BOISE, Idaho — Update: As of 11 a.m. on Wednesday, an hour after the scheduled execution for Thomas Creech, Idaho Department of Corrections announced that they were unable to proceed with the execution due to an inability to find a vein for the IV for the lethal injection.
Thomas Creech is convicted of killing five men in the 1970s and 1980s. Creech has admitted to killing as many as 42 people in the past, but that claim has not been confirmed.
In 1974, the body of 50-year-old Vivian Robinson, a state tax auditor, was found in his home in Sacramento, California. Investigators said the body was found so badly decomposed, no cause of death was originally announced.
In October of 1975, investigators were able to link Thomas Creech's fingerprints to the crime. Years later, it was revealed that Robinson was suffocated.
Two months later, 22-year-old William Dean was found shot to death inside a church in Salem, Oregon. It's the same church where Creech once worked as a sexton. Creech later admitted to the killing.
In early November in 1974, the bodies of two men were found in a ditch near Donnelly, Idaho.
34-year-old Edward Arnold of Texas and 40-year-old John Bradley of Alabama had been shot to death.
Creech, and his then girlfriend, 17-year-old Carol Spaulding of Lewiston, were later arrested and charged with murder. According to The Bulletin Newspaper, Creech reportedly told officers that he "shot the men after they made improper advances to Miss Spaulding."
Spaulding eventually pleaded guilty to accessory to murder, and was sentenced to two years in prison. While there, she gave birth to a baby boy - Ben.
In 1981, while serving his sentence for the deaths of the two men in Valley County, Creech beat a fellow inmate. 23-year-old David Dale Jensen was killed with a sock full of batteries. The two men were exercising in the maximum security prison in Boise, when the warden saw Jensen get "slugged on the head by a homemade weapon consisting of flashlight batteries wrapped in a stocking."
Jensen was taken to the hospital and later died. He was in prison serving a three-year sentences for grand theft.
Creech was sentenced to death for killing Jensen.
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