Inmate who taunted victim’s mother executed

ATMORE, Ala. — An Alabama death row inmate who taunted his victim’s mother with grisly, graphic drawings and writings on the Internet was executed Thursday at Holman Prison.

The inmate, 62-year-old Jack Trawick, was pronounced dead at 6:17 p.m. CDT. He was executed by lethal injection for the 1992 abduction and slaying of Stephanie Gach, a 21-year-old college student in Birmingham.

With his last words, Trawick apologized to the people he hurt and asked their forgiveness.

“I want to apologize to the people I hurt. I ask for their forgiveness. I don’t deserve it, but I do ask for it,” Trawick said in a steady voice.

As he made the statement, he lay still on a hospital gurney looking at prison warden Grant Culliver, but not toward the witness room where family members of his victims were sitting.

Trawick filed no motions to try to stop the execution in the final days.

Trawick drew wide notice several years ago after he described how he beat, strangled and stabbed Gach and killed other women in writings posted on the Internet by a pen pal. He even taunted the victim’s mother, Mary Kate Gach, by name.

The Alabama Legislature passed a law this year aimed at Trawick that prohibits inmates from using such postings to profit from their crimes. Trawick did not sell his artwork and writings, which are still online.

“We’ve fought and we’ve fought but it comes down to the First Amendment,” Mary Gach said Wednesday.

Trawick was in a good mood Thursday as he spent the day meeting with family and friends in a visitation area at the prison, prisons spokesman Brian Corbett said. He said Trawick had been in a good mood all week.

The stocky Trawick ate his last meal at about 3 p.m. Thursday. He had requested fried chicken, french fries, onion soup and rolls.

Trawick gave some of his belongings Thursday to Tod Bohannon, who operates a Web Site that has sold the belongings of serial killers. He gave Bohannon a Bible, a dictionary, a wallet, a television set, assorted pictures and cosmetics, Corbett said.

Trawick gave a cousin, Mary Anne Pearson, a Bible and two pictures, Corbett said. He said prison officials would examine the items given away by Trawick to make sure there was nothing inappropriate.

Trawick was moved earlier in the week from his cell on death row to a holding cell adjacent to the execution chamber.

Trawick was sentenced to die in 1994 for Gach’s killing and has been on death row at Holman for 15 years. He was also convicted in the 1992 killing of Frances Aileen Pruitt and was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole for her death.

He also confessed to the 1972 killing of a Birmingham-area teenager, but was never tried in that case.

Prosecutors said Trawick abducted Gach in the parking lot of her apartment complex on Oct. 9, 1992 in Irondale, a suburb east of Birmingham. She was strangled, stabbed through the heart and beaten with a hammer. Her body was found the next day beside an isolated road south of Birmingham.

Gach’s mother did not come to Atmore for the execution, prison officials said. She had said earlier she would come to a nearby prison, but would not attend the execution. Stephanie Gach’s sister, Heather, along with Pruitt’s sister, Donna Middlebrook, were witnesses.

Stephanie Gach was a student at Jefferson State Community College and had attended the University of Montevallo, where she studied psychology.