Execution Date Set For GA Man Convicted Of Murdering Girl, 8, Raping Another

COBB COUNTY, GA — A Georgia man convicted in Cobb County for murdering an eight-year-old girl and raping a 10-year-old girl in 1976 is scheduled to be executed next month, according to the Georgia Department of Corrections.

Virgil Delano Presnell Jr. is to be put to death at 7 p.m. on May 17 at the state prison in Jackson, according to a news release.

Georgia Department of Corrections Commissioner Timothy Ward announced Wednesday that Presnell, 68, was accused of abducting and attacking the two girls as they walked home from school in Cobb County, just outside Atlanta, on May 4, 1976.

According to WSB-TV, Presnell waited for a Cobb County elementary school to let out for the day and saw a 10-year-old girl walking home on a wooded trail. The next day he kidnapped her and her 8-year-old friend, according to evidence at trial outlined in a Georgia Supreme Court ruling, reported WSB.

Presnell was convicted in August 1976 on charges including malice murder, kidnapping and rape and was sentenced to death. In 1992 the death sentence was overturned, but was reinstated in March 1999, reported WSB.

The Atlanta-Journal Constitution reported that during a retrial in 1999, key testimony was provided by the victim who survived. She told the court Presnell snuck up behind them, pushed them into a Plymouth Duster and spread a blue blanket in a wooded area as he played out fantasies he had read about in pornographic paperbacks, reported the AJC.

His family testified that he shouldn't get the death sentence because his mind was warped by a childhood of incest and abuse, reported the AJC.