Murdering monster who killed 19-year-old store clerk in Little Rock in 1989 has died and gone straight to hell

Bruce Ward, an Arkansas death row inmate convicted of murdering 18-year-old Rebecca Doss in 1989, died on Tuesday at the Varner SuperMax prison. He was 68. The Arkansas Department of Corrections reported that Ward died at 4:30 p.m. from natural causes, likely a heart attack, though an autopsy is pending.

Ward was sentenced to death in 1990 for the murder of Rebecca Lynn Doss, a clerk at a Quik Stop store in Little Rock. On August 15, 1989, Ward entered the store around 11:45 p.m., bought a soda, and asked Doss to check something in the back. There, he strangled her with a shoelace taken from his own shoe.

Her body was found the next morning by a coworker, with the shoelace still around her neck.

Police arrested Ward on August 18 after a witness reported seeing him near the store that night. Forensic evidence showed Doss’s hair on Ward’s jacket, and a search of his home found a notebook with a drawing of the store and an entry dated August 14 that read, “Tomorrow I take what’s mine.”

At trial, prosecutors said Ward had watched the store for three days prior, targeting Doss because she worked alone. He had a prior arrest in 1986 for assaulting a woman, though charges were dropped.

Ward claimed he was innocent, saying he was home asleep, but the jury convicted him in under two hours. His appeals, based on claims of schizophrenia, delayed his execution multiple times, including a stay in 2017 during a dispute over lethal injection drugs.

Doss’s family reacted to Ward’s death with a brief statement. Her sister,

Emily Carter, said, “We wanted him executed, but he’s gone now. Rebecca was killed for no reason, and that never changes.”

Ward had been on death row for 34 years, the longest of any inmate in Arkansas. There are now 28 inmates left on the state’s death row.