Raymond Lee Stewart Executed for Six-Day Killing Spree in Illinois and Wisconsin
Raymond Lee Stewart was executed by lethal injection on September 18, 1996, at Stateville Correctional Center in Crest Hill, Illinois. Stewart was a spree killer responsible for the deaths of six people across Illinois and Wisconsin during a six-day rampage in 1981. His victims included Willie Fredd and Albert Pearson in Rockford, two gas station attendants in Rockford (Kevin Kaiser and Kenny Foust), and Donald Rains and Richard Boeck in Beloit, Wisconsin. Stewart had a prior criminal record for gas station robberies, for which he served six years in prison. Years after the murders, in an audio recording made just days before his execution, Stewart claimed the killings were racially motivated acts of retaliation against Caucasians for the assassinations of Martin Luther King Jr. and President John F. Kennedy. He stated that the victims had not provoked him and offered an apology.
