The clock was already ticking when Robert Anthony Buell stepped through the gates of the Southern Ohio Correctional Facility in Lucasville on the morning of September 24, 2002. He knew, as every man who enters that place knows, that he would never walk out alive. But for Buell, 62 years old and 18 years into a death sentence, the final 24 hours had begun.
This was not his first brush with the execution chamber—six years earlier, in January 1996, he had been minutes from death when a federal court issued a stay, pulling him back from the precipice. Now, there would be no reprieve. The state of Ohio was ready to carry out its fifth execution in three years, and Buell was the man strapped to the gurney.
In the final hours, every detail became deliberate, almost ritualistic. Buell was served his last meal, but he chose something small, almost symbolic: a single black olive, the pit still inside. No explanation was given, but prison officials recalled that some condemned inmates had made similar choices in the past, believing an unpitted olive might allow a tree to grow from their grave—a final sign of peace after a lifetime of violence.
Buell’s own past was marked by brutality. In 1982, 11-year-old Krista Harrison vanished from a park in the quiet village of Marshallville, Ohio, while collecting aluminum cans. Six days later, her body was found in an abandoned garage.
The evidence against Buell was overwhelming: fibers from his van matched those on the girl’s clothing. He was convicted in 1984 and sentenced to die.
Throughout the night, Buell met with the only two people he had chosen to accompany him: his spiritual adviser, Baptist Pastor Ernie Sanders, and his attorney, Michael Benza. The conversations were quiet, punctuated by long pauses and the heavy weight of what was coming. At one point, Buell turned to the Bible, reading softly, line by line, and he maintained his innocence to the end.
“I didn’t 𝓀𝒾𝓁𝓁 your daughter,” he would later say to the victim’s family. “The prosecutor knows that, and they left the real killer out there on the streets to 𝓀𝒾𝓁𝓁 again and again and again.” But the courts had heard his claims before.
As the hours ticked past midnight, his legal team filed a flurry of last-minute appeals, arguing that key witnesses had been hypnotized, their memories potentially altered, their testimony tainted. The Ohio Supreme Court refused to intervene. The U.
S. Supreme Court, the last line of defense, also declined to act.
The final push for clemency had already failed. Just one week earlier, the Ohio Parole Board had voted unanimously against granting mercy. Two days before the execution, Governor Bob Taft refused to intervene, citing “overwhelming evidence of guilt” and Buell’s lack of remorse.
“There is no compelling reason to grant clemency,” Taft concluded. Buell’s defense team had furiously worked to re-examine the evidence, but the arguments were dismissed. The courts were not convinced that the hypnosis of witnesses had compromised the trial.
Even without the death sentence, Buell would never have walked free. He was already serving 121 years for sexually assaulting two women decades earlier, crimes he did not contest.
On the morning of his execution, Buell woke early. He was given the chance to shower and shave one last time, and he took it. Back in his cell, he turned on the radio.
Classical music filled the silence, measured, calm, almost detached—something to steady the moment. Breakfast was simple: bran flakes and a glass of milk. A quiet start to the final hours.
Then came the news that the U. S. Supreme Court had denied all remaining appeals.
No stay, no delay. The execution would go ahead. Nothing could stop it now.
Outside the prison, a small group of seven protesters gathered, their voices barely audible against the concrete walls. Inside, the machinery of death was already in motion.
The final hour was reserved for goodbyes. Buell met once more with Reverend Sanders and attorney Benza. No family came.
His sister, his ex-wife, his daughter had all declined to visit, declined to attend the execution, and had made it clear they would not claim his body. Prison officials noted this was the first time since Ohio resumed executions in 1999 that an inmate’s family refused the remains. Buell would later be buried at Chillicothe Correctional Institution in a prison-made wooden casket, wearing a prison-made suit.
The state would handle everything.
In the witness room, members of Krista Harrison’s family sat together. Her father, Gerald Harrison, and her brothers, Mark and Dana, clasped their hands, eyes fixed on the man who had taken their little girl. Buell climbed onto the gurney on his own, no struggle, no hesitation.
As they strapped him down, he clenched and unclenched his left fist, stared at the ceiling, breathed slow and deliberate. The IV lines went in carefully, methodically. Then came the question: did he have any final statement?
A pause, and then he began to speak. He turned to the Harrison family. “Jerry and Shirley, listen to me.
I didn’t 𝓀𝒾𝓁𝓁 your daughter. The prosecutor knows that, and they left the real killer out there on the streets to 𝓀𝒾𝓁𝓁 again and again and again.” Then he addressed the governor.
“I invited the governor to be here today, and his wife, Mrs. Taft, too. He didn’t come.
Governor, if you can’t bring your wife to your workplace, you’re obviously ashamed of what you do.”
And with that, there was nothing left to say. At 10:25 a. m.
, the lethal chemicals began to flow. Within moments, the sedative took hold. His body relaxed, his eyes closed.
Then the paralytic brought stillness. His mouth slackened. No movement.
A minute later, his breathing stopped. His chest no longer rose. At 10:30 a.
m. , Robert Anthony Buell was pronounced dead. The victim’s family released a brief statement: “We came quietly, and we will leave quietly.
Justice was done.” The execution marked the fifth in Ohio since the state resumed capital punishment in 1999, but the case left lingering questions about the reliability of witness testimony and the final words of a man who insisted he was innocent.
The Harrison family had waited 20 years for this moment. Krista Harrison was just 11 years old when she disappeared from a park across the street from her home in Marshallville, a small village that had never seen such violence. Her father, Gerald, had spent nearly two decades attending parole hearings, writing letters, watching the legal system grind slowly toward this day.
“We are relieved it is over,” the family said in their statement. But for Buell, the end came without closure for those who believed his protestations of innocence. His attorney, Michael Benza, continued to argue that the case was flawed, that the hypnosis of witnesses had polluted the trial.
“The system failed him,” Benza said after the execution. “But the system also failed Krista Harrison. The real killer may still be out there.”
The debate over the death penalty has never been settled in Ohio, or anywhere else. Some see it as a necessary tool of justice, a final reckoning for the worst crimes. Others view it as an irreversible punishment in a fallible system.
Robert Buell’s case touches on all those questions. The single black olive with the pit still inside, the classical music, the quiet reading of the Bible, the final defiant statement—these are the details that linger, long after the chemicals have stopped flowing. The state of Ohio buried him in a prison-made casket, in a suit stitched by inmates, on a plot of land that will never see a tree grow from an olive pit.
And in the quiet village of Marshallville, a family tried to move on, carrying the memory of a girl who never came home from the park.
