NORTH RIDGEVILLE — The Ohio Supreme Court on Friday scheduled an Oct. 14 execution date for convicted killer Richard Cooey.That’s a day that cannot come soon enough for Bob McCreery of North Ridgeville, whose daughter, Dawn McCreery, was one of Cooey’s victims.

“I’ll definitely be there. I want to see him get the needle put in his arm,” he said Friday.

Cooey

Dawn McCreery, 22, and her friend, 21-year-old Wendy Offredo, were both University of Akron students when they were murdered by Cooey and an accomplice, Clint Dickens, in 1986.

Cooey and Dickens dropped a chunk of concrete onto a car carrying the women, and when the women stopped, Cooey and Dickens forced them into nearby woods and raped, robbed, beat and strangled them.

Dickens, who was 17 at the time of the murders, is serving a life sentence.

“We’ve been waiting for this for a long time. It was supposed to go through in 2004,” Bob McCreery said.

That’s when Cooey received a last-minute stay of execution because Ohio’s death penalty was challenged as being cruel and unusual.

Since then, the controversial punishment has been under intense scrutiny, and an informal ban on state executions had been in effect since late 2007. Cooey’s death will be the first to break that sanction.

Christopher Newton, executed last May, was the last inmate to be put to death in Ohio.

Bob McCreery said he’s always supported the death penalty — and his daughter’s death did nothing to change his feelings. He said he had been estranged from his daughter for several years prior to her death and planned to try to reconcile with her on her birthday, but Cooey stole his last chance.

He said his daughter wanted to be a lawyer and would also be happy to hear the court’s ruling.

Bob McCreery said he doesn’t know if he’ll want to say anything to Cooey when he travels to Southern Ohio Correctional Facility in Lucasville this fall for the execution.

“We’ve been living with this for a long time,” he said. “I won’t know what emotions will surface until I get down there.”

Contact Jason Hawk at 329-7148 or jhawk@chroniclet.com.

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