In the end, the judge's parting words from so long ago became more than legal ritual. "May God have mercy on your soul." Strapped into the state's electric chair, John Earl Bush wore the solemn expression of a condemned killer as his brown eyes darted between the nearly identical twin sister and the brother of his victim. If not for the plexiglass, they could have touched each other Monday night at Florida State Prison. The judge who ordered this moment, uttering the traditional line about divine forgiveness, was not here. But his remarks hung in the chilled air, an ominous echo of the cool morning in April 1982 when a teenage clerk was kidnapped from a convenience store in Stuart, stabbed by Bush and shot by an accomplice. Bush, the first of Frances Julia Slater's killers to reach the death chamber, rested his hands on the arms of the polished oak chair. His fingers clenched around his thumbs when the surge of electricity coursed him. In two minutes, it was over. Catherine Slater Springston trembled ever so slightly as 14 years of waiting came to an end. She had done what she hoped to do. "That was the whole purpose," said her husband, Herb, who waited in a pasture across from the prison. "She wanted him to see who he killed." The kidnapping and slaying of Frannie Slater, an heir to the fortune of marine motor magnate Ralph Evinrude, remains one of the most notorious murders along Florida's eastern seaboard. Her death brought new concern for store clerks working alone at night, and her mother pushed for legislation to improve the rights of crime victims statewide. Bush, 38, had no final words about the murder before his execution Monday. Nor did he discuss it the day before, when calling his father to say goodbye. "He sounded like he's always been to me. He didn't sound like he was worried any," said W.C. Bush, 79, who lives in Fort Pierce. "There was no need to worry. They were going to kill him anyway." + + + Bush and three friends _ Alphonso Cave, J.B. "Pig" Parker and Terry Wayne Johnson _ had consumed a gallon of gin and two bags of marijuana. It was a Monday, and they were having fun. Driving from one bar to another, they got an idea: "We're going to rob something," Parker remembers Bush saying. They found the Lil' General convenience store on U.S. 1 in north Stuart, where the 18-year-old Slater was working graveyard, filling in for a co-worker who had gotten a nail in his foot. She was uneasy about being there after midnight and told her family only hours earlier that this would be her last overnight shift. Walking inside the store, Cave flashed a gun and walked Slater to the back. Behind the counter, Bush stuffed $134 from the cash drawer into a paper sack. They forced Slater to their car, making her sit between two of them as Bush drove into the darkness of rural Martin County. Beside a ditch, the car stopped. Bush and Parker yanked her out of the car. They took her behind the trunk. Bush later told relatives and investigators that he did not want to kill her, but he jabbed her with a knife, just hard enough to cause her to fall to the ground. Parker insisted on shooting her and Bush told him, "Go ahead and do what you have to do." The two others waiting in the car heard the single shot fired into Slater's abdomen. Which one pulled the trigger, neither could say. But the body was left in brush as they all drove away. Back at the Lil' General, an actor on his way home from a show found the store empty. Stuart police and Martin sheriff's deputies searched 14 hours before a trucker saw the body. It was two days shy of her 19th birthday, which she shared with her twin, Cathy. The case galvanized the affluent community north of Palm Beach and attracted widespread attention as the media reported Slater was the granddaughter of Ralph Evinrude, who was married to retired entertainer Frances Langford. Within a week, Bush and the others were arrested. Bush, Cave and Parker eventually were convicted and sentenced to death. Johnson got life, because he had testified he had been asleep in the car when the others robbed the store. + + + Over the past 14 years, Slater's mother and twin sister, Catherine Springston, traveled to appellate court hearings in Tallahassee and Atlanta as lawyers argued motions to spare their clients the death penalty. "Your life changes forever," the sister said. "Your attitude. Your health. Everything." They were in Atlanta when Bush's lawyer tried to persuade a panel of federal judges that his original defense lawyer failed to pursue evidence showing Bush was a deprived youth, or tell jurors Bush once helped save the life of a drowning toddler. Bush went to prison the first time when he was 16, two years after his mother died of a heart attack. Along with two others, he was charged as an adult with raping a pregnant woman and robbing her of $7. He served one-sixth of a 30-year prison term. Two years later, he went to death row for the Slater homicide. He outlived two death warrants, and he earned his general equivalency diploma in prison. His father usually sent him $50 a month to spend in the prison commissary. He used the money to buy peanut butter, his father said, because prison food was bland. In the past week, he was visited by his 16-year-old daughter, his sister, his brother-in-law and his father, who no longer can drive. On Monday, he was allowed to phone his 34-year-old brother, who is serving a robbery term at another prison. He also saw his lawyers and Caroliene Honing, a woman who became his pen pal several years ago and traveled from the Netherlands to give him support in his final days. "He has been the bravest man," she said. For his final meal, Bush ate porterhouse steak, shrimp and lemon pie. He was showered and his head was shaved three hours later when he was escorted into the death chamber. As the red hand clicked on the nearby clock, prison employees positioned the leather straps around him. A lieutenant talked into a phone at the wall, connected to the governor's office. With no word of a final reprieve, the superintendent nodded to a hooded executioner, who turned a switch to energize the three-legged chair with 2000 volts, 14 amps. He was pronounced dead at 7:09 p.m., Florida's first execution since December 1995. In his last call to his family, Bush told his father he wanted to be cremated. "He didn't want to be buried in back of the prison there," Mr. Bush said.