DEATH ROW Killer has steak dinner before execution today

Wickline spoke to his spiritual adviser and didn't appear despondent.
By JEFF ORTEGA
VINDICATOR CORRESPONDENT
LUCASVILLE, Ohio -- Killer William D. Wickline appeared in positive spirits Monday, just one day before he was scheduled to die for the 1980s slaying and dismembering of two central Ohioans.
Andrea Dean, state prisons spokeswoman, said Wickline, 52, didn't appear despondent when he arrived at the Southern Ohio Correctional Facility at 9:45 a.m. Monday, Dean said. Wickline had been held on death row at the Mansfield Correctional Institution.
Clad in leg irons and watched by corrections officers, Wickline spent some of Monday afternoon and early evening meeting with his brothers, David Wickline of Columbus and Robert Wickline, and Robert Wickline's wife in a room at the building at the southern Ohio maximum-security prison that holds the Death House where executions are conducted, Dean said.
The hometown of Robert Wickline and the name of his wife were not immediately available.
William Wickline also spoke to his spiritual adviser, Gary Sims, the religious services administrator for the Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction, Dean said.
Wickline had a last meal consisting of an 8-ounce filet mignon, cooked medium rare, old-fashioned potato salad, six bread rolls with butter, and fresh strawberries and shortcake and butter pecan ice cream for dessert, Dean said.
The prison already had the steak, but the remainder of the meal was purchased at a Portsmouth, Ohio, supermarket for $11.66, Dean said.
William Wickline requested and was given four packs of Pall Mall cigarettes, six bottles of Sprite and six bottles of Mountain Dew, Dean said.
What was scheduled
Wickline was to die at 10 a.m. today by lethal injection.
According to court records, on Aug. 14, 1982, Wickline decapitated 28-year-old Christopher Lerch of suburban Columbus after a dispute over a $6,000 cocaine debt.
Wickline then strangled Lerch's wife, 25-year-old Peggy Ann, and dismembered both corpses and got rid of the body parts in trash bags placed in trash cans throughout the area, court records say.
No remains of the Lerchs were ever found, but Wickline was convicted of two counts of aggravated murder in Franklin County Common Pleas Court and sentenced to death.
According to prison officials, scheduled to witness Wickline's demise were Nancy Fowler, who is Peggy Ann Lerch's sister; Pat Shirin from the Franklin County prosecutor's office; and Keith Thatcher, a law officer from Blendon Township in suburban Columbus.
Also scheduled to witness the execution were Wickline's brothers and Columbus attorney Lewis Williams, prison officials said.
A Wickline appeal before the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Cincinnati has been denied. Also, Republican Gov. Bob Taft has denied clemency in the case.
Wickline's execution would be the 11th in Ohio since 1999.
XEditor's note: Jeff Ortega is to be a press pool witness for the Wickline execution.