That morning, Basnett had been briefed to be on the lookout for Swindler, who was the suspect in the double murders of teenagers Gregory L. Passing the I-540 exit on I-40 near Van Buren, Arkansas, the illiterate Swindler became confused and exited, driving across the Arkansas River and into Fort Smith. Swindler was returning to Leavenworth, Kansas to settle some personal grudges that had arisen when he had been imprisoned there. Officer Basnett had stopped at a service station at the Kelly Highway exit in Fort Smith, Arkansas, when Swindler also stopped there in a stolen car with a South Carolina license plate. John Edward Swindler shot and killed Patrolman Randy Basnett in the afternoon of September 24, 1976. Swindler was the first person to be executed by the state of Arkansas since 1961, and is the only person to have been executed in the electric chair in Arkansas since the reinstatement of capital punishment in 1976. He was also convicted of the murders of two teenagers: Greg Becknell and Dorothy Rhodes, in Columbia, South Carolina, and was charged but never convicted of the murder of Jeffrey McNerney in Florida. John Edward Swindler (– June 18, 1990) was an American murderer and suspected serial killer who was executed by the state of Arkansas for the 1976 murder of Patrolman Randy Basnett. South Carolina, Arkansas, and possibly Florida Cummins Unit, Lincoln County, Arkansas, U.S.
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