JOLIET, Ill., Sept. 20 -- Charles Albanese used arsenic in 1980 to fatally poison three family members to get insurance money and control of the family business. In return, the Illinois Department of Corrections early Wednesday used a combination of three chemicals to provide to execute the suburban Chicago man by lethal injection. Illinois put Albanese, 58, to death at the Stateville Correctional Center for his murder convictions for the deaths of his father, Michael, and his wife's mother, Marion Mueller, and grandmother, Mary Lambert. His death was uneventful, as he stared at the ceiling for three minutes before taking two desperate gasps of breath, then closing his eyes for good. He was pronounced dead at 12:20 a.m. Prosecutors claim Albanese used the poison on his wife's relatives to gain a $72,000 inheritance, then spiked his father's milk with arsenic to gain control of the family trophy-making business. Albanese has consistently denied killing his family members, and in a written statement he issued just before his death, he accused prosecutors of allowing witnesses to commit perjury and to present 'fabricated circumstantial evidence.' 'Not only have you killed an innocent man, you have destroyed my family, all I have worked for in life, and allowed someone to get away with murder,' Albanese wrote. He had no final words prior to the execution process starting. Albanese spent his final day of life at Stateville, after having been transferred by helicopter from the Menard Correctional Center in Southern Illinois, where he had been on death row since 1982.
He spent much of the day talking with guards at the jail, making only one telephone call, to his attorney, who filed unsuccessful appeals with the Supreme Court to try to get the execution postponed. Albanese dined on a final meal of prime rib, a baked potato and garlic bread, drank coffee and Coca Cola, and had pistaccio flavored ice cream for dessert. He spent part of his final evening watching game shows on television. Albanese's execution, the fourth in Illinois this year and the sixth since the state reinstituted the death penalty in 1977, attracted little attention. Family members were contacted by the Department of Corrections to see if they wanted to be present. None was. And only about two dozen death penalty opponents, organized by Amnesty International and the Illinois Coalition Against the Death Penalty, gathered outside the prison for a midnight vigil.