Convicted child killer Donald Moeller is set to die by lethal injection at 10 p.m. Tuesday. The 8th Circuit Court of Appeals dismissed the latest request for a stay of execution. Moeller gave up his last appeal several weeks ago where he admitted his guilt and that he accepts lethal injection as justice.
In May of 1990, a young girl was brutally raped and murdered. Her body was found in a wooded area near Lake Alvin. Former Lincoln County Prosecutor Scott Abdallah says authorities working the grisly case had little evidence and few leads.
"We had a body of a girl naked out in a field who’d been stabbed beyond belief and not a lot of clues, and so there was this mass manhunt to try and track down leads and try and find the perpetrator," Abdallah says.
One of hundreds of tip calls led police to Donald Moeller. The 37-year-old suspect had a criminal record and came from a reportedly abusive upbringing. Officials interviewed Moeller; he offered a bogus alibi but agreed to provide a blood sample. He disappeared soon after that.
Nine months later, Moeller stepped off an airplane in Sioux Falls with a coat draped around his shoulders and his hands cuffed in front of him as he walked to a waiting police car. Authorities in Washington state captured Moeller and returned him to South Dakota for a murder trial filled with gruesome evidence. A jury convicted him of murdering nine-year-old Becky O’Connell, and the panel sentenced him to death.
The 1992 trial was only the beginning of Moeller’s legal saga. Scott Abdallah was the second prosecutor to take on the murder case against Moeller in 1997. That’s because the South Dakota Supreme Court overturned Moeller’s first conviction on the grounds that the court allowed evidence about Moeller’s past crimes that shouldn’t have been introduced.
"He had assaulted people with knives in a similar way on three different occasions with three different victims, and so that was a lot of evidence that was introduced at the first trial that was ripped out of the second trial," Abdallah says.
The five year difference between the trials offered a big advantage, though. By the time Donald Moeller received a second trial, DNA technology advanced. Officials could compare Moeller’s blood sample to DNA taken from Becky O’Connell’s body. They found an impressive match.
"We actually had one lab testify that Donald Moeller matched the DNA from the semen donor, and the odds of a random match were about one in 130 million," Abdallah says. "So it was literally a fingerprint-type of evidence that we had in the second trial that we didn’t have the first trial."
Abdallah says, in 1997, Moeller had the opportunity to avoid the death penalty if he admitted to the crimes. He wouldn’t. Abdallah says Moeller always passionately denied that he killed Becky O’Connell. That was true as Moeller lodged nearly every appeal possible in court battles. South Dakota Attorney General Marty Jackley says those appeals lingered for more than two decades.
"Both the South Dakota Supreme Court and the United State Supreme Court have upheld Moeller’s conviction, as well as his death sentence, but Moeller has also challenged in carrying out its lethal injection protocol," Jackley says.
In the fall of 2012, now 60-year-old Donald Moeller entered federal court. His hair was long and grayed, and he wore a bright orange prison jumpsuit and shackles. Instead of arguing for his life, he asked the judge to throw out his appeal and let him die by lethal injection. Two months before, his attorney vaguely said Moeller accepted responsibility for killing Becky O’Connell. But on October 4th, Moeller spoke.
"I kidnapped, raped, and murdered Rebecca O’Connell on May 8th, 1990," Moeller said. "I killed the little girl. It is just that the punishment needs to be concluded."
"We heard directly from Donald Moeller. Donald Moeller did accept responsibility for the kidnapping, rape and murder of a little girl," Jackley says. "And, to use his words, he indicated, I have killed and I deserve to be killed."
Moeller’s admission and waiving of his rights didn’t stop other legal maneuvers. Just more than one week ahead of his lethal injection, a woman who calls herself a friend filed paperwork with federal courts to stay Donald Moeller’s execution. The courts dismissed those appeals. Moeller forfeited his final appeal and can in no way move to delay his death.
"I don't want to die," Moeller said in open court. "I want to pay what I owe."
Former prosecutor Scott Abdallah says Moeller owes his life for the heinous murder he committed.
"This is obviously the best the system can do to provide justice for a crime like this," Abdallah says. "Obviously we’ll never be able to bring Becky back, but we will have completed the process by carrying out the ultimate punishment for the person responsible. "
Only South Dakota’s governor or a court with jurisdiction, for instance, the South Dakota Supreme Court, can halt Donald Moeller’s execution. If those entities find no reason to intervene, Donald Moeller will die Tuesday night.
Becky O’Connell’s mother now lives in New York. She’s traveled back to South Dakota to witness the execution.
The American Civil Liberties Union has requests in to the courts. The ACLU wants to unseal documents detailing South Dakota’s lethal injection protocols. The state has to respond to that filing by November 1st, and no court has issued a stay of execution for Donald Moeller.