A drifter who came to Montana to become a mountain man and wound up murdering a couple was executed Tuesday morning, taking any hope of an explanation for the killings to his grave.

In the nine years Terry Allen Langford was on death row, he never said why he tied up and killed Ned and Celene Blackwood at their ranch home in 1988.Langford, 31, was executed by injection after nine years of swinging back and forth between resignation and court appeals.

It was only the state's second execution since 1943.

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