Missouri executes killer of mom, 2 kids

BONNE TERRE, Mo. -- Nearly 19 years to the day that Susan Brouk and her two children were taken to a Missouri pond and killed, one of the men responsible for the crime was put to death Tuesday.

Mark Christeson was given a lethal injection -- Missouri's first execution since May. Christeson, 37, was hours away from execution in 2014 when the U.S. Supreme Court granted a temporary stay. This time, though, the court allowed the execution to proceed, and Gov. Eric Greitens declined a clemency request for Christeson, the first inmate to be put to death since the Republican took office.

As the lethal drug was administered, Christeson mouthed "I love you" to his brother and sister-in-law who attended the execution. Soon the inmate's eyes closed.

He was pronounced dead at 7:05 p.m., eight minutes after the lethal injection, a Department of Corrections spokesman said.

The 1998 killings of 36-year-old Brouk, her 12-year-old daughter, Adrian, and 9-year-old son, Kyle, traumatized the rural area around the south-central Missouri town of Vichy.

"It was a heinous crime. I'm just happy to see justice finally served," said Maries County Sheriff Chris Heitman after Christeson's execution, which he witnessed. "I have regrets for the family that it took so long, but I hope it provides closure to them."

Harley Brouk, the half sister of the two children who were killed, said, "There's not a day that goes by that I do not miss them, and I wish that they were here."

She fought through tears to read a poem that Adrian had written not long before her death. "Our love will always be there even when fate is not fair," the poem reads in part.

Missouri executed 16 men from 2014 to 2015, second only to the 23 executions in Texas over the same two years. Last year, Missouri had just one execution, largely because most of the 25 men on the state's death row have appeals remaining or are unlikely to be executed because of medical or mental health concerns.

A Section on 02/01/2017

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