Richard Cooey: Murders, Appeals, and “Too Fat to Die” Execution

Richard Wade Cooey II was an Ohio death row inmate executed by lethal injection on October 14, 2008, for the 1986 kidnapping, rape, and murder of two University of Akron students, Wendy Jo Offredo and Dawn McCreery. He spent 22 years on death row, and his case drew national attention in its final months when his lawyers argued that his weight made lethal injection unconstitutionally cruel. The courts rejected that argument, and Governor Ted Strickland declined to grant clemency.

The 1986 Murders of Wendy Offredo and Dawn McCreery

On September 1, 1986, Cooey was 19 years old and on leave from the U.S. Army. He was with a 17-year-old associate, Clinton Dickens, on an Interstate 77 overpass in Summit County, Ohio, when Dickens threw a chunk of concrete weighing roughly 35 pounds off the overpass. It shattered the windshield of a car driven by Wendy Offredo, a 21-year-old University of Akron junior.¹

Cooey and his companions approached the women and offered to help, driving them to a shopping mall. At some point the two men decided to rob them. Cooey pulled a knife and held Offredo and her passenger, 20-year-old Dawn McCreery, against their will. They took the women to a wooded area near Norton, Ohio, where prosecutors said both victims were raped over more than three hours.¹

Both women were beaten with a wooden club. According to court records, Dickens suggested killing the victims because they knew his name. Cooey strangled Offredo with a shoelace while Dickens strangled McCreery. Cooey then struck both women in the head with the club, and McCreery was stabbed in the neck.¹ The attackers took the victims’ jewelry, dragged the bodies into weeds, and tried to clean the car. They returned the next day to retrieve and burn the purses.

Offredo and McCreery were both juniors and members of the Alpha Delta Pi sorority at the University of Akron.¹

Conviction and Death Sentence

Cooey was indicted on September 8, 1986, on two counts of aggravated murder along with counts of kidnapping, rape, aggravated robbery, and felonious assault.² He waived a jury trial and was tried before a three-judge panel in the Summit County Court of Common Pleas, which found him guilty on all counts.

On December 5, 1986, the panel unanimously determined that the aggravating circumstances outweighed the mitigating factors beyond a reasonable doubt and sentenced Cooey to death for each of the two aggravated murders.² He also received prison terms totaling 66 to 180 years on the remaining felonies.³ The judges found three aggravating specifications for each murder: that the killings were committed to escape detection, that they were part of a course of conduct involving the purposeful killing of two or more people, and that they occurred during the commission of rape, kidnapping, or aggravated robbery.

In mitigation, Cooey’s attorney argued that he was an immature 19-year-old heavily influenced by drugs and alcohol. Cooey later told interviewers he had drunk about a dozen beers, snorted cocaine, and smoked opium and marijuana the night of the murders, describing himself as “high and bombed.”¹ The court noted he had little or no prior criminal history and above-average intelligence, but concluded those factors did not outweigh the aggravating circumstances.

Two Decades of Failed Appeals

Cooey’s conviction and sentence held up through more than 20 years of state and federal review. The Ohio Court of Appeals affirmed on December 23, 1987. The Ohio Supreme Court affirmed on October 11, 1989, after acknowledging that the trial panel had improperly weighed the aggravating circumstances collectively for both murders and had failed to merge overlapping specifications. The state high court reweighed the factors independently and concluded the death penalty was still warranted.²

State post-conviction relief was denied, and the Ohio Court of Appeals affirmed that denial in May 1994, holding most of Cooey’s claims were barred because they could have been raised on direct appeal.² The Ohio Supreme Court affirmed the denial of a motion to reopen the direct appeal in 1995.⁴

Cooey filed a federal habeas corpus petition in October 1996. The U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Ohio denied it in September 1997. In April 2002, the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals denied relief on the two issues it had certified for review, finding the Ohio Supreme Court’s reweighing was constitutionally adequate and that Cooey had not shown prejudice from his trial counsel’s performance.² The U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear the case in 2003.⁵

The “Too Fat to Die” Lethal Injection Challenge

As his execution date approached, Cooey mounted a separate constitutional challenge to Ohio’s lethal injection protocol. Standing five feet seven inches and weighing 267 pounds, he had gained roughly 75 pounds during his years on death row, a weight gain his attorneys attributed to prison food and 23-hour-a-day confinement with little exercise.⁶ His lawyers argued that his obesity would make it difficult for medical staff to find suitable veins, creating an unacceptable risk of a botched, painful death.⁷

The team also contended that medication Cooey took for chronic migraines would diminish the effectiveness of the anesthetic in Ohio’s three-drug protocol, and asked the courts to order a switch to a single-drug method.⁶

The challenge failed at every level. A federal district court dismissed the claims as time-barred under Sixth Circuit precedent holding that the limitations period for challenging a lethal injection protocol runs from when the prisoner knows or has reason to know of the basis for the challenge. The Sixth Circuit affirmed the dismissal in October 2008.⁵ The U.S. Supreme Court denied a separate appeal based on the obesity claim on October 13, 2008, and denied a final stay the next morning.⁷

Clemency Denied

Cooey petitioned Governor Ted Strickland for executive clemency, arguing that he had received ineffective legal assistance at trial and that a different defense strategy would likely have produced a sentence other than death. The seven-member Ohio Parole Board unanimously recommended denial, concluding a different outcome was unlikely even with alternative tactics or more extensive mitigation.⁸ On October 10, 2008, four days before the scheduled execution, Strickland declined clemency.⁹

The Execution

Cooey was executed on the morning of October 14, 2008, at the Southern Ohio Correctional Facility near Lucasville. During preparation, medical technicians had difficulty inserting an intravenous needle, and Cooey shouted for his attorney and voiced fear that the staff would “botch” the process. IV lines were eventually established in both arms.¹

Asked for a final statement, Cooey said: “You haven’t paid attention to anything I’ve had to say for the past 22 years, so why would you pay attention to anything I have to say now?” Ohio’s three-drug protocol administered sodium pentothal, pancuronium bromide, and potassium chloride. Cooey was pronounced dead at 10:28 a.m. A corrections spokeswoman said the execution had proceeded with “no problems whatsoever,” despite the earlier IV difficulty.⁷ It was Ohio’s first execution since May 2007.

Dawn McCreery’s father, mother, brother, and three cousins attended as victim witnesses. Wendy Offredo’s family chose not to attend. No members of Cooey’s family were present.¹⁰ After the execution, Dawn McCreery’s mother, Mary Ann Hackenberg, told reporters she felt her daughter’s presence in the death chamber. Some family members said the execution was “too easy” compared to what the two women had suffered.¹

What Happened to Clinton Dickens

Cooey’s accomplice, Clinton Dickens, was 17 at the time of the crimes. He was tried as an adult and sentenced on January 12, 1987, to 95 years to life in prison.¹¹ In 2021, Ohio enacted Senate Bill 256, allowing individuals who committed crimes before age 18 to apply for parole after serving between 18 and 30 years, which made Dickens eligible for a parole hearing. The Ohio Parole Board denied his petition in April 2022.¹² According to Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction records, Dickens remains incarcerated at Marion Correctional Institution and is next scheduled for a parole board hearing in November 2026.¹³

1
Clark County Prosecutor. Richard Wade Cooey II
2
FindLaw. Cooey v. Coyle, 289 F.3d 882
3
Amnesty International. UA 275/08 – Richard Wade Cooey
4
Ohio Supreme Court. State v. Cooey, 73 Ohio St.3d 411
5
FindLaw. Cooey v. Strickland, 6th Circuit
6
San Bernardino Sun. Ohio Executes Man Who Said He Was Too Fat to Die
7
CNN. Ohio Executes Inmate Who Argued He Was Too Fat for Lethal Injection
8
Cleveland.com. Death Row Inmate Richard Cooey
9
Cleveland 19 News. Gov. Strickland Denies Obese Inmate Clemency
10
Cleveland.com. Richard Cooey Readied for Execution
11
Oxygen. Clinton Dickens Denied Parole in Wendy Offredo and Dawn McCreery Murders
12
Cleveland 19 News. Man Denied Parole in Brutal Murder of College Students
13
Ohio DRC. Clinton E. Dickens – Offender Search