Jeffery Dillingham is one of 3 people convicted in the attack on Jack and Caren Koslow as the Fort Worth couple slept on March 12, 1992, in a murder-for-hire scheme hatched by Koslow's 17-year-old daughter, Kristi.

An accomplice, Brian Salter, Kristi's boyfriend, later testified that she offered the men $1 million to kill her multimillionaire parents. Testimony showed she wanted them dead because she didn't get along with them after her father remarried. Kristi believed she would inherit as much as $12 million.

In the early hours of March 12, 1992, according to testimony, the men dressed in black and arrived with a drawing of the 4,000-square-foot house and codes to disable an alarm system - both provided by Kristi Koslow. They broke through a door, went to an upstairs bedroom and ordered the couple to the floor. Jack Koslow tried to load a shotgun he kept in a nearby closet.

Jurors heard how the man and woman were attacked and how the intruders left with $120 and Jack Koslow's wallet. Blows to Caren Koslow broke her skull and jaw. Then Salter straddled Caren Koslow and slashed her throat. The slashing of her neck nearly decapitated her.

Dillingham calmly told police: "I hit Mr. Koslow in the back of the head, on the neck. ... Then I hit Mrs. Koslow, and I hit Mr. Koslow some more. And Mrs. Koslow started screaming, and then I hit Mrs. Koslow again... ."

Jack Koslow testified at his daughter's trial, "I remember the whole world turning black. I remember him beating me and beating me until I didn't remember any more." He emerged from unconsciousness to stumble to a neighbor's home to get help.

His throat slashed and head beaten, he suffered blind spots for months. "He still bears a huge scar on his throat," says Robert Mayfield, one of the Tarrant County prosecutors who worked to convict Dillingham, now a judge in Johnson County. "A doctor said he could not imagine how the carotid was not slit. The crime scene was a veritable blood bath."

Mayfield described Dillingham, who refused requests for an interview in the weeks preceding his execution, as a regular individual from all outward appearances. "But if you heard his confession, which was audio taped, it would just chill you to the bone because it was so unemotional," he said. "He described the death of this poor woman by saying, as I recall, 'She was screaming and I hit her with the pry bar and she continued to scream and I hit her in the throat and then she laid down and let it pass.' Not a lick of emotion," Mayfield said. "Dillingham did not even know the victim. But it didn't matter to him. He was going to get a million dollars. That was the key point. What I argued to the jury is that he did a cost-effective analysis, and stepping over 2 bodies was nothing."

Caren Koslow suffered 29 wounds, mostly blows to her neck from the pry bar, and died at the scene. Dillingham gave his bloody clothing and the weapon to a friend who cracked under the pressure of knowing about the slaying and told police, said Mayfield.

At his trial, Dillingham wept nonstop. "I believe the jury interpreted that as 'poor pitiful me' rather than any compassion for his victim," Mayfield said. The Koslows were active in Fort Worth society and the arts. Jack Koslow is remarried and still lives in Fort Worth, where he is involved in the business community and plays golf. Besides a scar across his throat, he has no lingering injuries from the attack, according to some of his friends. He has since sold the 2-story brick house with large shutters, trimmed hedges and a brick sidewalk.

Salter and Kristi Koslow are both serving life sentences. Salter was offered a life sentence in return for his testimony. Kristi Koslow's jury chose a life sentence instead of the death penalty.

At her trial, jurors decided Kristi Koslow would not be a future danger and gave her a life sentence. Outside their presence, her father testified he favored giving her the death sentence. Both she and Salter become eligible for parole in about 27 years.

Dillingham, a video store clerk and former honor student, confessed but chose not to make a plea bargain similar to Salter's. "There can't be any satisfaction," Mayfield said of the execution. "It's just the fact that some crimes are so heinous that the ultimate punishment is required. It's a waste of life. Not only did he destroy his life, Caren Koslow's life, he destroyed his family, Caren's family. It's like the pebble dropping in the pond."