OAN’s Abril Elfi
12:32 PM – Thursday, September 21, 2023
Anthony Sanchez, the killer convicted for the murder of a dance student, was executed in Oklahoma.
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The state of Oklahoma executed Anthony Sanchez on Thursday, for the 1996 murder of Juli Busken, a University of Oklahoma dance student.
The killer was reportedly executed by a lethal injection and was pronounced dead at 10:19 a.m.
Sanchez, 44, was found guilty in 2006 of raping and murdering Busken after his DNA was linked to the crime while he was serving a burglary sentence.
State Attorney General Gentner Drummond was among those who attended the execution and said in a statement afterwards that “justice was served.”
“Justice was served today for Juli Busken nearly 27 years after her life tragically was taken,” Drummond said in a statement. “My hope is that today can bring some measure of peace to her family and friends.”
According to the press, Sanchez claimed his innocence in his final words. “I didn’t kill nobody,” he stated during his execution at the Oklahoma State Penitentiary in McAlester. He also reportedly criticized attorneys who had previously represented him in the matter and praised his fans.
When trying to prove his innocence earlier this year, Sanchez reportedly accused his now-deceased father of killing the dancer citing an alleged confession revealed by an ex-girlfriend of his dad.
“Once he said he … enjoyed watching her die,” Charlotte Beattie, the girlfriend, wrote in a sworn statement. “Glen said that he regretted Anthony was on death row for something Glen did. But he said that Anthony was tough and could deal with being locked up, whereas Glen wasn’t strong enough to adapt to being incarcerated.”
According to former Cleveland County District Attorney Tim Kuykendall, who was the county’s top prosecutor when Sanchez was tried, there was other evidence linking Sanchez to the killing besides the DNA, including a shoe print found at the crime scene.
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