Michael Howie

MICHIGAN CITY — The man who pleaded guilty to the 2001 rape and murder of a 15-year-old girl in downstate Spencer County is scheduled to be executed by the State of Indiana Friday before sunrise as a decades-long legal fight comes to an end.

Barring any highly unlikely last-minute legal intervention, Roy Lee Ward, 53, will be strapped to a chair early Friday morning and injected with the drug pentobarbital that will cause him to stop breathing and die.

On July 11, 2001, Ward walked into the Dale, Indiana, home of 15-year-old Stacy Payne and raped her, beat her with a dumbbell and stabbed her with a knife, according to court documents from the case. She was flown to a hospital in Louisville, where she died five hours after Ward entered her house. Her autopsy revealed 18 blu

See Full Page