Daniel Lewis Lee, 47, took his last breath at a US prison in Terre Haute, Indiana - 24 years after he tortured and killed the Mueller family from Tilly, Arkansas


A sick one-eyed killer who murdered an eight-year-old girl and her family has been executed with a lethal injection.

Daniel Lewis Lee took his final breath at a US prison in Terre Haute, Indiana this afternoon.

His last words were: “I’ve made a lot of mistakes in my life but I’m not a murderer.

“You’re killing an innocent man.”

He was pronounced dead at 8.07am local time.

His death marks the first federal execution in 17 years, despite objections from the mother of one of his victims.

Lee's execution had been scheduled for yesterday but was halted last minute over legal challenges to the government's lethal-injection protocol.

The 47-year-old white supremacist from Yukon, Oklahoma, tortured and slaughtered gun dealer William Mueller, 52, his wife Nancy Ann Mueller, 28, as well as stepdaughter Sarah Elizabeth Powell in 1996.

The brutal killings in Arkansas shook the US to its core.

Lee, who had a checkered past of crime, carried out the murders with accomplice Chevie Kehoe.

They met through a white supremacist organisation known as the Aryan Peoples' Republic (APR) or the Aryan Peoples' Resistance.

The fateful day of the murders began when the pair travelled on January 11, 1996 from Washington to the Mueller family home in Tilly, Arkansas.

Gun dealer Mr Mueller owned a large collection of weapons, cash and ammunition and had previously been burgled by Kehoe.

He and Lee plotted to strike again.


The twisted duo dressed in police raid clothing as they attempted to break into the home, which at the time had nobody inside


When the family returned Lee and Kehoe attacked them and shot them using a stun gun. With the trio passed out, they then suffocated them to death using plastic bags.

It's claimed daughter Sarah was also tortured with electric cattle prods to reveal where her stepfather hid his valuables.

The family's bodies were then taped with rocks and tossed into a swamp.

It would be six months before their badly decomposed bodies were discovered by a fisherman.

Kehoe escaped the death penalty for the killings and was instead sentenced to three sentences of life in prison without the possibility of parole.

Nancy's mum Earlene Peterson had pleaded with US President Donald Trump to give the death row inmate clemency, reducing his sentence to life in prison.

The grieving gran believed executing Lee did not honour her daughter - rather it "dirties her name".

"She doesn't want it and I don't want it. That's not the way it should be. That's not the God I serve," said Ms Peterson, fighting back tears.

"Do I think the Government should value my opinion? Yes. I'm as much a victim as Nancy and Sarah was.

"I think they should value everything I say. I'm the one that lives through it. The Government ain't doing this for me because I would say no.

"And I think President Trump is a God-fearing man.

"If I could talk personally to President Trump, I feel he could feel my heart and know that I don't want this to happen," she added.

Ms Peterson said her daughter - who loved gymnastics and horse-riding - was due at a gun show in Oklahoma with her husband on the day they were murdered.

The company that they worked for called me and said they had not showed up," she explained.

"It was like they just vanished, just disappeared. We started searching for them, it was pretty horrible.

"The sheriff, they called to tell me that people answering to the description of my family were found and I needed to come and identify the clothing.

"It was definitely Nancy and Sarah. I knew Sarah's jacket with all her buttons and her pins. It was my baby."

Ms Peterson said she went to every day of the trial, which began over two years later, except for one in which she checked into hospital "because I got so emotionally sick

Kehoe had arrived in court "dressed very nicely like a young businessman" while Lee "was not", she remembered - "he had the Swastika on his neck...he didn't have no eye.

"He really looked like an outlaw. He was instantly judged the minute he walked into the courtroom. You could see the prejudice on the jury's faces and the people in the audience, you could tell.

"And myself, at the time, I'm not going to exclude myself because I felt the same thing that they felt. I felt like he was guilty from the time he walked in, before even hearing anything."

It was argued in court by Lee's attorneys that Kehoe told Lee to kill Sarah but he refused, telling him "I don't kill children", said Ms Peterson, to which Kehoe had allegedly said "I do" before killing the eight-year-old.

"So, who's the worst man? That's the way I feel," she continued.

So, I was really surprised when they called us out from the hotel to tell us the jury was coming back and the foreman of the jury said that Chevie Kehoe was sentenced to life without possible chance of parole. But Daniel Lee was sentenced to death."

Lee's attorney Ruth Friedman, meanwhile, said her client was convicted using "junk science and false evidence" and refuted claims from the US Department of Justice that he is a white supremacist.

"The government has portrayed Mr Lee as a white supremacist and a child-killer. Neither is true," she said.

"He has long since renounced the skinhead groups he joined as a youth, and the government has now dramatically re-characterised its case against Mr Lee.

Meanwhile, Attorney General William Barr had announced last July that the Justice Department would resume carrying out executions of some of the 62 inmates on federal death row.

He originally scheduled five executions for last December, but was ordered to delay them while long-running lawsuits challenging the government's lethal-injection protocol played out.

An appeals court overturned that injunction in April, and Barr announced new execution dates for July and August of four inmates, all men convicted of murdering children: Lee, Wesley Purkey, Dustin Honken and Keith Nelson.

The evil that men do...

And what if he actually didn't kill them, where's the justice in that if he's buddy us only doing life and he's just been killed ... Only God and the other guy knows now

toooooorrrrr...

What a rapid demotion...

He moved from "Terre Haute" to de plaine all in one day.


*** I believe I saw this story yesterday on CNN...?

Now, where was it...?