A transgender woman convicted of murder was put to death late Tuesday in the first such execution in the United States, officials said.
The convict, Amber McLaughlin, 49, was pronounced dead shortly before 7 pm local time at the Diagnostic and Correctional Centre in the town of Bonne Terre, Missouri, according to a statement from the state prison department.
Local media reported that McLaughlin died by lethal injection.
McLaughlin was the first transgender person of either sex to be executed in the country, and also the first person to die by capital punishment this year in America.
She was convicted of murdering a former girlfriend in 2003 in a suburb of St. Louis, before she transitioned.
McLaughlin stalked the victim to the point where the ex-partner sought a restraining order.
The day of the killing, McLaughlin waited for the woman — named Beverly Guenther — as she left work.
Guenther was raped and stabbed to death with a kitchen knife. Her body was dumped near the Mississippi river.
