Zagorski died with a peace denied to his victims’ families

Edmund Zagorski’s life ended with a smile.

Just before he was executed Thursday night, he locked eyes with his attorney Kelley Henry and flashed a grin. She returned the expression.

He told her he wanted his last vision to be of her smiling. “I did my best,” Henry said afterward. Zagorski, 63, urged those closest to him to keep a light mood. His last words summed up his attitude: “Let’s rock.”

The people who knew Zagorski best said he walked to the execution chamber in peace, a man ready to meet his fate 34 years after he was convicted of killing two men in Robertson County.

But Zagorski’s smile only revived grief for family members of his victims, John Dale Dotson and Jimmy Porter.

Their conflicting emotions converged in the quiet aftermath, when Zagorski was declared dead at 7:26 p.m.

‘He was ready to go’

The Rev. Joe Ingle said his final goodbye to Zagorski more than two hours earlier, at 5 p.m.

“I said, ‘I love you. You’re my friend.’ He said, ‘I love you. You’re my friend,” Ingle said.

The United Church of Christ minister leads the death row visitor program at Riverbend Maximum Security Institution and had known Zagorski for the 34 years he was in prison. Zagorski never signed up to have visitors, but he built a relationship with Ingle anyway. He asked Ingle to be his spiritual adviser for the last three days of his life.

Ingle described Zagorski as very positive in his final hours.

“He was very strong,” Ingle said. “As he said to me yesterday, ‘I’ll probably drag the guards to the electric chair,’ because he was ready to go.”

As the state strapped Zagorski into the chair, and then 1,750 volts of electricity killed him, Ingle stood outside the prison keeping vigil. Dozens of death row visitors, clergy and capital punishment opponents joined him.

After hearing Zagorski had been declared dead, Ingle greeted the moment with grief but acceptance.

Zagorski didn’t want to grow old in prison, Ingle said. And he was eager to avoid the fate of Billy Ray Irick, another Tennessee death row inmate who was executed by lethal injection in August. Henry, Zagorski’s attorney, argued in court that Irick was tortured to death for nearly 20 minutes.

“That’s why he (Zagorski) chose the electric chair. He was very clear about that. He did not want lethal injection after what happened to Billy Irick and he wanted to be electrocuted,” Ingle said.

“As barbaric as this moment is, it’s also I know a moment that Ed Zagorski anticipated and really desired,” Ingle said. “He was at a point in his life where he felt grateful for his life, grateful for people who had worked for him and supported him, but also felt like it was time for his life to transition to something else.”

‘He got just what he deserved’

The days before the execution were anything but calm for the families of Dotson and Porter. They have spent decades hearing the gruesome details of their loved ones’ deaths each time the Zagorski case returned to the headlines.

For them, the last month has been excruciating.

Kim Dotson Rochelle was two weeks away from her 13th birthday when she buried her father, and every day since, she’s looked at her own reflection in the mirror and been reminded of the man she lost. For years, she thought about getting a nose job until one day she looked closer and realized she had her father’s nose.

“I can’t because it’s a part of him,” she said.

Today, Rochelle’s children are 30 and 15 years old. They’ve had to be content with stories about the grandfather they never met, she said.

“He’s a stranger to them,” Rochelle said of John Dale Dotson. “It tears me up. My dad, through whatever he did in life, he always took care of us kids. We always knew we were loved.”

Like most of her family, Rochelle waited for years to hear something, anything from her father’s killer.

There was never any apology, never any reason why he killed the two men, she said.

John Dale Dotson’s widow Marsha and his nephew Richard Hicks also said they’d never heard from the inmate during his 34 years of incarceration.

Her last vision of Zagorski’s smiling face reinforced her pain and anger, and deprived her of the apology for which she waited 34 years.