Ohio executes man for ’97 killing

LUCASVILLE, Ohio – Ohio on Tuesday executed a condemned killer who calmly went to his death still claiming he was innocent of stabbing a woman 138 times, slitting her throat and cutting off her hands.

“I’m good, let’s roll,” Brett Hartman said in his final words.

He then smiled in the direction of his sister and repeatedly gave her, a friend and his attorney a “thumbs-up” with his left hand.

“This is not going to defeat me,” Hartman then said to warden Donald Morgan, who didn’t respond.

The warden declared Hartman’s time of death as 10:34 a.m. Hartman was the 49th inmate put to death since Ohio resumed executions in 1999.

Hartman acknowledged that he had sex with Winda Snipes early on the morning of Sept. 9, 1997, at her Akron apartment. He also said he went back to Snipes’ apartment later that day, found her mutilated body and panicked, trying to clean up the mess before calling 911.

But Hartman said he didn’t kill her, a claim rejected by numerous courts over the years.

A former co-worker and friend of Snipes who witnessed the execution said afterward that the family was relieved the case was over and that the continuous rounds of appeals and media reports about the case were at an end. Jacqueline Brown of Doylestown in northeast Ohio also flatly dismissed Hartman’s innocence claim.