An ex-soldier who raped and murdered a nurse he was convinced was a witch has been executed after 16 years on death row.

William LeCroy was put to death by lethal injection on Tuesday evening, the sixth federal execution since July after a lengthy hiatus in capital punishment at a national level.

The 50-year-old was pronounced dead at 9.06pm local time after officials with the US Bureau of Prisons administered him a fatal dose of the barbiturate pentobarbital.

The execution took place in Terre Haute, Indiana and came shortly after the US Supreme Court denied an 11th-hour petition.

Nurse Joann Lee Tiesler was raped and murdered by LeCroy (

It sought a stay until LeCroy's principal lawyer - who suffers from a chronic health condition - could travel safely without fear of contracting Covid-19.

As part of their plea, his lawyers also argued the death of LeCroy's brother in 2010 should be taken into account for the suffering of LeCroy's family.

Georgia State Trooper Chad LeCroy died during a routine traffic stop, according to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

The Federal Corrections Complex in Terre Haute, Indiana (

LeCroy was convicted and sentenced to death in Georgia in 2004 for the carjacking, rape and murder of Joann Tiesler, a 30-year-old nurse, after breaking into her home.

He thought his victim had "cast a spell on him" after becoming "obsessed with witchcraft" on being dismissed from the army for going AWOL.

The killer had broken into her home while she was out shopping in October 2001.

As she entered, he shot at her, before raping her, and stabbing her in the back.

LeCroy had written a note asking for Joann's forgiveness (

LeCroy later told investigators he mistakenly believed Joann was his former babysitter who he claimed had sexually abused him as a child.

He hoped killing her would reverse a "hex" put on him, reports the New York Post.

He later said after killing her he realised this was not true.

LeCroy was caught two days later in Joann's vehicle at the US-Canadian border with notes scribbled on the back of a torn map, according to prosecutors.

The death row inmate was executed by lethal injection (
Corbis via Getty Images)

"Please, please, please forgive me Joanne," read one note by LeCroy, who misspelled the victim's name.

"You were an angel and I killed you. Now I have to live with that and I can never go home. I am a vagabond and doomed to hell."

His execution marked the sixth death sentence the US government has carried out during the past three months.

It is more than the total number of federal executions carried out under all of President Donald Trump's White House predecessors combined since 1963.

Another execution is planned for Thursday.

Christopher Vialva, a convicted murderer, is set to become the first black man to face the federal death penalty under Trump.

The president has has long been an outspoken advocate for capital punishment and his administration ended an informal 17-year-hiatus in federal executions in July.



Last month, US District Judge Tanya Chutkan in Washington DC sided with condemned inmates in ruling that the Justice Department was violating the Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act in not seeking a doctor's prescription to administer the highly regulated barbiturate.

But a three-judge panel of the US Circuit Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit said the violation did not in itself amount to "irreparable harm" and allowed federal executions to proceed.

Chutkan previously issued multiple orders halting planned executions while litigation continued.

Each of those was overturned by either the Circuit Court or the US Supreme Court, whose conservative majority said that legal challenges to pentobarbital injections, also used by several state governments to execute prisoners, were unlikely to prevail.