A man who claimed to be Jesus was executed in the electric chair early Friday for killing two girls in 1985 by wrapping their heads with duct tape. One of the murders was the basis for a TV movie.
Larry Gene Bell, 47, made no final statement, but he had said that his execution would deliver him to heaven.He was convicted of killing 17-year-old Shari Faye Smith and 9-year-old Debra Helmick about two weeks apart. He kidnapped them from their homes, in neighboring counties, and suffocated them with the tape.
Before he was captured, Bell taunted Shari's family with telephone calls describing how he killed her.
Police caught him by connecting him to an imprint of a phone number found on a will he made Shari write to her family. The 1991 CBS movie "Nightmare in Columbia County" was based on the case.