LUCASVILLE - "I refute you, Satan,'' declared the mother of Darrell W. Ferguson as her 28-year-old son was put to death this morning for the brutal stabbing and stomping of three elderly Dayton residents five years ago.
"Satan, you're not as strong as you thought you were,'' sobbed Donna Davis. "All you did was make people suffer like you like to do. But you didn't get him.''
Ferguson took advantage of a two-day pass from a Cincinnati drug abuse treatment program in 2001 to launch a murder and robbery spree to fuel his crack cocaine and chemical-huffing habit, sometimes leaving his victims alive and sometimes dead.
He brutally stabbed 61-year-old Thomas King Sr. in his Dayton home on Dec. 23, 2001, and stomped and kicked him with his steel-toed boots. A day later, he did the same to Arlie and Mae Fugate, aged 68 and 69.
He left bloody impressions of his boot on the cheek of Mr. Fugate and on Mr. King's pants. DNA testing of his boots found probable blood matches for all three victims.
Ferguson confessed to the crimes with graphic detail after his arrest and personally requested the death penalty in letters to the judge and prosecutor.
"(W)hat I done is done and if I could bring them back I wouldn't,'' his letter to the judge read. "I have no Remorse for what I did.''
Ferguson was Ohio's sixth volunteer, prematurely ending what could have been years of additional appeals to hasten his death. He refused to participate in his own clemency hearing, but could have stopped his execution at any time right up to the point that the execution drugs began to flow.
He taunted the families of his victims during his sentencing hearing and posted poems and essays about his crimes and his Satanic beliefs on his personal web site. He made no comment to members of the victims' families, but to his parents, he said, "Mom and Dad, I love you both. I love you a lot. I wish you all the best.''
After the execution, his mother denied that her son was a Satanist, saying he used that to accelerate his execution and avoid life in prison.
Contact Jim Provance at: jprovance@theblade.com, or 614-221-0496.
Read more in later editions of The Blade and toledoblade.com.
advertisement
