Grocery Store Killer Executed

McALESTER, Okla. (AP) - One of two men who blamed each other for a 1985 blood bath at an Edmond grocery store became the first to die for the crime Tuesday. <br><br>A dose of drugs took Mark Andrew Fowler's

Tuesday, January 23rd 2001, 12:00 am

By: News On 6

McALESTER, Okla. (AP) - One of two men who blamed each other for a 1985 blood bath at an Edmond grocery store became the first to die for the crime Tuesday.

A dose of drugs took Mark Andrew Fowler's breath and then stopped his heart in Oklahoma's death chamber. The 35-year-old was pronounced dead at 9:07 p.m.

Fowler became the fifth killer executed this month. His accomplice in a robbery turned triple murder, Billy Ray Fox, 34, is to become the sixth Thursday.

Fowler and Fox were arrested in Edmond the day after the July 3, 1985 murders of Barrier, 27, Rick Cast, 33, and Chumpon Chaowasin, 44. A teen-age girl found the three men lying face-down in a massive pool of blood in the back room of Wynn's IGA.

Cast and Chaowasin died of shotgun wounds to their heads and Barrier had been beaten and stabbed. Attorney General Drew Edmondson said testimony showed the killer couldn't have acted alone.

``Both of them pointed the finger at the other as the more involved of the two, but the evidence was clear,'' he said. ``When you're dealing with three healthy human beings, it had to be more than one person involved ... to successfully keep them herded in the back room.''

Six family members and friends of two of the slain men came to the prison to see Fowler die.

``I have always believed in an `eye for and eye,' '' Linda Barrier, the sister of victim John Barrier, wrote to a clemency board earlier this month. ``I have waited 15 years for the final chapter.''

Fowler had maintained he was a lookout during the murders, but he apologized to the victims' families at his clemency hearing.

``I'm not here to deny my involvement or participation because I was there and I was equally responsible for what happened,'' he said. ``I cannot change the past or make the bad things disappear. I apologize for what I have done and thank God for taking care of my family.''

Fowler spent his final hours visiting with family and friends through a thick glass window. He ate a last meal of two orders of onion rings, a cheeseburger, a bacon cheeseburger, a grilled chicken sandwich and a medium cherry limeade.

His parents, Jim and Ann Fowler, came to the prison to witness the execution.

Jim Fowler has lived on both sides of the death penalty; first, as the father of a condemned inmate and secondly, as the son of a murder victim. Robert Miller Jr. spent 11 years on Oklahoma's death row before DNA evidence exonerated him in Anne Laura Fowler's death.

``If we had killed Mr. Miller you would never had known about him being innocent,'' said Jim Fowler, who believes the death penalty lowers citizens to a killer's level.

Catholic leaders, including Fowler's uncle, the Rev. Gregory Gier of Holy Family Cathedral in Tulsa, made pleas for his life before the state clemency board earlier this month.

Frank Cast, Rick Cast's brother, pointed to lives cut down by the two killers. All three victims were working at night and attending college by day, he wrote in a letter to the clemency board.

Grief took a toll on his mother, who watched as Fox and Fowler snickered and passed notes during their court proceedings, Frank Cast said.

``I believe to this date that Ricky's murder and the trial is what killed her,'' he wrote. ``Our mother lingered on her death bed for 14 years, withering into a skeleton, waiting for justice to be carried out.''

The execution came in a string of eight scheduled through Feb. 1 in Oklahoma's death chamber.

Death penalty opponents, who have gained momentum with national attention to the record pace, protested Tuesday morning on the grounds of the building that houses the state Pardon and Parole Board. Seven were arrested for trespassing.

Kevin Acers, president of the Oklahoma City chapter of Amnesty International, said a homicide survivor's support group had received the permit to stand at the group's normal protest site outside the governor's mansion.