Killer Dies In Oregon's First Execution In 34 Years -- He Admitted Killing 3 Homeless Men, Boy

SALEM, Ore. - The admitted killer of three homeless men and a 10-year-old boy he lured off the streets was put to death today in Oregon's first execution in 34 years.

South Carolina also executed a man by injection this morning. He

killed three people - including one he choked with a dog chain.

In Oregon, Douglas Franklin Wright had no final words but mouthed "I'm sorry," to the mother of one of his victims before the injection that killed him was administered. She nodded in response.

Wright, 56, had refused to appeal his execution. A prison log of his final days showed he had listened to Bob Dylan's "Knockin' On Heaven's Door" over and over.

He was sentenced to death for killing three homeless men he lured from Portland streets to central Oregon by promising them work. He was charged with killing a fourth homeless man, but that case never went to trial.

Wright served 12 years in prison for the 1969 murders of an Oregon woman and her mother. Last week, he confessed to kidnapping, molesting and killing a 10-year-old boy who had disappeared from Portland 12 years ago.

Oregon is the only state where voters have outlawed capital punishment twice, in 1914 and 1964. They voted to re-establish it in 1920 and 1978.

Before Wright, the last person executed in Oregon was LeeRoy Sanford McGahuey, who died in the gas chamber on Aug. 20, 1962, for killing a child with a hammer.

In South Carolina, Michael Torrence's lawyer read a short statement by the killer before his execution: "With no hope of reward on Earth, Michael Torrence has accepted God as his savior and asks for God's forgiveness, however undeserving Torrence is."

Torrence killed Dennis Lollis and Charles Bush in Midlands during a robbery in 1987. He stabbed Lollis as many as 19 times and choked Bush with a dog chain. A month later, he shot Cynthia Williams, a Charleston prostitute.

A federal appeals court yesterday denied an appeal by court-appointed lawyer Jay Elliott, who said Torrence was borderline mentally retarded, had claimed he was a Guatemalan guerrilla and had talked with Barbie dolls on Death Row.