Serial killer Alfredo Prieto executed Thursday night in Virginia

Alfredo Prieto, a serial killer who had a series of appeals denied, was executed in Virginia on Thursday, October 1.
Prieto, a 49-year-old man from El Salvador, was linked to nearly a dozen murders, and had his lawyers appeal his execution multiple times. His lawyers attempted to persuade the prosecutors that he was intellectually disabled,. However, his appeals were ultimately denied.

According to the New York Daily News,Prieto was sentenced to death in Virginia in 2010 for the murder of a couple that took place nearly 20 years earlier. Alfredo was charged with killing Rachael Raver and her boyfriend, Warren Fulton III, who were both 22-years-old. They were both found shot to death in a wooded area several days after they were last seen at a Washington, D.C., nightspot.

Prieto was linked to the Virginia murders through DNA evidence while he was on death row in a prison in California for the rape and murder of a 15-year-old girl. The authorities said Prieto has been linked to at least six other murders in California and Virginia, but he was never charged because he had already been sentenced to death.
Prieto’s execution took place at Greensville Correctional Center in southern Virginia. He was given the choice of the electric chair or lethal injection. He chose the latter and entered the death chamber wearing glasses, a blue work shirt, blue work pants and sandals with no socks at 8:52 p.m. on Thursday.

Alfredo Prieto was executed in Viriginia by lethal injection. [Photo via Getty Images]

Alfredo was then lifted onto the gurney, where his cuffs were removed. The guards proceeded to place two leather straps across his chest, two across his legs, one around each ankle, and then one on each hand. A curtain was then pulled so that the witnesses could not see the medical personnel inserting the IVs into his arms. Once the curtain is pulled back, Prieto could be seen with his arms outstretched. A prison official then asks Prieto if he has any last words and holds a microphone down to him. He briefly thanked his supporters and then told them to “get this over with.”

“I would like to say thanks to all my lawyers, all my supporters and all my family members. Get this over with.”

After being injected with a deadly three-drug combination of pentobarbital, rocuronium bromids, and potassium chloride, Alfredo was pronounced dead at 9:17 p.m. His body was then taken by ambulance to the medical examiner’s office in Richmond, Virginia.
While it is not clear if they stayed to witness the execution, a visitors log showed that Alfredo was visited by his mother, Teodora Alvarado, his sister Yolanda Loucel, and his brother Guillermo Prieto, all from Pomona, California. He was also visited by a Catholic prison chaplain, the Rev. Richard Mooney from Petersburg, according to the Washington Post.

Alfredo Prieto, convicted serial killer, executed in Virginia.

“To me, the whole thing is so surreal,” Dede Raver, Rachael Raver’s sister, said late Thursday night. “It’s lasted so long, it’s hard to believe it’s come to an end.”

“I did not see any emotion in him. It kind of haunts me because I kind of know that’s the expression my sister saw. I found it absolutely disturbing.”

Dede said she did not expect him to apologize for what he had done to her sister, but she was glad she went. Her mother Veronica Raver, who died from stomach cancer in 2013, wanted to go, so Dede said she went on her behalf.
Prieto is the first inmate to be executed in Virginia in over three years. The last time an execution took place was in January 2013, when Robert Gleason Jr. was put to death using the electric chair.
[Photo via Shutterstock]