Death-row inmate Larry Bill Elliott was executed last night for the 2001 murder of Dana Thrall of Prince William County. Elliott, 60, a former Army intelligence officer from Hanover, Md., died in the electric chair at Greensville Correctional Center, about 60 miles south of Richmond. He was pronounced dead at 9:08 p.m. He had met with his family, a spiritual adviser and his lawyers earlier in the day.

The U.S. Supreme Court yesterday refused to block the execution of a Maryland man who was convicted of gunning down a Northern Virginia couple to win the love of a former stripper. Larry Bill Elliott, 60, is scheduled to be executed by electrocution at 9 tonight for the January 2001 shooting deaths of 25-year-old Dana Thrall and 30-year-old Robert Finch. The former Army counterintelligence worker would become the first Virginia inmate to die by electrocution since 2006 and the first nationwide since last year.

If carried out, next week’s scheduled execution of Larry Bill Elliott will be by electrocution, the option he selected before his Oct. 5 execution date, which was delayed by Gov. Timothy M. Kaine. “The attorney general’s office has advised us that no new choice is to be given. Elliott’s choice remains electrocution,“ said Larry Traylor, spokesman for the Virginia Department of Corrections.

Sniper John Allen Muhammad was executed at 9:11 p.m. for the Oct. 9, 2002, slaying of Dean Harold Meyers, 53, who was shot at a Manassas-area gas station.

The Virginia attorney general’s office said yesterday that there is no evidence John Allen Muhammad’s lawyers had reason to think he was mentally ill when he asked to represent himself at his 2003 trial. To the contrary, Muhammad demonstrated his competence to stand trial, “to everyone in the courtroom,“ the attorney general’s office said in its response to an appeal filed by Muhammad with the U.S. Supreme Court this week.

In October 2002, the shots came from out of nowhere, as seemingly random as they were cold-blooded, leaving 10 dead, three wounded, and millions of people frightened. John Allen Muhammad, now at the Greensville Correctional Center awaiting a scheduled Nov. 10 execution, remains an enigma who might take the motives behind the attacks with him to the grave.

If executed as scheduled Nov. 10, condemned Beltway sniper John Allen Muhammad will die by lethal injection, not electrocution. Larry Traylor, spokesman for the Virginia Department of Corrections, said yesterday that Muhammad, 48, declined to choose between either means of execution. In such cases, the default method is lethal injection.

Lawyers for Beltway sniper John Allen Muhammad have asked Gov. Timothy M. Kaine to spare his life because the Persian Gulf War veteran suffers from mental illness. In a statement released yesterday afternoon, they contend Muhammad should not be executed because of his “brain damage, brain dysfunction, neurological deficits as well as his psychotic and delusional behavior.“

Marion Lewis says if he had his way, he’d take Washington, D.C.-area sniper John Allen Muhammad into the Idaho desert near his home and kill him slowly, over three days.

A Virginia death-row inmate who killed two men in Richmond cannot be executed because he is mentally disabled, his attorney told a federal appeals court yesterday. A lawyer for the state countered that Darrick Walker, 37, failed to prove he is disabled through IQ tests and evidence about how well he functions in society. Walker kicked in a door and killed a man in front of his loved ones on two separate occasions. He was convicted of killing Stanley Rogers Beale in November 1996 and Clarence Elwood Threat in June 1997. Virginia law allows the death penalty for anyone who commits two premeditated murders within three years.

Elliott Gov. Timothy M. Kaine has delayed from Oct. 5 to Nov. 17 the execution of a former Army intelligence officer from Maryland in the 2001 murders of a Dale City couple. Kaine said he needs more time to study the man’s clemency petition. Larry Bill Elliott, 59, was convicted of capital murder in the slaying of Dana Thrall, 25, and of first-degree murder in the killing of Robert Finch, 30. Both were shot in their town house in January 2001.

The former head of Beijing airport’s management company was executed Friday following his conviction on corruption charges, state media reported, making him the latest figure brought down in China’s battle against widespread graft.

Condemned killer Paul Warner Powell won another reprieve yesterday, this time from the U.S. Supreme Court, which stayed his execution set for tonight in Virginia’s electric chair. Powell, 31, was sentenced to die for the Jan. 29, 1999, capital murder of Stacie Lynn Reed, 16, in her Manassas-area home. After he stabbed Stacie to death, Powell raped and attempted to kill her 14-year-old sister, Kristie, and left her for dead.

A decade ago, the murder of her older daughter and rape of her younger sent Lorraine Reed Whoberry down an uncertain path. Tomorrow, it will lead to “L Unit” at the Greensville Correctional Center, also known as the death house, where Paul Warner Powell is set to die in the electric chair for the 1999 capital murder of Stacie Lynn Reed, 16, of Prince William County.

On a balmy day in April 1977, Gov. Mills E. Godwin and a bevy of prison officials, some dressed in seersucker suits, performed a ribbon-cutting ceremony for a cluster of grand new buildings. The cost of the state’s newest maximum-security prison would run to $19.6 million. The set of five matched units, each housing 72 inmates, promised to become a bulwark of economic opportunity across hundreds of square miles of job-poor Southside Virginia.