HUNTSVILLE — Condemning his execution as an "atrocity," Michael James Perry was put to death Thursday night for the shotgun murder of a Conroe woman during an alcohol and drug-fueled binge almost a decade ago.

Perry had steadily proclaimed he was innocent of the murder of 50-year-old Sandra Stotler in her fashionable home near Lake Conroe in October 2001. Although he confessed following his arrest several days later, he quickly recanted, claiming he was coerced and physically intimidated into implicating himself.

"I want to let everyone here who is involved in this atrocity know they're forgiven by me," Perry said in his final statement, still not acknowledging his role in the woman's death. He sobbed briefly, teared up, mouthed "I love you" to his mother in the witness room, then twice whispered, "I'm coming home, Dad."

Making some peace

Perry, 28, gasped four times before falling silent. He was pronounced dead at 6:17, nine minutes after the lethal injection was administered. He is the 14th inmate to be executed in Texas this year.

"We can get on with our lives now and have peace," said Stotler's mother, Mary Ann Bockwich.

Stotler's daughter, Lisa Stotler Balloun, said the day "was not a good day no matter what anyone says" and expressed sympathy for Perry's family. But she said his last statement validated the jury's death sentence.

"I needed to look into his eyes and see if he was the monster I had made him out to be, because he was just a 19-year-old kid at the time," Balloun said. "When he said that, I knew that he was. I knew that justice had been served."

Points finger at friend

Perry confessed to authorities that he killed Stotler, a nurse, in her home in the Bentwater subdivision near Conroe on Oct. 24, 2001, then later recanted. He claimed to have been in jail on an unrelated traffic charge at the time that the state's medical examiner pinpointed the time of death - Oct. 26 - and thus could not be the killer. He blamed his former friend and co-defendant, Jason Aaron Burkett, for the shotgun shooting of Stotler and later Stotler's son, Adam, and Adam's friend, Jeremy Richardson. Burkett is serving a life sentence in connection with the boys' deaths.

"Burkett should be up there, too, on the gurney with him," said Charles Richardson, Jeremy's brother, one of the witnesses. "This was friends stabbing friends in the back."

Prosecutors said there was ample evidence supporting Perry's confession and that much of the information he provided could only have come from someone involved in the killings. The time of death was not a real issue, Bill Delmore, an appellate specialist with the Montgomery County District Attorney's Office, has said. He said the forensic evidence did not place an upper limit on how long Stotler, whose body was found in a nearby lake on Oct. 27, had been dead.

Perry's lawyers have claimed Burkett, convicted of capital murder in the boys' deaths but given a life sentence by a jury, was also behind the woman's murder and brought the car to Perry. They produced an affidavit from a jail inmate who claimed Burkett had bragged to him that he had killed all three.

"There's no doubt he was making bad decisions at the time," appeals lawyer Jessica Mederson said in an earlier interview. "It does not mean he was guilty of murdering someone."

Stotler's family said Perry's claim of innocence, amplified by a well-produced website, was "just asinine."

mike.tolson@chron.com