John Thanos

John Frederick Thanos (March 28, 1949 – May 17, 1994)[1] was an American murderer who was convicted in 1992 of the September 1990 murders of three teenagers: Billy Winebrenner, Gregory Taylor, and Melody Pistorio.

At his trial he taunted the families of his victims, saying he wished he could dig up their bodies and defile their corpses. Thanos stated: "their cries bring laughter from the darkest caverns of my soul. I don't believe I could satisfy my thirst yet in this matter unless I was to be able to dig these brats' bones up out of their graves right now and beat them into powder and urinate on them and then stir it into a murky yellowish elixir and serve it up to their loved ones" during his sentencing hearing for the murder of Winebrenner and Pistorio.

His attorney later said of Thanos: "What he did was reprehensible, that's true... the other thing is he is extremely damaged. He is an extremely damaged human being. And really, in our society we should not kill sick people. He really is a sick person."[1]

Thanos waived all of his appeals and refused to fight his death sentence after he was convicted and sentenced to death. At that time, death by gas chamber was the only means of execution provided by the state of Maryland. Thanos agreed to a proposal by a lawyer of another prisoner sentenced to death to have his execution videotaped and his EEG data recorded, in an attempt to raise evidence that execution by gas chamber is cruel and unusual, as defined by the 8th Amendment, and thus unconstitutional. The legislature of Maryland responded by making lethal injection the primary means of execution in January 1994.[2]

Thanos was executed in 1994 by the state of Maryland by lethal injection, becoming the first person to be executed in Maryland since 1976 when the death penalty was reinstated. Thanos was 45 years old; his last words were "Adios!"