After waiting around in prison for nine years, death-row inmate Richard Glassel died from "apparent natural causes" at the age of 74, according to the Arizona Department of Corrections.
Glassel killed two people and injured three when he opened fire at a board of directors meeting for a retirement community in Peoria on April 19, 2000.
See also:
-Off with their heads
-Nation's Oldest Death Row Inmate Will Never Be Executed
After being sentenced to death for his first-degree murder convictions, Glassel's address changed to the Arizona State Prison Complex-Eyman on January 13, 2002.
Glassel didn't have a set execution date, since it usually takes a few years short of forever to get one. There are still folks who were sentenced to die in the '80s who are hanging out on death row -- much longer than Glassel's nine years.
As we've previously noted, Arizona spent an estimated $586,000 in 2010 housing the 24 convicted murderers who've been waiting to be juiced for more than two decades.
Attorney General Tom Horne has barked about the time it takes to execute people who were sentenced to die, but we've yet to see any action from him on that front.
It costs $66.90 per day to house, feed, and care for a single inmate in the Browning Unit of the Eyman Prison, where death-row inmates are housed, as of the Department of Corrections' 2010 spending report. There are 123 inmates currently on death row in Arizona
Here's an account of Glassel's crime, from the Arizona Department of Corrections:
Several months prior to April 19, 2000 Richard J. Glassel made several trips to the Phoenix area from California. Richard Glassel reserved a U-Haul truck one week prior to the shooting and picked up the truck on the day of the shooting. According to the police report given the number of weapons and large amounts of ammunition found Richard Glassel had obviously planned this crime for some time.
On April 19, 2000 Richard Glassel decided to take revenge on people he believed to have wronged him in the past and entered the Board of Directors meeting for the Ventana Lakes Property Owners Association at Ventana Lakes. Richard Glassel began shooting weapons into the group of people attending the meeting. Esther LaPlante and Nila Lynn were both killed. Edward Ettinger, Charles Yankowski and Gilbert McCurdy each suffered gunshot wounds. Richard Glassel was subsequently subdued by the group and held on the floor until the police arrived.
