By CHARLES WILSON
Associated Press Writer
8:49 PM CST, December 10, 2009
MICHIGAN CITY, Ind.
An Indiana death row inmate who refused to request clemency awaited execution Friday for killing his estranged wife and two of her relatives more than 15 years ago.
Matthew Eric Wrinkles didn't pursue any last-minute appeals or efforts to save his life Thursday. The 49-year-old inmate had told his attorneys not to make any such efforts, and they agreed to abide by his wishes.
Wrinkles was scheduled to die by lethal injection early Friday at the Indiana State Prison.
He had exhausted his appeals in state and federal courts and last month declined to request clemency from Gov. Mitch Daniels.
Wrinkles was convicted in 1995 of murdering his wife, Debra Jean Wrinkles, 31; her brother, Mark "Tony" Fulkerson, 28; and Fulkerson's wife, Natalie "Chris" Fulkerson, 26, at the Fulkersons' home in Evansville.
The killings came just days after Wrinkles' mother tried to have him committed due to his erratic behavior but was told he didn't meet the criteria. He had been briefly hospitalized at a different hospital about two weeks before the killings but was released after a psychiatrist determined he was not "gravely disabled," according to records from a 1999 court hearing.
Authorities say Wrinkles was high on methamphetamine when he cut the phone lines to the Fulkerson home about 2 a.m. July 21, 1994. He was wearing camouflage clothes and face paint and armed with a gun and a knife when he kicked open the door of the home where his estranged wife and children were staying.
Wrinkles shot Mark Fulkerson in front of Fulkerson's 3-year-old son, then shot Debra Wrinkles as their daughter pleaded for her mother's life. Finally, he shot Natalie Fulkerson in the face.
Wrinkles has said the killings wouldn't have happened except for his meth addiction and his fear he would never see his children again.
A half-dozen members of the Duneland Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty marched outside the state prison Thursday night, bundled up against the frigid cold as they beat drums and carried signs calling for a state moratorium on capital punishment -- including one that read "The state is not the Angel of Death."
The drum beats could be heard inside the prison and were meant to support Wrinkles, said leader Marti Pizzini, 69, of Chesterton, who has been protesting executions at the prison for 20 years.
Frank Lennon, 65, of Hammond, read a passage from Bible and said he had found that it makes sense to learn something about the condemned before coming to a protest.
"If nothing else, it gives me a little passion," he said.
Wrinkles received his "last meal" Tuesday -- prime rib with a loaded baked potato, pork chops with steak fries, rolls and two salads with ranch dressing.
Prison spokeswoman Pam James said inmates usually receive their special meals about two days before their execution because they typically aren't as hungry on the day they are to die.
His scheduled execution was to be Indiana's first in more than two years. Before Wrinkles, the last person put to death in Indiana was Michael Lambert, who was executed in June 2007 for fatally shooting a Muncie police officer 16 years earlier.
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