Finally....

Today I am skipping any talk of homesteading, misc happenings, family, etc. I have something else to say. It's something very important to me, and though some may not agree with my viewpoint on it, I frankly don't care. Sorry to be so blunt, but it's just the way it is. Understand when you've been here.

Today was a special day that's been waiting on the sidelines for 22 years. Today the state of Ohio executed Richard Cooey. That fat, whining, coward of a man finally got his just rewards.

Why does this mean so much to me? Look at the photo to the left and meet Wendy Offredo. I knew Wendy, we worked together. We weren't best friends, buddies, or pals, but friends and co-workers. It was 1986, and Wendy, same as me at the time, was 21 years old. We worked together at a Woolworth store at a shopping mall. Wendy was a beautiful girl, and worked 2 jobs to put herself through school.

Wendy and her friend, Dawn McCreery, were going home from Wendy's second job at Brown Derby, (where they both worked), when Cooey and his friends threw a large rock off a highway overpass, hitting her car. (and by rock, I mean bowling ball size) They drove around, posed as "good citizens", and offered help. The girls got a ride from them to a pay phone, and Cooey himself spoke to Wendy's mother over the phone, promising to bring them home safely after such an awful accident. Instead, Cooey and his friends drove the girls to a secluded area, and repeatedly raped them, beat them, and eventually murdered them both. He left those young girls there in the woods like garbage without a care in the world.

Wendy was scheduled to work that next day, and we got the call early in the morning before the store opened. I wish I could remember for sure, but I believe it was her own mother that called with the news. Let me say, there wasn't a dry eye in the store. Everyone loved Wendy, you coouldn't help it. She was always friendly, always at work on time, always smiling, and never complained about customers at the service desk where she worked every day. Most of the store employees sat downstairs in the break room, comforting each other, and trying to figure out WHY.

It's been 22 years since that day. 22 long years for Wendy and Dawn's families to get this closure. 22 years of waiting for the excuses to stop. Excuses like his last one, that he was "too fat" to execute...that his veins would be hard to find. I won't go into a rant about our prison system and how prisoners should do physical labor, but I still really want to know how someone gets so heavy in there....he blamed solitary confinement and prison food.

But now it's finally over. At 10:28 this morning, Cooey was declared dead by lethal injection. I'm not a religious man by any means, but if there is a hell, I truly hope he is burning....................................................................................finally.