Virginia ? A man convicted of mutilating and murdering his former girlfriend was executed by lethal injection Thursday after Gov. Timothy M. Kaine rejected a plea for clemency.

When asked if he had any final words, the 43-year-old Dexter Lee Vinson shook his head sharply back and forth several times.

Vinson was convicted in 1998 in the death of 25-year-old Angela Felton, a mother of three. Prosecutors said Felton, who had lived with Vinson for about 1 1/2 years, had moved out of Vinson’s house with her children shortly before the murder to get away from him.

On May 19, 1997, Felton stopped by Vinson’s house to check her mail when Vinson drove up and rammed her car. He then forced her to an abandoned house, where she was choked with a rope, sexually mutilated and stabbed. She bled to death.