In his final statement, convicted rapist and killer Jeffrey Ferguson wrote that he prays “for the victim’s family to have peace in their hearts one day and lose the anger, hate and need for revenge that has driven them” and that they find “forgiveness, compassion and love in their hearts instead.”

However, Kelli Hall’s father, Jim Hall, told reporters after the execution that what Ferguson felt in dying wasn’t one iota compared to the fear and pain his daughter felt when her life was taken from her at age 17.

Jim Hall was joined by his former wife and Kelli’s mother, Susan King, two brothers, Stephen (and Melissa) Hall and Michael Venegoni, Jr., and a cousin, Chris Parmeter, in saying that today was a “special day for Kelli’s family.”

“It’s been a very long 25 years waiting for this execution, way too long,” Jim said. “My family and I have been devastated for years over this. His family was devastated by this. This basically tore two families apart. That should have never been. It’s been so long, it tested our ability to move forward.”

“They took her someplace, they undressed her and Kenneth Ousley raped her while Ferguson stood by and waited his turn,” Jim said, fighting to keep his composure. “Ferguson was more violent than Ousley, because he killed her while he was raping her.”

Kelli Hall’s family speaks to the press after Ferguson is executed.

He says the Hall family was elated when an execution date had been set last month.

“We waited 25 years for that news,” Jim said. “It’s been 301 months since we buried Kelli. To the day.”

He says now, maybe, his family can move on.

“I’m not sure. We’ll find out starting tomorrow,” he said. “Kelli can rest now.”

“It’s over, thank God,” said Kelli’s mother, Susan King.

Governor Jay Nixon issued a brief statement about the execution, saying that Jeffrey Ferguson was convicted of Kelli’s murder and sentenced to the ultimate punishment provided by Missouri law.

“That sentence has now been carried out,” Nixon said. “I ask that Missourians remember Kelli Hall at this time and join us in keeping her family in their thoughts and prayers.”

Ferguson’s brother, friend and two daughters also witnessed the execution. His daughters wept as the curtain was drawn and he lie on the gurney. As he had said he would, Ferguson made funny faces at them, and mouthed that he loved them.

He was then administered a lethal dose of pentobarbital, waggled his feet rapidly, took a few breaths, then closed his eyes. He was pronounced dead shortly after.

One week to live. Jeffrey Ferguson says he’s been moved into solitary confinement, “the hole,” and expects to be transferred from the prison in Potosi to Bonne Terre on Friday. 

Though he’s been cut off from the rest of the prison population and his friends there, he maintains contact with his loved ones on the outside.

“My two brothers and brothers wife and my children and grandchildren and my friends, a whole network of people,” he said. “A lot of people have been calling and sending letters.”

Including letters, he said, from other victims’ families. Those who “want to know about forgiveness.”

Ferguson says he was blacked out on alcohol and cocaine when 17-year-old Kelli Hall was abducted, raped and murdered in St. Charles. He says he might or might not have committed the crime. However, he has taken responsibility for the crime and is ready to pay the ultimate price. Ferguson is to be executed by lethal injection at midnight on March 26th.

“Drinking and drugging, and blacking out every night,” he said. “For the last two years, I would drink until I passed out and then I’d wake up places I didn’t know where I was at and what I did. And this night I went out with these guys and we abducted and sexually assaulted and killed this gal, I don’t even remember seeing this gal. I don’t know how I got home that night, none of that. But, you know, maybe … the way the prosecutor said … I don’t know, it seems a little far fetched that a guy in that bad of shape would be able to do all that but … they gave me the death penalty.”

Ferguson said he was weak and didn’t have any faith or courage.

“I should have been a better man,” he said. “This is what you get.”

Ferguson seems conflicted on whether he wants to live or die. He says he wants to live, and that the death penalty doesn’t bring justice to victims’ families, but that he’s a Christian man and ready to “meet his maker.”

“It was 25 years ago, this is just a terrible way to do things,” he said. “I’m not complaining about being put to death, you know, kill me. I’m going to go to heaven to be with my Lord and Savior. That beats this place.”

Meanwhile, he said he’s talking to his family to get funeral arrangements in place and try to make this as easy as possible on them. He knows he cannot do that for Kelli Hall’s family. He is sorry, but said he has no words that can take away their pain.

“They had this bad thing happen to them,” he said. “They don’t need to have my name shoved in their face, and they don’t need to have their wounds opened again like this execution’s going to do. They’re going to bring them down there … stick microphones in their face, they’re going to start it all over again. It’s going to be like the first day for them all over again.”

This isn’t the first time Ferguson’s number has come up. He was scheduled to die by lethal injection in 2011, after Martin Link, when the state’s three-drug protocol was brought into question. Link was the last offender in Missouri to be put to death using the three-drug cocktail containing sodium pentothal, which renders the offender unconscious, followed by pancuronium bromide, which causes paralysis, and finally, potassium chloride, which stops the heart.

Since then, four offenders have been put to death using a single drug protocol, pentobarbital. It’s the same drug commonly used to euthanize animals and was once the standard drug used to put people under before surgery.

Ferguson thinks the process is cruel and unusual, but he’s not talking about the clinical aspect. He said he was prepared to die three years ago, “packed up, ready to go.”

“I told everybody it was their last visit,” he said. “You talk about cruel and unusual, it’s like somebody takes a gun and has a bullet in it and they play Russian Roulette with you and they keep clicking the chamber and they keep pointing it right at your head and you know they’re going to kill you, and ‘click’ and then it’s like, ‘Well, hang on a minute, let me re-load.’

“Do it or don’t do it,” he said. “Don’t dangle me over the fire. Get it over with. I’m ready to get it over with.”

Ferguson said his lawyer is still working to get the execution stayed or to get his sentence commuted, but that he doesn’t put too much faith in that. He said the only person that you can count on in life is Jesus Christ. And because of that, he’s making plans with his family for his funeral.

“I don’t have any fear in my heart at all,” he said. “I’m ready to do this. I’m ready to go. I’m going to go up there, they’re going to pull the curtains open and my family is going to be there. And I’m going to look at them and I’m going to smile and then make a funny face at them and they’re going to laugh, and then I’m going to tell them I love them and then I’ll go to sleep and die. Then I’m going to open my eyes and it’ll be Jesus and he’ll be going, ‘Come here, man!’ and it’ll be fantastic. That’s the plan.”

(AUDIO) Interview with Jeffrey Ferguson (29:16)

The Supreme Court has issued show-cause orders for two more Death Row inmates — Michael Shane Worthington and Leon Taylor. A show-cause order is issued when the court believes all appeals have been exhausted, meaning there is no reason why the death sentence should not be carried out.

Michael Shane Worthington (left) and Leon Taylor enter the next phase in the death penalty process.

Michael Shane Worthington was found guilty of murder, rape, and robbery in 19-95. The victim was his Lake St. Louis neighbor, Melinda Griffin.

Worthington claimed he was black-out drunk after four days of alcohol and cocaine and did not remember his actions.
Leon Taylor is on Death Row for the 19-94 shooting death of Robert Newton, a gas station attendant in Independance, during an armed robbery. Taylor also tried to shoot Newton’s eight-year-old step daughter, but because his gun jammed, her life was spared.

The Supreme Court of Missouri has given Taylor and Worthington’s attorneys until April 24th to file appeals. If no motions are filed, the court will issue warrants for their deaths.

For more information on Taylor, click HERE. For more on Worthington, click HERE. 

Missouri Attorney General Chris Koster is praising a federal court ruling upholding Missouri’s funeral-protest law as constitutional and enforceable.

“My office has been fighting for five years to ensure that funerals for fallen soldiers can be free of disruptive protesters shouting right outside the church door,” Koster said in a press release. “No parent who has lost a child should be confronted by the hate and intolerance of strangers, and today’s ruling means parents and other loved ones will have a protective boundary from protesters.”

The Missouri legislature passed a bill in 2006 that bans protests at funerals, particularly those for members of the armed forces. The law prohibits picketing or other protest activities within 300 feet of any funeral location during a funeral or memorial service or within one hour before or after the event.

Shirley Phelps-Roper, daughter of Westboro Baptist Church leader Fred Phelps, filed a lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of the law in 2006. However, the Federal District Court for the Western District of Missouri has denied Phelps-Roper’s final claims that the law was unconstitutional and lifted the injunction against enforcing the law that has been in place since January 2009.

Koster said the ruling means law enforcement across the state can now enforce the time and distance provisions of the funeral-protest law. Under the law, it is illegal for any individual to protest within 300 feet of any location at which a funeral is held, within one hour before the beginning of the funeral until one hour after the end of the funeral.