Convicted Killer Gets Wish, Is Executed at San Quentin

Robert Lee Massie, a convicted killer who spent two separate stints on death row and gained notoriety while pursuing his own demise for more than 30 years, was executed by the State of California early this morning.

Massie, who killed in 1965 and again in 1979, was pronounced dead at San Quentin State Prison. A combination of drugs was injected into the 59-year-old murderer’s veins, first rendering him unconscious, and then killing him by stopping his heart and lungs.

The pale, slight inmate had spent more years on San Quentin’s death row than any currently condemned man.

His case was one of the most peculiar in state history.

In all, Massie was convicted and sentenced to die on three occasions for the two murders.

On Monday, the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals and the U.S. Supreme Court rejected efforts to stay the execution. The appeals by opponents of the death penalty were made despite Massie’s objections.

Outside the prison gates, several hundred protesters gathered. A dozen had walked 25 miles from San Francisco carrying signs that read “Abolish the Death Penalty” and “Executions Teach Vengeance and Violence.”

But prison officials said Massie, whom they described as upbeat in recent days, was preparing to die. His last meal included well-done fried oysters, french fries, two vanilla milkshakes and soft drinks, they said.

Relatives and friends of Massie’s victims also were preparing for the execution. About a dozen of them gathered for dinner at a Marin County restaurant--some meeting each other for the first time.

Most admitted they had been nervous and got little sleep the past few days.

“The hurt for my family will never stop,” said Rick Naumoff, the son of one of Massie’s victims. “We continue to deal with the loss of a husband, a father, a grandfather.”

Over the years, Massie repeatedly said he would rather be dead than live in confinement for the rest of his days.

He called his quest for death “a mission” to expose what he considered the unfair process of automatic appeals in California capital cases. Convicted killers, he said, should be allowed to stop all appeals.

“I’m tired,” he said in a recent telephone interview. “I just don’t want to live the rest of my life in jail.”

Massie’s death sentence stemmed from the fatal shooting in 1979 of 61-year-old Boris Naumoff in the liquor store Naumoff owned in San Francisco. But that was not the first time Massie had killed.

After a childhood of neglect and abuse in Virginia, Massie had drifted to California by 1965. He was 24, already a veteran of rough-and-tumble jails and well-schooled in crime.

On Jan. 7, 1965, Massie murdered Mildred Weiss, a mother of two married to a furniture store owner. Massie shot Weiss, 48, outside her San Gabriel home during a botched follow-home robbery.

Massie pleaded guilty, and by 1967 was so close to being executed that he had ordered his last meal and made a will. He escaped death when then-Gov. Ronald Reagan stayed the execution so that Massie could testify in the trial of his alleged accomplice.

After testifying, he returned to prison and remained there when the California Supreme Court temporarily banned executions.

Along the way, Massie began decrying the conditions on death row as harsh and cruel and he repeatedly told state officials he did not want to be kept alive.

By the early 1970s, he was dubbed the “Prisoner Who Wants to Die” by the news media. He wrote magazine articles making the case for his own execution and was quoted frequently.

But in 1972, the U.S. Supreme Court banned executions. Massie and more than 100 men and women on California’s death row had their sentences commuted to life with the possibility of parole.

Massie, a model prisoner who immersed himself in the law and became an advisor to many inmates, was given a second chance when the state’s parole board let him free in the summer of 1978.

Only months later, on Jan. 3, 1979, he killed Naumoff. Chuck Harris, a clerk at Naumoff’s liquor store who was hit by one of Massie’s bullets, survived with a leg wound.

After pleading guilty, Massie was sentenced to die. Again he welcomed the verdict, openly fighting the automatic appeals process.

But the state’s high court, led by then-Chief Justice Rose Elizabeth Bird, overturned Massie’s conviction because he had pleaded guilty against the advice of his attorney. The court ordered a retrial.

In 1989, Massie was convicted of murder for a third time.

He temporarily sought freedom through state and federal courts, but after a while he returned to saying he wanted to die.

“I just decided to step up to the plate and say enough,” Massie said earlier this month.

Two months ago, a federal judge ruled him competent and decided he could drop all appeals.

In recent days, death penalty opponents tried a flurry of last-ditch efforts to save Massie.

They argued in state and federal courts that Massie had long been racked by depression and other mental illness, a fact they claim was not argued strongly enough throughout Massie’s time in prison. They also said Frederick Baker, a corporate lawyer who represented Massie, had abdicated his responsibility by seeking to pave the way for Massie’s execution.

The late moves angered both Massie and the prosecutors who had sought his execution for years.

“I just find it curious that we are suddenly hearing from attorneys who have never met Massie and weren’t at any of his hearings in which a judge found him competent, that he knows what he is doing,” said Deputy Atty. Gen. Bruce Ortega. “I just don’t understand why they are not respecting his opinion.”

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Times staff writer John M. Glionna and special correspondent Richard Chon contributed to this story.

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Capital Punishment in California

* 1851-1967

The death penalty is carried out 502 times in California, 308 times by hanging and 194 times in the gas chamber. Before 1937, all condemned prisoners are hanged.

* April 1967

Aaron Mitchell, 37, is executed by lethal gas for killing a Sacramento police officer. He is the 194th and last prisoner who will die in the San Quentin gas chamber until 1992.

* February 1972

California Supreme Court declares the death penalty unconstitutional.

* June 1972

U.S. Supreme Court strikes down death penalty statutes in every other state.

* July 1976

U.S. Supreme Court rules that capital punishment is constitutional as long as jurors and judges who impose it are allowed some discretion.

* Jan. 17, 1977

Gary Gilmore is put to death by a firing squad in Utah, the first person to be executed after the Supreme Court ruling.

* August 1977

California Legislature votes in a new death penalty law.

* April 22, 1992

Robert Alton Harris, 39, is executed in San Quentin gas chamber after spending 11 years on death row. He was convicted in the 1978 slaying of two San Diego teenagers.

* Aug. 24, 1993

David Mason, 36, is put to death in the San Quentin gas chamber. He was convicted of killing five people.

* Oct. 4, 1994

A federal judge in San Francisco rules that gas chamber executions are unconstitutional. All subsequent executions are by lethal injection.

* Feb. 23, 1996

William G. Bonin,

49, is put to death. He confessed to raping, torturing and killing 21 boys and young men.

* May 3, 1996

Keith Daniel Williams, 48, is executed after 17 years on death row. He was convicted of killing three people.

* July 14, 1998

Thomas M. Thompson, 43, is executed. He was convicted of raping and murdering Ginger Fleischli.

* Feb. 9, 1999

Jaturun “Jay” Siripongs, 43, is executed. Siripongs was convicted of two murders.

* May 4, 1999

Manuel Pina Babbitt, 50, is put to death. He was sentenced

for the 1980 murder and attempted rape of 78-year-old Leah Schendel.

* March 15, 2000

Darrell Keith Rich, 45, is executed. Rich raped and murdered four women and girls during a two-month rampage in the summer of 1978.

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Compiled by Times researcher Maloy Moore