Richard Wade Cooey II (June 9, 1967 – October 14, 2008) was an American murderer. With Clinton Dickens, he was responsible for the murders of 21-year-old Wendy Offredo and 20-year-old Dawn McCreery in

Akron, Ohio Akron () is the fifth-largest city in the U.S. state of Ohio and is the county seat of Summit County. It is located on the western edge of the Glaciated Allegheny Plateau, about south of downtown Cleveland. As of the 2020 Census, the city prop ...

, on September 1, 1986. He became notable for his argument that, with his weight of over , he was too obese to be executed an argument ultimately rejected by the courts.

Youth

Cooey was born in

Akron Akron () is the fifth-largest city in the U.S. state of Ohio and is the county seat of Summit County. It is located on the western edge of the Glaciated Allegheny Plateau, about south of downtown Cleveland. As of the 2020 Census, the city ...

Ohio Ohio () is a state in the Midwestern region of the United States. Of the fifty U.S. states, it is the 34th-largest by area, and with a population of nearly 11.8 million, is the seventh-most populous and tenth-most densely populated. The sta ...

. He lived in Stow with his parents until they divorced when he was 11. He spent his junior high years and high school years between Stow, with his father, and Akron, with his paternal grandmother. Cooey graduated from Stow High School in 1985 and enlisted in the

U.S. Army The United States Army (USA) is the land service branch of the United States Armed Forces. It is one of the eight U.S. uniformed services, and is designated as the Army of the United States in the U.S. Constitution.Article II, section 2, cl ...

. The following summer, he returned on

leave Leave may refer to: * Permission (disambiguation) ** Permitted absence from work *** Leave of absence, a period of time that one is to be away from one's primary job while maintaining the status of employee *** Annual leave, allowance of time away ...

Case

Early on the morning of September 1, 1986, Cooey, Dickens and Kenneth Horonetz, Jr. were throwing chunks of concrete off the Stoner Street Bridge onto U.S. Interstate 77 in Akron. One of the chunks thrown by Dickens struck the vehicle of a

University of Akron The University of Akron is a public research university in Akron, Ohio. It is part of the University System of Ohio. As a STEM-focused institution, it focuses on industries such as polymers, advanced materials, and engineering. It is classifie ...

student, 21-year-old Wendy Offredo. Also in the vehicle was another student, 20-year-old Dawn McCreery. Pretending to rescue both students, the three men actually ended up kidnapping them. Cooey, then age 19, and Dickens, age 17, took the women to a field behind the

Rolling Acres Mall Rolling Acres Mall was a shopping mall located in the Rolling Acres area of Akron, Ohio, United States. Built in 1975, it originally included approximately 21 stores, with Sears as the main anchor store. Later expansions added several more stores ...

where they raped, stabbed, and tortured them for three and one-half hours, eventually choking and bludgeoning them to death and abandoning the bodies. They also carved X's into the victims' abdomens. Cooey and Dickens each blamed the other for the actual murders, Horonetz having left the car before the violence began. Cooey bragged about the murders to close friends and was eventually turned in to authorities. He was convicted on November 14, 1986, and sentenced to death. Dickens, who was a minor at the time of the murders, could not be sentenced to death under Ohio laws, and is serving a life sentence in prison. Horonetz, then age 18, and another suspect, Terry Grant, age 19, were charged with obstruction of justice in the case for participating in the destruction of evidence. Grant was sentenced to two years' probation. Horonetz was released on parole after serving one year of a three-to-fifteen year prison sentence for felonious assault. Cooey later claimed that he did not kill or beat anyone. He admitted to raping the women, claiming he did "rape under duress". He also stated that he was under the influence of alcohol and illegal drugs, such as cocaine and opium, at the time.

Execution

Cooey was confined at the

Southern Ohio Correctional Facility The Southern Ohio Correctional Facility (commonly referred to as Lucasville) is a maximum security prison located just outside Lucasville in Scioto County, Ohio. The prison was constructed in 1972. As of 2022, the warden is Donald Redwood. The ...

. He was originally scheduled to be executed July 24, 2003, but the execution was stayed to allow further investigation of his case. In February 2005 he attempted to escape. Cooey argued that his obesity rendered lethal injection an inhumane form of execution because (he claimed) his clogged veins would prevent the first drug administered during the executionmeant to render the prisoner insensiblefrom having full effect. He also claimed that prison food was responsible for his obesity. The argument was rejected and he was executed on October 14, 2008.

References

General references

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External links

United States 6th Circuit Court of Appeals opinions
regarding Cooey
State of Ohio Adult Parole Authority report recommending against death sentence clemency
{{DEFAULTSORT:Cooey, Richard 1967 births 2008 deaths 20th-century American criminals 21st-century executions by Ohio 21st-century executions of American people People executed by Ohio by lethal injection American people executed for murder People convicted of murder by Ohio People from Akron, Ohio Executed people from Ohio People from Stow, Ohio