ExecutedToday.com

On this date in 1997, serial killer Ricky Lee Green died by lethal injection in Texas.

The radiator repairman was executed specifically for castrating and stabbing to death Steven Fefferman in 1986, but he killed at least three other people — two women and a 16-year-old boy — and investigators associated his m.o. with up to eight other unsolved murders. (Green also copped to another murder after his conviction, possibly to help another man, William Chappell, avoid execution. It didn’t work; Chappell was executed for that crime in 2002.)

“They all deserved it. They were kind of the dregs of society.”

“A Jekyll and Hyde thing” is how Green’s true-crime biographer characterized him — a lifetime of physical and sexual abuse and a drug habit dating to childhood had seriously warped the dude.

And the most famous serial killer from tiny Boyd, Texas might’ve kept getting away with it if wasn’t for his darn estranged wife.

Someone sure was grateful for Sharon Dollar Green’s help: even though she’d participated in some of the murders, she shopped hubby and skated with ten years’ probation as more Green’s victim than his accomplice.

Green went the popular “death row conversion” route while awaiting the inevitable, or so — atheists in foxholes and all — maintained his last statement.

I want to thank the Lord for giving me this opportunity to get to know Him. He has shown me a lot and He has changed me in the past two months.

I have been in prison 8 1/2 years and on death row for 7, and I have not gotten into any trouble. I feel like I am not a threat to society anymore. I feel like my punishment is over, but my friends are now being punished.

I thank the Lord for all He has done for me.

I do want to tell the …

But the lethal cocktail had begun, and the sentiment went to the grave with Ricky Lee Green.

Also On This Date

• 1789: Rachel Wall, female pirate
• Themed Set: Women Who Kill