Ohio inmate scheduled to die

Prison officials in Ohio say Richard Cooey is to be executed for the rapes, beatings and killings of two sorority sisters 22 years ago.

Barring a last-minute court order, Cooey, now 41, is to be put to death by lethal injection at the state prison in Lucasville, the Dayton (Ohio) Daily News reported Monday, noting Gov. Ted Strickland has rejected Cooey's plea for clemency. The Ohio Supreme Court rejected a final appeal Monday, the Akron Beacon News reported, opening the way for Tuesday's 10 a.m. execution.

Cooey's appeals have gone on longer than the entire lives of either of the victims -- Wendy Offredo, 21, and Dawn McCreery, 20.

Cooey and a friend, Clinton Dickens, were convicted of disabling Offredo's car by dropping concrete on it from a bridge over Interstate 77. They offered the women help, attacked them in Cooey's car and dumped their bodies after carving an X on the abdomen of each woman, the News reported.

These were really fabulous girls whose lives were cut way too short, prosecutor Sherri Beven Walsh said.

Dickens was sentenced to life in prison and not the death penalty because he was a minor at the time of the killings, Beven Walsh said.