A death row inmate became the third ever person to be executed with a new method, which is said to be brutal.
American prisoner Carey Dale Grayson was held at the William C. Holman Correctional facility in Alabama, after he was found guilty of killing and mutilating a mother while she was hitchhiking back in 1994.
He was just a teenager when he carried out the heinous act, and along with three other teens, they offered her a car ride as she was making her way back to West Monroe, Louisiana, from Chattanooga, Tennessee.
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Prosecutors stated that the group took Vickie DeBlieux to a wooded area, assaulted her, and beat her.
It was so brutal in fact, that a medical examiner revealed that DeBlieux's face was so severely fractured that she could only be identified through an X-ray of her spine.
The teenagers became suspects after one showed a friend a photo of one of the mother's severed fingers, bragging about the killing.
It is believed that they threw her off a cliff and returned to mutilate her body, stabbing her a total of 180 times.
He was the only teen to face a death sentence, as the rest of them were under 18 at the time of the crime, while he was 19.
But on 21 November this year, Grayson, now 50, was executed after consuming his final meal, a selection of Mexican food with some Mountain Dew Blast.
He was executed via nitrogen gas hypoxia, meaning he would die from oxygen deprivation.
Grayson became the third ever person in the US to die this way, in a method that has been compared to 'torture'.
It works by putting a gas mask on someone's face, replacing breathable air with nitrogen as the criminal suffocates.
When asked by the prison governor if he had any final words, Grayson spat at him, saying: "For you, you need to f*** off."
The 50-year-old showed him both of his middle fingers as he was fed a wave of nitrogen gas, choking him and killing him, and he was pronounced dead at 6.33pm.
Alabama only introduced nitrogen gas as an execution method earlier this year, and Grayson's death came just hours after his request for a stay was denied by the US Supreme Court.
Grayson's legal team said that the method needed further examination before being administered again.
Directly following the execution on Thursday, Governor Kay Ivey said that she was praying for Deblieux's loved ones to heal and find closure, following 30 years of pain.
She stated: "Some thirty years ago, Vicki DeBlieux's journey to her mother's house and ultimately, her life, were horrifically cut short because of Carey Grayson and three other men.
"She sensed something was wrong, attempted to escape, but instead, was brutally tortured and murdered," Ivey said.
Describing Grayson's crimes, she went on: "(They were) heinous, unimaginable, without an ounce of regard for human life and just unexplainably mean. An execution by nitrogen hypoxia (bears) no comparison to the death and dismemberment Ms. DeBlieux experienced."
Joshua Nair