Poetic Justice: The Story of Paul Warner Powell, the Man Who Unwittingly Signed His Own Death Warrant

Warning: The following story contains graphic material, including descriptions of murder and rape, which some readers may find disturbing. Discretion is advised.

Every once in a while, we hear about stories of terrible people getting their richly deserved comeuppance, be it a murderer or rapist getting a severe beating in prison or a home invader being shot by a resident he intended to burgle.

But the best comeuppance, in my opinion, is when a person brings about their own downfall. One cannot deny that it is satisfying to see criminals fall victim to their own methods, which, in many cases, they had previously used to cause unimaginable pain to innocent people.

Now, this is a true story about a very evil man who committed a very evil crime.
This man, Paul Warner Powell, nearly escaped justice for his heinous act, but, in a twist of fate, his sadistic, arrogant behavior led him directly to where he belonged.

Stacie Reed

Stacie Lynn Reed was born on August 21, 1982, to a middle-class family in the small town of Yorkshire, just outside the historic city of Manassas, Virginia. Two years later, her younger sister, Kristie Erin Reed, was born. The two sisters were very close, and Stacie Reed had high ambitions for her life. She was a friendly, hardworking student who got good grades, and was admired by her family and her peers. She even had a boyfriend, whom she was planning to take to a military ball hosted by the ROTC.

When Stacie entered high school in 1998, the 16-year-old decided she wanted to join the military. Stacie enlisted in the Junior Reserve Officers Training Corps and a week later had her hair shaved into a military-style crew cut. She had an optimistic goal; Stacie wanted to become the first female to join the elite US Navy SEALs.

Paul Powell: Man of Evil

Right down the road from the Reed’s house, there lived a young man by the name of Paul Warner Powell. The 20-year-old Powell, also a Manassas native, had been a friend of Stacie Reed since childhood. Their friendship was originally non-romantic, but, eventually, Powell became infatuated with the 16-year-old Stacie, despite knowing full well that such a relationship would be highly illegal, as Stacie was underage.

Nevertheless, Powell had, on occasion, asked Stacie Reed out on dates, but she had politely turned him down, saying she already had a boyfriend.
Powell was furious. Not only was he upset that Stacie already had a boyfriend, but he was more upset to learn that Stacie’s boyfriend, Sean Wilkerson, was black.

Powell was an avowed neo-Nazi and white supremacist. It was bad enough that Stacie had turned his advances down, but to see her, a white girl, dating Wilkerson, a black boy, made the young racist enraged.

One day, in January, 1999, Powell decided to end Stacie and Sean’s relationship once and for all.

Murder in Manassas

At about noon on January 29, 1999, Stacie Reed left for her home early from school. She had just completed an exam at Osbourn Park High School, and, since she had nothing else on her schedule, decided to have lunch at her house.

Unfortunately for the high school freshman, Paul Warner Powell was waiting for her at the house. Powell had gone to the house to confront Stacie about her relationship with Sean Wilkerson, and he had brought a pistol, several knives, and a box cutter with him.

After waiting outside the house for over an hour, Powell entered the house to find Stacie talking on the telephone with her boyfriend. After she disconnected the call, Powell walked over to Stacie and put his hand down her shirt on her breast, asking her to have sex with him.
Stacie pushed Powell away, refusing his advances, and told him she already had a boyfriend.
Powell became angry. He demanded that Stacie break up with Wilkerson and date him instead, but Stacie again refused. Powell followed Stacie into her room, and the two began arguing.

Abruptly, Powell shoved Stacie onto the bed, got on top of her, and pinned her wrists behind her head. “We can do this the easy way or the hard way”, he sneered.

Stacie managed to pry her wrists free of Powell and scratched his face, trying to push him off, but Powell pushed the girl to the ground. “If you fight me again, I’ll kill you”, he growled as he tried to take off the girl’s pants.

Stacie managed to break free from Powell and made a mad dash for the door, but, as she opened the door, her would-be rapist pulled a knife from his belt and stabbed the girl in the chest, puncturing her heart. Powell twisted the knife, pulled it out, and stabbed Stacie again.

Stacie stumbled into her sister’s room down the hall and fell to the floor, bleeding profusely and gasping for air. Powell followed Stacie into the room and, noticing she was still breathing, put his foot on her throat and stomped the life out of the young girl.

Leaving Stacie lying dead on the floor, Powell decided to wait for 14-year-old Kristie Reed to come home. He went downstairs and fixed himself a cigarette and some iced tea.

Left for Dead

At about 3:00 PM, around two hours after Powell murdered Stacie Reed, 14-year-old Kristie Reed returned home from school. Kristie had invited a male friend, Mark Lewis, over to her house, but he wasn’t going to arrive for another hour or so.

As Kristie Reed put her key into the house’s front door, Powell opened the door for her and let her inside. Kristie wasn’t surprised to see Powell, as he had often come over before and she assumed he was just “hanging out” with Stacie.

Entering the house, Kristie didn’t see her sister anywhere. She asked Powell “Where’s Stacie?”.
“Oh, she’s just in her bedroom”, Powell replied nonchalantly as he sat back down on the couch.

Kristie went over to Stacie’s bedroom, but found it empty. Puzzled, the girl turned towards her own bedroom, where she came across a horrifying sight. She saw her sister lying dead on the floor of her bedroom, with a knife wound to her chest. In shock, Kristie dropped her schoolbooks and began to cry.

Powell was right behind Kristie, holding the knife he had used to kill her sister. “Go downstairs”, he snarled to the 14-year-old, forcing her at knifepoint down the steps into the basement.
When they got downstairs, Powell turned even more ugly. He ordered Kristie to take off her clothes and lie down on the floor. Then he proceeded to rape the girl at knifepoint, threatening to kill her if she resisted.

After raping Kristie, Powell heard a knock at the door. The rapist assumed that the police had somehow been notified, so he armed himself with his pistol and prepared for a confrontation.
Before going upstairs, Powell cut the shoelaces from Kristie’s sneakers and used them to tie her hands and legs behind her back. He warned her that if she called for help he would kill her.

Outside, Kristie’s friend Mark Lewis was at the door. He knocked several more times, but received no answer, and eventually decided to leave.
The decision probably saved his life. Mark had no idea that Powell was waiting on the other side of the door with a pistol and a set of knives. Had he entered, Powell probably would have killed him.

While Powell was upstairs, Kristie managed to loosen the bindings around her wrists and dragged herself across the floor, attempting to hide under the basement stairs, but it was to no avail. Powell returned to the basement before Kristie could hide.
Knowing Kristie could identify him as her rapist and the killer of her sister, Powell decided to kill the girl. He took off her glasses, wrapped a shoelace around her throat, and strangled Kristie into unconsciousness.

Powell then pulled out his knife, stabbed Kristie twice in the stomach, sit her wrists, and slashed her throat multiple times. He went upstairs, leaving the naked, bleeding girl to die.

Upstairs, Powell stole some more iced tea, washed his hands, and left the house.

About an hour later, at 4:10 PM, Kristie’s stepfather, Robert Colver, arrived home, unaware of the carnage that had taken place in his house. He called out for the girls, but got no response.

It was at this time that Kristie Reed regained consciousness. Despite her devastating wounds, the girl was still alive and awake. She tried to call out to Colver, but, due to the wound to her throat, was unable to speak.

Looking for the girls, Colver walked over to Stacie and Kristie’s bedrooms. He looked inside Stacie’s bedroom and saw it was in disarray, as if a struggle had happened there. Walking over to Kristie’s bedroom, Colver discovered the body of Stacie Reed lying dead on the floor.

Colver immediately grabbed a phone and dialed 911. As he spoke with the dispatcher, Colver heard noises coming from the basement and went downstairs. There he discovered his 14-year-old stepdaughter lying on the floor, bound, naked, and bleeding from her neck, chest, and throat. Colver administered first aid until paramedics arrived.

Before Kristie was evacuated, one of the police officers leaned over the girl. “Who did this to you?”, he asked. Unable to speak, Kristie could only mouth the words “Paul Powell”.

Kristie Reed was evacuated by helicopter to the hospital. Even so, Kristie’s mother was warned that the injuries to her daughter were very severe. She was barely clinging to life. One of the stab wounds to Kristie’s stomach had barely missed her aorta (by only one centimeter) and the slash wounds to her throat had missed her carotid artery by only half a centimeter. She required five hours of surgery and 60 stitches to repair the slashing wounds on her throat.

Even though Kristie eventually recovered, she still bears the scars of the knife wounds on her neck, and she and her mother have both suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder.

The following morning, Paul Powell was arrested by police in Washington, D.C., without incident. At the police station, Powell confessed to the murder of Stacie Reed and the rape and attempted murder of Kristie Reed. Powell, however, never expressed any remorse for his crime. He claimed Stacie died because she was “stupid” and that he had tried to kill Kristie because she was the only witness who could identify him.

Powell was charged with capital murder, attempted murder, rape, and abduction. He pleaded not guilty, and was ordered to be held without bail.

The first trial

One week after the brutal crime in Manassas, Stacie Reed was laid to rest at Stonewall Memorial Gardens. Because she was part of the Jr. ROTC, Stacie‘s funeral was conducted with full military honors. Gradually, and painfully, the Reed family began to adjust to life without Stacie.

While awaiting trial for capital murder, Paul Powell’s vile behavior intensified. He was arrogant, remorseless, and repeatedly bragged to fellow inmates about “raping a virgin”. Powell also mailed out threatening, taunting letters to the Reed family and their friends, referring to Stacie Reed as a “nigger lover” and threatening to kill Kristie Reed if she testified against him.

On one occasion, Powell mailed an envelope to Lorraine Reed, the mother of Kristie and Stacie Reed, in which he enclosed a cut-out picture of a nude woman from a pornographic magazine who bore a resemblance to Kristie.

A vile, taunting letter accompanying the photograph read:

“Lorraine, I was wondering if you might be able to help me think of something. I found this picture in a magazine and it kinda looks like someone I know or used to know, but I can't think of the persons name. I think you know the person too, so I was wondering if you could tell me the name of the person this picture resembles so I can quit racking my brain trying to think of it? I would appreciate it. 
If you don't know the person I'm talking about, ask Kristie or Kelly Welch [a friend of Kristie's] because I know they know who I'm thinking of. If you talk to the person I'm talking about, please give her my address and tell her to write me."

In 2000, Powell finally went to trial for the murder of Stacie Reed and the rape and attempted murder of Kristie Reed. Despite Powell’s threat to kill Kristie Reed if she testified in court against him, the 14-year-old girl bravely confronted her sister’s killer on the witness stand.

The evidence against Powell was insurmountable. The bloody knife used to kill Stacie and wound Kristie was found on his person, and a rape kit matched Powell’s DNA to semen recovered from Kristie. Additionally, Powell had openly bragged about the crime to other prisoners.

On May 5, 2000, a little over a year after the murders, a jury found Paul Warner Powell guilty of the capital murder of Stacie Reed and the rape and attempted murder of Kristie Reed. Three months later, the jury recommended the death penalty for Powell.

On September 15, 2000, a Virginia judge sentenced Paul Warner Powell to death by lethal injection for the murder of Stacie Reed. Additionally, Powell received life in prison for the rape and attempted murder of Kristie Reed, and was ordered to pay a fine of $200,000.
Powell was sent to death row at Sussex I State Prison to await execution.

The trial was over, but, because of the setup of Virginia’s capital punishment laws, Paul Warner Powell would later nearly escape execution.

Overturned: Virginia’s Death Penalty and how Powell nearly avoided justice

Like all death row inmates, Powell was allowed to appeal his conviction and death sentence. In 2001, he did just that. Powell appealed his conviction and death sentence to the Virginia Supreme Court, claiming that there was no evidence that he had actually raped or attempted to rape Stacie Reed prior to killing her.

Now, to understand the process of what happened next, one must have an understanding of how Virginia’s capital punishment statute works.

Virginia’s capital punishment laws differ from most other states in the US. Most states have two degrees of murder (second-degree murder and first-degree murder). In most states where the death penalty is legal, first-degree murder is punishable by death or life in prison.

However, under Virginia law, only capital murder, not first-degree murder, is punishable by death. To prove a defendant guilty of capital murder, the prosecution must prove one or more aggravating factors. These factors include the murder of a child under 14 by an adult older than 21, murder during the commission of rape or attempted rape, or the murder of a police officer.

Because the prosecution contended that Paul Powell had attempted to rape Stacie Reed prior to killing her, this enabled them to seek a conviction on capital murder and a potential death sentence.

Unfortunately, however, there was no physical evidence that Powell had actually attempted to rape Stacie Reed prior to killing her. Although Powell had confessed to killing Stacie, he never mentioned any attempt on his part to commit a sexual assault. Powell claimed that, since the prosecution couldn’t prove he raped or attempted to rape Stacie before she was murdered, he could not be guilty of capital murder or subject to the death penalty.

In June of 2001, the Virginia Supreme Court sided with Powell. The court declared that the fact Powell had raped Kristie did not mean he had raped Stacie prior to her murder, and that there were no other aggravating factors that could warrant a conviction on capital murder.
The rape of Kristie, the court ruled, was a separate crime from the murder of Stacie, and could not be considered an aggravating factor.

On June 9, 2001, the Virginia Supreme Court overturned Powell’s capital murder conviction and vacated his death sentence. Although Powell still had to serve a life sentence for the rape and attempted murder of Kristie Reed, he no longer faced execution.

It seemed as if Powell had escaped his richly deserved justice, but, in a twist of fate, it was Powell himself who would end up being responsible for his own downfall.

The Letter: Paul Powell's Biggest Mistake

After his death sentence and capital murder conviction were overturned, Powell’s behavior turned disgustingly smug, arrogant, and sadistic.

Believing he no longer faced the death penalty due to double-jeopardy, Powell decided to write a taunting letter to the prosecutor who had tried to have him executed, mocking him and confessing to the crime in detail.

In October of 2001, Powell mailed a vile, expletive-ridden letter to the prosecutor who had charged him:

“Mr. Ebert,

Since I have already been indicted on first degree murder and the Va. Supreme Court said that I can't be charged with capital murder again, I figured I would tell you the rest of what happened on Jan. 29, 1999, to show you how stupid all of y'all mother fuckers are.

Y'all should have known that there is more to the story than what I told by what I said. You had it in writing that I planned to kill the whole family. Since I planned to kill the whole family, why would I have fought with Stacie before killing her? She had no idea I was planning to kill everybody and talked and carried on like usual, so I could've stabbed her up at any time because she was unsuspecting.”

Believing he could not be tried again for capital murder due to double jeopardy, Powell went on to confess that he had, in fact, attempted to rape Stacie Reed before killing her, writing:

“I had other plans for her before she died [...] We continued talking when she had everything in the wash and I reached over and touched her tit and asked if she wanted to fuck. She said no, because she had a boyfriend. I started arguing with her because she had never turned anybody down because of having a boyfriend.

We started walking upstairs, arguing the whole time. When we got upstairs we went to her room and she turned the radio off. After she turned the radio off I pushed her onto her bed and grabbed her wrists and pinned her hands down by her head and sat on top of her. I told her that all I wanted to do was fuck her and then I would leave and that we could do it the easy way or the hard way.”

The letter continued in gut-wrenching detail:

“She said she would fuck me so I got up. After I got up, she got up and started fighting with me and clawed me face. We wrestled around a little and then I slammed her to the floor. When she hit the floor I sat on top of her and pinned her hands down again. She said she would fuck me and I told her that if she tried fighting with me again, I would kill her.

When I got up she stood up and kept asking me why I was doing this and all I kept saying is take your clothes off. Finally she undid her pants and pulled them down to her ankles. She was getting ready to take them the rest of the way off and the phone rang. When she heard the phone she pulled her pants back up and said she had to answer the phone. I pushed her back and said no. She said that she wouldn't say anything about me being there and I told her no and to take her clothes off.”

“She tried to get out of the room again and I pushed her back and pulled out my knife. I guess she thought I was just trying to scare her and that I wouldn't really stab her because she tried to leave again.
When she got to me and tried to squeeze between me and the door jam I stabbed her. When I stabbed her, she fell back against the door jam and just looked at me with a shocked look on her face.
When I pulled the knife out she stumbled a couple steps and fell in her sister's room. I walked over and looked at her. I saw that she was still breathing so I stepped over her body and into the bedroom. Then I put my foot on her throat and stepped up so she couldn't breath. Then I stepped down and started stomping on her throat. Then I stepped back onto her throat and moved up and down putting more pressure to make it harder to breathe.”

After his confession, Powell decided to unload a sadistic, taunting, mocking, and gloating rant against the prosecutor:

“I would like to thank you for saving my life. I know you're probably wondering how you saved my life, so I'll tell you.
“You saved my life by fucking up. There were 2 main fuck-ups you made that saved me. The first was the way you worded my capital murder indictment. The second was the comment you made in your closing argument when you said we won't know because he won't tell us.
“One more time, thank you! Now y'all know everything that happened in that house at 8023 McLean St. on Jan. 29, 1999.

“I guess I forgot to mention these events when I was being questioned. Ha Ha! Sike!
I knew what y'all would be able to prove in court, so I told you what you already knew. Stacey was dead and no one else was in the house so I knew ya'll would never know everything she went through unless she came back to life.

Since the Supreme Court said I can't be charged with capital murder again, I can tell you what I just told you because I no longer have to worry about the death penalty. And y'all are supposed to be so goddamn smart. I can't believe that y'all thought I told you everything.

The letter closed in a profane fashion typical of Powell:

Well, it's too late now. Nothing you can do about it now so fuck you you fat, cocksucking, cum guzzling, gutter slut. I guess I'll see your bitch ass on Dec. 18 at trial because I'm not pleading to shit. Tell the family to be ready to testify and relive it all again because if I have to suffer for the next 50 or 60 years or however long then they can suffer the torment of reliving what happened for a couple of days.

I'm gone. Fuck you and anyone like you or that associates with people like you.
I almost forgot, fuck your god, too. Jesus knows how to suck a dick real good. Did you teach him?
Well, die a slow, painful, miserable death. See ya punk.

Do you just hate yourself for being so stupid and for fuckin' up and saving me?

Sincerely,
Paul Powell.”

Last Laugh?: Paul Powell’s legal blunder and the retrial

Paul Powell may well have expected the prosecutor to be upset or angry when he received the letter in the mail, but he was, in fact, just the opposite.

Paul Powell didn’t know it at the time, but he had inadvertently just signed his own death warrant.

Powell didn’t realize that double-jeopardy didn’t apply in this case, because having a conviction overturned by a judge is not the same thing as being acquitted by a jury. The prosecution was still able to try Paul Warner Powell for first-degree murder, or again for capital murder should new evidence emerge.

By confessing to attempting to rape Stacie Reed, Powell had accidentally given the prosecution enough evidence to try him again for capital murder and once again seek the death penalty.

In 2003, the prosecutor asked the judge for a new trial, and presented Powell’s letter as evidence against him.

Despite objections from the defense, the judge gave the go-ahead for a new trial for Powell. He was once again facing capital murder charges, and again the prosecution sought the death penalty.

On January 13, 2003, Powell once again went on trial for the capital murder of Stacie Reed. Powell’s letter confessing his attempted rape of Stacie was introduced as evidence against him.
During his first trial, Powell had acted belligerent and arrogant, smirking and laughing at the Reed family and openly threatening Kristie Reed.

But this was not the case at the second trial. Powell was now an emotional wreck. He cried openly in court and remained silent throughout most of the proceedings. He knew that he had dug himself into a hole he could not climb out of.

As she had done in the previous trial, Kristie Reed again testified against Powell, but it was Powell’s own words that proved to be the most damning evidence against him.

Not only had Powell’s letter confessed to attempting to rape Stacie Reed prior to killing her, but his arrogant and sadistic attitude in the letter clearly demonstrated a complete lack of remorse on his part. Powell tried all he could to gain the sympathy of the jury, pretending to show remorse by weeping in court, but his letter shattered his remorseful facade and revealed who he really was: a racist, remorseless, murderous pedophile.

Truly, Powell had given the prosecution all the ammunition they needed to shoot him down.

In January, 2003, a jury in Manassas, Virginia, found Paul Warner Powell guilty once again of the capital murder of Stacie Reed.

Next up was Powell’s penalty phase. Guilty of capital murder, Powell faced either the death penalty or life without parole.

Powell’s attorneys tried desperately to sway the jury to spare Powell’s life. They said that Powell would never pose a threat to anyone again if he was sentenced to life. He would be medicated, they said, and treated for a history of mental illness if his life was spared.

But the jury didn’t buy it. After deliberating for only 90 minutes, the jury returned a verdict:

“We, the jury, on the issue joined, having found the defendant Paul Warner Powell guilty of capital murder [...] and having found unanimously and beyond a reasonable doubt that his conduct in committing the offense was outrageously or wantonly vile, horrible or inhuman [...], unanimously fix his punishment at death.”

On May 8, 2003, the judge followed the jury’s recommendation.
Paul Warner Powell was once again sentenced to death by lethal injection for the murder of Stacie Reed. Justice had finally caught up with him.

During his sentencing, Powell did the one thing he should have done after his original conviction was overturned:

He remained silent.

Lessons Learned: How Paul Powell Became His Worst Enemy

Paul Warner Powell’s crime was abhorrent by any standard. He took the life of a vibrant young girl and changed the lives of many other people forever.

But, if there is one thing good to come out of this horror story, it is that Paul Warner Powell brought justice upon himself. After his first capital murder conviction was overturned, Powell could have just left the issue at that. There was no physical evidence showing he had attempted to rape Stacie Reed prior to killing her, and there were no other aggravating factors against him that could have warranted a death sentence.

Powell’s case has gained attention among the legal community because of the fact he, in essence, signed his own death warrant. The same year he was re-convicted, Powell earned an honorable mention from the Darwin Awards, which referred to him as being as “bright as a burned-out lightbulb”.

Had Powell just remained silent and never written his abusive letter, chances are he would never have gone back to death row. He would have likely spent the remainder of his life in prison, but he would have successfully cheated the system and avoided the death penalty.

But Powell couldn’t help himself. A psychopath to the bone, Powell loved to derive pleasure from the pain of his victims.
Consumed by narcissism, arrogance, and sadism, and wholly ignorant of how the legal system worked, Powell decided to write his abusive letter to the prosecutor outlining the crime in detail and confessing that he had, in fact, attempted to rape Stacie Reed. He wanted to cause them as much pain as possible.

The heartlessness and utter disregard for human life shown by Powell in his letter is gut wrenching. I have rarely read about people more vile and more sick than Paul Warner Powell. He was truly among the worst of the worst people to ever walk this earth.

But the ultimate karma, the ultimate poetic justice in this case, was that Powell himself gave the prosecution all the evidence they needed to convict him again and sentence him to death. Powell himself became a victim of his own abusive, wicked personality. He was so arrogant, and so boastful, that he ended up bringing himself down.

One could say that the moral of this story is that, inevitably, even the most evil, heartless people who walk the earth can one day become their own greatest enemy.
And, in my humble opinion, little else is more satisfying to see than a murderous psychopath like Paul Warner Powell being brought down by his own hand.

Execution

For seven years after his second trial, Paul Powell languished on death row at Sussex I State Prison. He avoided one execution date set for July 14, 2009, but that was the only reprieve he was given.

After Powell’s last chance for relief failed, a second execution date for him was set for March 18, 2010. Powell, given the choice between dying by lethal injection and dying by electrocution, elected to be put to death in Virginia’s electric chair.

A few days before his execution, Paul Warner Powell was transferred from Sussex I State Prison to the death house at Greensville Correctional Center in Jarrat, Virginia, near the border with North Carolina.
Powell spent his final hours sitting in a holding cell while officials tested the electric chair in preparation for his execution. Powell ordered a small last meal, and spent his last day alive talking with his attorneys, relatives, and any few friends he still had. He spoke briefly on the phone with Kristie Reed and her mother, apologizing for his crime but otherwise showing little remorse.

On the evening of March 18, 2010, Powell was led from his holding cell for the last time.
Wearing a light blue prison uniform and shackles, with his head and right leg shaved, and his right pant leg cut off above the knee, Paul Powell, escorted by guards, entered the brightly-lit, white-walled execution chamber at Greensville Correctional Facility, where an oak-wood electric chair sat waiting for him with open arms.

Powell appeared nervous, wearing a stern expression and darting his eyes around the room. As his eyes fell upon the chair in the room, his eyes widened and he swallowed hard.

Virginia's electric chair at Greensville Correctional Center, where Paul Warner Powell was executed for the murder of Stacie Reed.

Powell sat down on the old wooden chair, resting his back on a black leather seat cushion, as half a dozen guards strapped him down with eight leather restraints and buckles. A metal clamp with a wet sponge was attached to his bare right ankle, and an electrode was fastened through it.
Another guard fastened a special skullcap electrode helmet to the top of his head, securing it with a chinstrap. Noticing the inmate was sweating profusely, a guard wiped Powell’s face and leg with a towel.

At 8:58 PM, Powell was read his death warrant. A guard approached him and turned on a microphone. “Do you have any last words?”, he asked.

Powell remained silent, at first staring up at the ceiling and then straight forward towards the witness gallery, where Kristie Reed, Lorraine Reed, and several reporters were watching. He had nothing to say.
A mask was put around Powell’s face, covering his eyes, mouth, and nose. Before activating the chair, guards used Q-tips to apply Vaseline to their nostrils to stifle the smell of burning flesh.

At exactly 9:00 PM, an executioner in the control room pressed a small red button marked “On”.
1800 volts of electricity surged through the electrodes into Powell’s body for 30 seconds. The inmate jerked back in the chair as a dull electrical hum permeated through the room. His hands clenched into fists, turning his knuckles white, and smoke curled up from his leg.

The chair deactivated briefly, and Powell slumped back in the chair, motionless. After a brief pause, the executioner switched the voltage and activated the chair again. 240 volts of electricity surged through Powell's body for another sixty seconds before the chair kicked off again.

Five seconds later, the cycle was repeated. Another jolt of 1800-volts of electricity surged through the chair. Sparks and smoke began coming off of Powell’s leg and from under his mask as he once again jerked back in his chair. The murderer's skin turned a deep reddish-purple color as blisters began forming on his right leg around the electrode.
After another 30 seconds, the electric chair was switched once again to a 60-second jolt of electricity at 480 volts.

At 9:03, the flow of electricity stopped. Powell's body slumped back in the wooden chair and lay still.

For another five minutes, the guards allowed Powell’s body to cool down so that they could check for vital signs. At 9:08 PM, a doctor entered the room and walked over to the electric chair. She ran a stethoscope over his chest, searching for a heartbeat, but found none.

At 9:09 PM, Paul Warner Powell, the heartless, psychopathic rapist who had inadvertently brought about his own downfall, and who had ruined so many lives in such horrible circumstances, was formally pronounced dead.

As Lorraine Reed later said of the execution, "Justice was served, and this chapter has closed".