Missouri Executes Serial Murderer
A man who investigators say zigzagged across the United States raping and killing women was executed by injection early Wednesday for fatally slashing a woman who caught him breaking into her apartment.
Anthony Joe LaRette, a drifter who confessed to more than a dozen slayings, was put to death at the Potosi Correctional Center after the U.S. Supreme Court rejected a last-minute appeal.
On Death Row for 14 years, LaRette, 44, tantalized authorities with unsolicited details of killings in Colorado, Illinois, Louisiana, Mississippi, Nebraska, Texas, Virginia and Arkansas. He also confessed to slayings in Florida and Kansas in the 1970s.
“Tony was a serial murderer-rapist who basically traveled all over the United States by bus, and killed and raped women,” said investigator Richard Lee of the Cole County prosecutor’s office.
A Florida investigator who spoke on condition of anonymity said Tuesday that LaRette helped authorities solve at least three killings in that state.
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