The Courier of Montgomery County Perry put to deathBy Nancy Flake
Updated: 07.02.10
Lisa Stotler Balloun, middle, the daughter of murder victim Sandra Stotler, weeps as she speaks during a press conference Wednesday following the execution of Michael James Perry in Huntsville. Perry, 28, was executed by lethal injection in the Texas Department of Criminal Justice’s Walls Unit for the October 2001 shooting murder of Sandra Stotler, 51. Balloun was joined at the press conference by, from left, Mary Ann Bockwich, monther of Sandra Stotler, Patti Derrick, sister of Sandra Stotler, and, far right, Rosemarie Jeffery, the mother of Jeremy Richardson.HUNTSVILLE – When Michael James Perry said he forgave everyone involved in the "atrocity" of his execution Thursday evening, the daughter of the woman he killed said she knew "justice had been served today."
Perry, 28, was executed by lethal injection just after 6 p.m. Thursday in the Texas Department of Criminal Justice's Walls Unit for the October 2001 murder of Sandra Stotler, 51, a nurse at Conroe Regional Medical Center.
Perry shot Stotler twice in the back as he lay in wait for her in the laundry room of her Lake Conroe-area home. Taking her red Camaro, he and his accomplice, Jason Burkett, then dumped her body in Crater Lake near Grangerland.
Perry and Burkett then went back to her home and lured Stotler's 16-year-old son Adam and his friend Jeremy Richardson, 18, to a nearby wooded area, where they shot and killed both of them and stole Adam Stotler's SUV.
Burkett is serving a life sentence for all three murders. Perry was charged only with the murder of Sandra Stotler.
Laying on a gurney, where the combination of three drugs began flowing through his veins at 6:03 p.m., Perry gave his final statement.
"I want to start off by saying and letting everyone involved in this atrocity know they're all forgiven by me."
Looking at his adoptive mother, Gayle Perry, he said, "Mom, I love you," with his voice breaking. "I'm coming home, Dad."
Perry's adoptive father died in June.
He gave four audible gasps and his breathing slowed, while one tear rolled from his right eye down his cheek. Family members of the Stotlers and Richardson watched quietly and intently, while some wiped away tears.
Perry was pronounced dead at 6:17 p.m.
"I felt sorry for his family," said Lisa Stotler Balloun, Sandra Stotler's daughter and Adam's sister. "It's not a good day for anyone. When he said he forgave us, I knew justice had been served today. I needed to see if he's a monster – and apparently he is.
"I just wish Jason Burkett and Kristin Willis were here sitting beside him."
Willis was Burkett's girlfriend at the time of the murders and was present in the wooded area when Adam Stotler and Jeremy Richardson were shot, with blood left on the shirt she was wearing, according to trial testimony. She testified against Burkett in his October 2003 trial.
Before the execution, Montgomery County District Attorney Brett Ligon personally reviewed all the evidence, he wrote in a statement Thursday night.
"Ethics prevented me from commenting on the ridiculous accusation that Mr. Perry's confession was somehow coerced and the evidence in his criminal case was flawed," Ligon stated. "The reality is that Mr. Perry laughed throughout his legal and voluntary confession in which he related gruesome details about the murders of his innocent victims. The remainder of the evidence in the case was as overwhelming as it was disturbing.
"Mr. Perry's last words reflected the way he lived his life: full of hatred, bile and narcissism. I do not relish in the execution of his sentence, but I do not mourn his death. May the victim's families finally have the peace they deserve."
Neither Perry nor any of his family members ever reached out to the victims' families, Lisa Balloun said.
"Never. Not once," she said. "He's been blaming and pointing fingers since day one. It just infuriates me; we were the 'bad guys' in this situation."
Perry sought a commutation of his death sentence in recent days, claiming, based on a medical examiner's testimony about Sandra Stotler's time of death, he was in the Montgomery County Jail and couldn't have killed her.
But the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals and the U.S. Supreme Court didn't agree, clearing the way for Perry's execution.
Balloun tells her daughters – one was 3 years old and the other 10 months old when Sandra Stotler was murdered – about "what a wonderful woman she was" and how Adam was "the best uncle in the world," she said.
"Our family is crushed."
For Rosemary Jeffery, Jeremy Richardson's mother, Perry's death has not yet brought the closure she seeks.
"It won't be over until Burkett is gone," she said. "Then ... our family can have some rest."
But that closure finally seems to have come for the family of Sandra and Adam Stotler.
"I'm glad to say this is over," said Mary Ann Bockwich, Sandra Stotler's mother and Adam's grandmother.
"We can all have peace now."
Nancy Flake can be reached at nflake@hcnonline.com.Copyright ©1995 - 2010 | HCNOnline.com
