on this SOB.

UPDATE 10/14/08: Well the clock did run out on this SOB. Richard Cooey was executed this morning at 10:28 by lethal injection. And there were no problems finding his veins. Good riddance.

Dawn McCreeryWendy Offredo
Dawn McCreery and Wendy Offredo Photos