How do you give parole a bad name

 As if he was a victim, he stated:

"I'm ready to be released," McDuff, 52, said when asked by Warden Jim Willett if he had any final statement. "Release me."

He made no other comments, gasped several times and then exhaled before slipping into unconsciousness. 8 minutes later, at 6:26 p.m. CST, he was pronounced dead.

It was a quiet ending to a nearly three-decade history of ghastly murders that earned him the tag of predator and monster. He also was believed to be the only condemned man ever released from one of the nation's death rows to be returned there for another killing.

McDuff's 1st death sentence was commuted in the 1970s when the death penalty was ruled unconstitutional.

While McDuff asked for a final meal, his attorneys were at the U.S. Supreme Court seeking a delay so additional tests could be conducted on hair samples that authorities said linked him to Ms. Northrup's slaying.

Both requests were denied. And the high court refused Tuesday night to stop the punishment from being carried out.

"I want you all to know I'm very glad," said Brenda Solomon, who watched McDuff die and said he "looked like the devil."

McDuff was put to death for killing her daughter, Melissa Ann Northrup, 22, of Waco.

"He's going where he needs to go," she said. "I feel happy. I feel wonderful."

Ms. Northrup was abducted March 1, 1992, from a Waco convenience store where she worked. Her body surfaced weeks later and dozens of miles away in a Dallas County gravel pit. Her hands were tied behind her and she had been strangled with a rope.

McDuff also had a 2nd death sentence for the 1991 abduction and slaying of 28-year-old Austin accountant Colleen Reed, and authorities say he may have killed as many as a dozen other people, primarily in central Texas between Austin and Waco.