States Execute Man Who Killed Woman by Knife, Man Who Killed Boy and Stuffed Him in Freezer

ATMORE, Ala. – An Alabama death row inmate was executed Thursday for the 1990 killing of a mother of six whose throat was slashed with a pocketknife.

Separately, a man convicted of battering his girlfriend's 8-year-old son and stuffing the dead body in a freezer was put to death in Oklahoma.

Willie McNair in Alabama was pronounced dead at 6:17 p.m. Thursday after being given a lethal injection at Holman Prison near Atmore. The 44-year-old man was condemned for the stabbing death of Ella Foy Riley, a 68-year-old retired textile worker.

Court records show Riley was stabbed to death in her home after refusing to give $20 to McNair, who was described as a cocaine addict.

The U.S. Supreme Court refused to block the execution of McNair, who had spent nearly 18 years on Alabama's death row. His was the fourth execution in Alabama this year and the first since April 16. There are 205 inmates on Alabama's death row.

In Oklahoma, state Department of Corrections spokesman Jerry Massie says 48-year-old Donald Gilson was pronounced dead at 6:19 p.m.

Gilson was convicted of first-degree murder in 1998 for the death of 8-year-old Shane Coffman. The boy's remains were found in an abandoned freezer outside a mobile home.

An autopsy showed two fractures to the boy's skull, a tooth missing from his right jaw and fractures to his collarbone, shoulder blades, ribs, legs and spine.

Gilson became the second person to be executed this year in Oklahoma.