PHOENIX — The Arizona Supreme Court has signed a warrant of execution for convicted murderer Frank Atwood.
Atwood is now scheduled to be executed on June 8, 2022. Atwood would be the second inmate killed since the state resumed executions. Clarence Dixon is scheduled to be the first and is scheduled to be executed on May 11.
In September 1984, Frank Atwood kidnapped and murdered 8-year-old Vicki Lynn Hoskinson, whose body was later found in the Tucson desert a year later.
Vicki had left her Tucson home on a bicycle to go mail a card and never returned.
Atwood was seen that night with blood on his hands at a park where homeless people often gather and was eventually connected to a vehicle seen in the neighborhood where Vicki lived.
A U.S. Magistrate in Tucson issued a warrant for Atwood's arrest for kidnapping. After hearing from his parents that he was headed to New Orleans and having car trouble in Kerrville Texas, the FBI located and arrested Atwood. At the car dealership where Atwood was arrested, police checked the car and found pink paint on the front bumper of the car. The bicycle the girl was riding was the same color pink.
On April 11, 1985, nearly seven months after the girl's disappearance her skeletal remains were found in the desert outside Tucson. Prosecutors then added murder to the charges against Atwood.
Dixon is convicted of murder and sexual assault connected to a 1978 death.
Pending any appeals, Dixon is scheduled to be executed May 11, which would make this the first execution in Arizona since the botched attempt in 2014. That execution left a man gasping for air for nearly two hours and put a halt to executions in the state.
