Death row inmate executed for ’88 slaying

? Luther Jerome Williams was executed by injection Thursday for the 1988 murder and robbery of a man who was taken into the woods and shot after he had stopped on an interstate exit ramp to check on a problem with his pickup truck.

Prison chaplain Chris Summers held Williams’ left hand and knelt in prayer as he died. He was pronounced dead at 6:21 p.m. at Holman prison near Atmore.

Williams, 47, was executed for the robbery and shooting death of 63-year-old John Robert Kirk on Jan. 23, 1988.

Kirk, of Gordo, was led into the woods, shot in the head and robbed when he stopped his truck on an Interstate 59 exit ramp to check a vehicle problem while driving home from work in Helena. His sister, Peggy Kirk Guy, and her son, Lewis Kirk Guy, witnessed the execution.