MOHAVE COUNTY — Just one Arizona prison inmate from Mohave County has been executed for well more than four decades. It was on this date 13 years ago when Dan Cook, 51, Lake Havasu City, was put to death by lethal injection at the prison complex in Florence, where Arizona houses its death row inmates.
Cook was convicted in the July, 1987 sodomy-torture murders of two co-workers, 16-year-old Kevin Swaney of Lake Havasu, and Carlos Cruz-Ramos, 28, an illegal immigrant from Guatemala.
Cook’s final meal included eggplant lasagna, broiled asparagus, roasted brussel sprouts, garlic cheese mashed potatoes, root beer and ice cream.
Press accounts of the 2012 execution indicated that Cook offered apology, thanked his lawyers and appeared nervous and confused when drugs that would render him unconscious began to take hold. “Where am I,” Cook reportedly queried before making other remarks that were incomprehensible.
Cook was pronounced dead 35 minutes after his execution began.
“You just made my day,” Dan Gabler responded when informed his former neighbor was dead. “It just got a lot brighter.”
Gabler said he spoke with Cook and co-defendant John Matzke within hours of the brutal homicides and that they were drinking beer and partying. Gabler said he was wracked with guilty wondering if he could have done anything to prevent the killings that took place in the unit next to him in the housing complex.
Matzke entered a plea agreement, testified against Cook at Cook’s trial, completed his 20 year sentence and was released from prison about five years before the execution.
Retired Mohave County Superior Court Judge Steve Conn imposed Cook’s death sentence. Conn said he experienced no angst or uneasiness that his execution order was carried out.
“If you start with the proposition that there are people who deserve to be executed for the crimes that they have committed, then there’s no question whatsoever that Cook was one of those people,” Conn said. “Even though I’m the one that made the decision to have the death penalty imposed, I think to myself he’s (Cook) the one who made certain decisions in his life to engage in behavior that gave me the opportunity. And in the 25 years that elapsed an awful lot of other judges in different courts that reviewed the process and upheld my decision. So I didn’t really lose any sleep about it and really don’t feel bad about it.”
Roger Murray, Frank Anderson, Bobby Poyson, Charles Elliison and Brad Nelson are the five Mohave County death row inmates awaiting execution.
