FLORENCE, Ariz. (AP) — An inmate expressed regret but didn't apologize before being executed Wednesday for murdering two 13-year-old girls in a ghost town where they were raped, strangled and stabbed before being dumped in a partly flooded mine shaft.

Richard Dale Stokley, 60, was put to death by injection two decades after he and another man were convicted of murdering Mandy Meyers and Mary Snyder in 1991 in rural Cochise County.

Stokley had no formal last words but told members of the execution team, "I do wish that I could die doing something meaningful, you know, this seems like such a waste."