KILLER Steven Nelson delivered three haunting last words before he was executed in front of his wife and dog.
The inmate killed Reverend Clint Dobson inside the NorthPointe Baptist Church in Arlington, Texas, in 2011.
Nelson was convicted of beating, strangling, and suffocating Dobson to death with a plastic bag.
On Wednesday night, Nelson, 37, was executed by lethal injection in Texas State Penitentiary at Huntsville.
His wife, Helene Noa Dubois, held up her white bull terrier Doron to the window into the witness area as Nelson was killed.
Nelson told Helene, a French woman who he had met as a pen pal: “Give Monkey a hug for me”
“I’m not scared, it’s cold s**t in here. But I’m at peace, I’m ready to be at home.”
“It is what it is,” he said, before he told Helene she should “enjoy life”.
Nelson then said three chilling words before the execution began.
“Let’s ride, Warden.”
As the lethal dose of Pentobarbital was injected into Nelson’s veins, he told his wife “Let me go to sleep”.
He tried to say the word “love”, gasped twice, and then appeared to try and hold his breath.
Nelson then trembled for a few seconds before he stopped moving.
He was officially announced dead 24 minutes later.
Jeff Hood, Nelson’s spiritual advisory, said his pal “fought to the very end”.
Nelson had spent more than a dozen years on Death Row in Texas before he was executed at Huntsville – 75 miles north of Houston.
Nelson claimed he was innocent of the killing and had only been a lookout in the 2011 death of Reverend Dobson.
He claimed at trial that he waited outside the church for about 25 minutes before going in and seeing that Dobson and the secretary had been beaten.
But evidence found Nelson’s fingerprints at the scene, pieces of his broken belt, and drops of the victims’ blood on his shoes.
Investigators also said the two men Nelson blamed for the attack had detailed alibis.
He is the second person in the US to be executed in 2025 and the first of four Texas inmates scheduled for death in the next three months.
In a statement following the execution, Dobson’s family said they were focusing on the memories of Clint.
They said: “Steven Nelson forever changed our lives, but he has never occupied our minds. … We miss Clint every day.
“We miss his laughter and his wit, his advice and his love for us.”
During the 2011 attack, the church’s secretary, Judy Elliott, 67, was also severely beaten but survived.
Bradley Elliott, her son, shared a message wondering if Mr. Nelson was warmly welcomed by the same loving and kind Savior who supported them through all their experiences.
“Mr. Nelson, we forgive you and hope to see you when we are called home from here.”
Nelson was a laborer and high school dropout with a long history of legal trouble and arrests that started as early as age six.
While awaiting trial, Nelson was indicted in the killing of another jail inmate.
He was never tried on that charge after his guilty verdict and death sentence.
Before his execution he told AFP about the experience of waiting on death row.
He said: “You’re waiting to be put to death.
“So that kind of breaks a little part of you every day… You just don’t want to do nothing.”
