Arizona death-row inmate Robert Towery was executed by lethal injection Thursday for the 1991 murder of a Paradise Valley philanthropist during a robbery.

Towery, 38, was pronounced dead at 11:26 a.m., nine minutes after the lethal-injection procedure began at the Arizona State Prison Complex-Florence.

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Towery's execution came just eight days after Arizona executed another inmate, Robert Moormann, for killing and dismembering his mother 28 years ago.

Wednesday night, Towery was served a last meal of porterhouse steak, baked potato with sour cream, asparagus, mushrooms, clam chowder, milk, Pepsi and apple pie a la mode.

Towery met with his attorneys Thursday before the execution began. The execution was scheduled to start at 10a.m., but his attorney's visit ran long and the executioner discovered he had to insert a catheter in the femoral artery, suggesting that they could not raise a vein in his arm.

Witnesses were not led into Housing Unit 9, where executions are carried out, until a few minutes after 11 a.m.

The execution began at 11:17 a.m. Towery looked to his family and attorneys. In his last words, he apologized to his family and to the victims. He talked about bad choices he had made. Then he said, as he appeared to be crying, "I love my family. Potato, potato, potato."

His reference to potatoes was a message to a nephew who witnessed the execution, and referred to the sound made by a Harley-Davidson motorcycle. Towery's attorney, Dale Baich, said it was Towery's way of telling his nephew that everything was OK.

But Baich said there were other messages buried in other of Towery's last words -- which puzzled journalists witnessing the execution -- including a suggestion that Towery had asked to call his attorney before his execution and was not allowed.

Once the injection was administered, he took several hard breaths, one witness said, and then slipped into unconsciousness.

Towery was sentenced to death for killing Mark Jones during an armed robbery at Jones' home.

Towery was Jones' mechanic, and Jones had even lent him money on two occasions. On Sept. 4, 1991, Towery and an accomplice went to his house, pretending they needed to use the phone to make a call because their car broke down. They held Jones, 68, at gunpoint and ransacked his house. Then Towery strangled him with zip ties. The accomplice testified that Towery also injected Jones with battery acid from a syringe. Then the two made off in one of Jones' cars with a television set, cash and credit cards.

In exchange for his testimony, the accomplice served only 10 years in prison and was released.

At Towery's clemency hearing last week, Towery claimed no memory of any syringe and said he could not understand why he took Jones' life.

His attorneys and doctors described at that hearing Towery's horrific childhood and his severe addiction to methamphetamine. The clemency board did not feel that those circumstances outweighed the seriousness of the crime, and it refused to grant him a commutation or a reprieve.

Late Wednesday, the Arizona and U.S. Supreme Courts denied Towery's last-minute requests for a stay of execution.