POTOSI, Mo. (AP) — A man convicted in a 1984 murder of a tavern patron during a holdup was executed early Wednesday after 11th-hour appeals to federal courts and to Gov. Bob Holden failed.

Kenneth Kenley, 42, died at 12:03 a.m., two minutes after the first of three injections were administered at the Potosi Correctional Center, said Department of Corrections spokesman Tim Kniest.

He was the first Missouri inmate executed this year and the 60th since the state's 1989 reinstatement of the death penalty.

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