Capital punishment This article is more than 8 years old

Missouri man executed for 2001 murder of 19-year-old woman

This article is more than 8 years old

David Zink, 55, who sexually assaulted Amanda Morton before tying her to a cemetery tree and killing her, dies on Tuesday after losing appeal

A Missouri man who sexually attacked a 19-year-old woman before tying her to a tree in a cemetery and killing her was executed on Tuesday after the US supreme court and the governor declined to intervene.

David Zink, 55, was put to death at a state prison near Bonne Terre, south of St Louis, hours after the nation’s high court rebuffed his last appeals and the governor, Jay Nixon, rejected his clemency request. A spokesman for the corrections department, Mike O’Connell, said the lethal injection began at 7.33pm and Zink was pronounced dead at 7.41pm.

Zink was convicted and recommended for a death sentence for the killing of Amanda Morton in 2001. Authorities said Zink abducted Morton after hitting her car from behind on a highway exit ramp a short distance from her Strafford home. She had been visiting a friend.

Zink had been released from a Texas prison a few months before, after serving 20 years on rape, abduction and escape charges. Fearing that his drunken crash with Morton could violate his parole and send him back to prison, Zink abducted her and took her to a motel.

“If I think that you’re going to pose a threat to my freedom, it is set in my mind I want to eliminate you,” Zink said in his videotaped confession.

The motel’s manager later saw a televised news report about Morton’s disappearance, recognized her as the woman who had checked in with Zink, and gave investigators Zink’s name and licence plate number from motel registration.

Zink was arrested at his parents’ home and led police to Morton’s buried body in a cemetery. He confessed – at times laughing on videotape – to tying her to a tree and killing her.

An autopsy showed Morton had been sexually assaulted, and had eight broken ribs and between 50 and 100 blunt-force injuries.

Zink had appealed to stop his execution. A three-judge panel of the 8th US circuit court of appeals declined, without comment, his claims that the death penalty was unconstitutional. On Monday the St Louis-based court had rejected his challenge of the drug process used during lethal injections.

Zink became the fifth man executed this year in Missouri and the 17th since November 2013. Only Texas has executed more inmates in the same period.

ncG1vNJzZmivp6x7tbTEoKyaqpSerq96wqikaK%2Bfp7mle5FpaG5nmqq5cH2UaKSiq6OkwrO1jKaYp2WVrbKkwdOem2aen6d6c3yPamSonl1mhm7FxJqpZqecmXq4u8yapQ%3D%3D