Religious cult leader executed in US

OHIO executed a religious cult leader yesterday for murdering a family of five of his followers who he thought were not enthusiastic enough about his teachings.

Jeffrey Lundgren, 56, died by lethal injection at 10.26am (2.26pm Irish Time) at the Southern Ohio Correctional Facility.

Lundgren told a jury in 1990 that he was a prophet of God and therefore not worthy of the death penalty.

“It’s not a figment of my imagination that I can in fact talk to God, that I can hear his voice,” he had told the jurors.

He was convicted of killing Dennis Avery, 49, his wife Cheryl, 46, and their three daughters.

“I profess my love for God, my family, for my children, for [wife] Kathy. I am because you are,” Lundgren said in his final statement.

The Sixth US Circuit Court of Appeals had issued an order on Monday night allowing the execution to go ahead, overturning a lower court ruling that would have delayed the sentence to allow Lundgren to join a lawsuit challenging Ohio’s use of lethal injection as cruel and unusual punishment.

The Avery family had moved from Missouri in 1987 to follow the cult leader’s teachings.

Lundgren said passages in the Bible told him to kill the family, and witnesses said the family was not as enthusiastic about the cult as Lundgren would have liked.