By Daily Mail Reporter
Last updated at 6:38 PM on 17th February 2011
Transvestite murdered three men in 1982
The longest-serving prisoner on death row, a Nazi who murdered three people, recited seven verses from the Bible in German before his execution today.
Frank Spisak, 59, was killed by lethal injection at Southern Ohio Correctional Facility in Lucasville shortly after 10 a.m., after the U.S. Supreme Court rejected his final appeal yesterday afternoon.
After the rejection he was served a last dinner of his choosing - spaghetti, salad, chocolate cake and coffee.
Murderer: Frank Spisak, who grew a Hitler moustache for his trial in 1983, was executed today after 27 years on death rowHe declined breakfast this morning, having only coffee, before attending a Catholic mass at 7 a.m..
Shortly after 10 a.m. he was taken in for his execution.
Spisak read the first seven Bible verses from chapter 21 of the book of Revelations from a handwritten yellow paper held over his head by a prison official, speaking in a halting voice and sometimes having trouble reading the verses.
The verses begin with the narrator saying he saw a new heaven and a new earth.
'I can't read it, it's too blurry, I can't read it,' he said at one point.
A warden adjusted his view and he continued.
'Heil Herr,' he appeared to say when he was finished. It was unclear what he meant, as the phrase is not used in German.
His struggles with the German drew snickers from witnesses, who included the daughter of one victim, two brothers of another and John Hardaway, a surviving shooting victim.
'Speak English, you fool,' said Jeffrey Duke, the brother of slaying victim Brian Warford.
After prison warden Donald Morgan signaled to start the sodium thiopental at about 10:22 a.m., Spisak's stomach rose and fell a few times, and after a minute he made several audible snoring sounds.
He swallowed a few times and grew still about 10:25 a.m., his lips starting to turn blue about two minutes later.
Facility: Police officers patrol the outer perimeter of the Southern Ohio Correctional Facility, where Spisak was executed'Oh God,' Eric Barnes, another of Warford's brothers, said as Spisak died.
Barnes held photographs toward Spisak of Warford as a baby and a teen, and held a crucifix as Spisak read the Bible verses.
Spisak glanced at Warford's brothers as he was strapped to the gurney, then looked away.
Warford's mother, Cora Warford, said in a statement afterward that 'justice has been served.'
Spisak conducted a shooting spree over several months in 1982, which he said had evolved from 'hunting parties' that targeted blacks.
He murdered two men and a teenager at Cleveland State University, shot one man seven times - remarkably, he survived - and attempted to shoot a white woman.
And I saw a new heaven and a new earth: for the first heaven and the first earth were passed away; and there was no more sea.
And I John saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down from God out of heaven, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband.
And I heard a great voice out of heaven saying, Behold, the tabernacle of God is with men, and he will dwell with them, and they shall be his people, and God himself shall be with them, and be their God.
And God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes; and there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain: for the former things are passed away.
And he that sat upon the throne said, Behold, I make all things new. And he said unto me, Write: for these words are true and faithful.
And he said unto me, It is done. I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end. I will give unto him that is athirst of the fountain of the water of life freely.
He that overcometh shall inherit all things; and I will be his God, and he shall be my son.
* King James version.
Spisak's first victim was the Reverend Horace Rickerson, 57, who was killed on February 1, 1982, in a campus bathroom where he had rebuffed Spisak's sexual advances.
Four months later, John Hardaway was shot seven times as he waited for a train by a man he later identified as Spisak. He survived and was planning to witness today's execution.
On August 9, 1982, Spisak shot at Coletta Dartt, a white university employee, as she left a toilet. Spisak missed and she survived by pushing him and running away.
Spisak's second murder victim was Timothy Sheehan, 50, who worked in Cleveland State's maintenance department. He was shot to death on August 27, 1982, because Spisak believed he might have witnessed Rickerson's murder.
Brian Warford, a 17-year-old student taking classes at Cleveland State to earn his high school degree, was Spisak's last victim when he was killed a few days later. He was shot in the head on August 30, 1982.
Rickerson, Warford and Hardaway were all black. Spisak told investigators he went on 'hunting parties' to shoot black people.
He was caught in early September 1982 after he was caught firing a gun out of his apartment window.
Spisak blamed his actions on his hatred of gays, blacks and Jews.
During his 1983 trial, Spisak grew a Hitler-style mustache, carried a copy of Hitler's book 'Mein Kampf' during the proceedings and gave a Nazi salute to the jury.
He appealed against his execution on the grounds of mental illness, with lawyers arguing he suffered from a severe bipolar disorder that wasn't diagnosed until years after he was convicted.
His condition was exacerbated by confusion about his sexual identity. Spisak identified himself as a woman and refered to himself in correspondence as Frances Spisak, a name his lawyers also used.
Death chamber: The witness room at Southern Ohio Correctional Facility where some of Spisak's surviving victims planned to see him dieCora Warford, mother of Spisak's last victim Brian, said she's made an exception to her opposition to capital punishment in this case, calling Spisak's final attempt to avoid execution by pleading mental illness the final straw.
'Justice has to be done, that's all,' said Mrs Warford, 75.
'He didn't care about the lives he took, and now it's time for him to go to rest.'
'Everybody loved Brian. He was just a good kid.'
Spisak was described by Carlo LoParo, spokesman for the Department of Rehabilitation and Correction, as 'calm and reserved' as he arrived at his place of execution.
Nazi transvestite: The most recent picture of Frank Spisak, aka, Frances Spisak met with his daughter at the the weekend, and spent time with his lawyers and spiritual advisers yesterday afternoon.
For his last meal dinner on Wednesday night Spisak selected spaghetti with tomato sauce but no meat, salad, chocolate cake and coffee with cream and sugar.
Last month, Spisak's attorneys asked the Ohio Parole Board to spare his life, on mental health grounds. Spisak was housed in a prison unit reserved for death row inmates being treated for mental illnesses.
The lawyers argued the diagnosis could have led jurors to consider a different sentence in his original trial.
'To go forward with this execution would represent a departure from the strong societal consensus that the death penalty should be reserved for the worst of the worst, and that we arguably demean ourselves when we impose it on the severely mentally ill,' his attorneys, Alan Rossman and Michael Benza, told the parole board.
Both the parole board and Governor John Kasich, making his first decision on a condemned killer's request for mercy, rejected Spisak's plea.
'Spisak killed three people, tried to kill at least one other, and shot at a fifth in his admitted plan to kill as many African-Americans as possible and start a race war in Cleveland,' the board said in its January 21 ruling.
'His victims were innocent, unsuspecting strangers.'
Spisak's death will also mark the last time the State of Ohio uses the scarce drug sodium thiopental to administer the death penalty, with the state giving it up in favour of a more readily available substitute.
