Date: Wednesday, September 18, 1996   
Source: By Ray Quintanilla and Eric Zorn, Tribune Staff Writers   
Section: METRO CHICAGO   
Parts: 9   
Copyright Chicago Tribune

RAY STEWART EXECUTED FOR KILLING SPREE   

   Convicted serial killer Ray Lee Stewart was put to death early Wednesday
in Joliet, 15 years after admitting he murdered six people in the Rockford
and Beloit, Wis., area.

   Stewart, 44, of Rockford, was pronounced dead at 12:30 a.m. Wednesday,
moments after he was administered a lethal injection by authorities at
Stateville Correctional Center. He was the eighth person to be executed in
Illinois since the state reinstituted the death penalty in 1977.

   "Hello to everyone. May you all have peace because of this. May my
victims' families have peace," Stewart said as he lay on a gurney in the
death chamber just before the execution began.

   Late Tuesday, as the visitors left and the time grew closer to his
execution,  Stewart grew reflective.

                         ...................

   The execution was scheduled more than 15 years after Stewart's weeklong
killing spree in January and February 1981.

   It began at Tiny Fredd's Grocery store in Rockford, where police
discovered the bodies of owner Willie Fredd, 54, and clerk Albert Pearson,
20, each shot several times in the head.

   The next day, at two separate service stations, police found the
bullet-riddled bodies of Kevin Kaiser, 18, and Kenny Foust, 35. The spree
ended at a Beloit shopping center, where Richard Boeck, 21, and Donald Rains,
26, were killed in a Radio Shack store.

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