The planned execution of a 73-year-old serial killer has been delayed after prison officials in the US state of Idaho failed to give him a lethal injection.Thomas Eugene Creech, one of the country’s longest-serving death row inmates, was imprisoned in 1974 and has been convicted of five murders in three states and suspected of more.He was serving life when he beat a fellow inmate, 22-year-old David Dale Jensen, to death in 1981 - the crime for which he was to be executed more than four decades later.
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00:10 So I was at the Idaho Maximum Security Institution today to witness
00:19 the planned execution of Thomas Eugene Creech.
00:23 He is somebody who is considered a serial killer.
00:26 He's been convicted of five murders in three different states.
00:30 When they first brought Mr. Creech into the execution room,
00:34 he turned his head to look at his family members who were in a separate
00:37 witness room.
00:39 And he appeared to mouth to them, I'm sorry and I loved you.
00:43 He was strapped to the table, but he would occasionally lift his hands,
00:46 his fingers to wave or stretch out toward that window and his family there.
00:51 They tried multiple times to insert an IV line.
00:56 They had earlier in the day, the medical team had established
01:00 eight possible spots to insert an IV.
01:04 And they tried each of those spots over the next hour in the crook of his arm,
01:10 in his hand, the same with the other arm, and then in his legs near his ankles.
01:15 All of those attempts failed, so eight attempts in all.
01:20 They were all unsuccessful.
01:23 When the warden announced that the execution had been halted,
01:27 he looked over again at his family in the witness room and
01:31 sort of waved his hand at them and then closed his eyes and shook his head.
01:37 It appeared to be a little bit rueful.
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