NEW MADRID, Mo. -- Mark Anthony Gill should be executed rather than get life in prison for the kidnapping and execution-style murder of 54-year-old Ralph Lape Jr. of rural Jackson, a jury decided Friday.

The jury's decision was announced at 12:38 p.m., after about an hour and a half of deliberations. Gill, 33, of Cape Girardeau had been convicted Thursday of first-degree murder, kidnapping, robbery, armed criminal action and tampering with a motor vehicle in the crimes related to the shooting death of Lape on July 7, 2002. The case was moved to New Madrid County on a change of venue request.

Lape was abducted from his home, driven to a cornfield near Portageville, Mo., and shot once in the head before being buried naked in a shallow grave.

"This jury has sent a strong message to kidnappers and robbers that if you take a hostage and you kill that hostage you will get the death penalty," said Prosecuting Attorney Morley Swingle.

Gill and another man went on a spending spree with Lape's credit card to a St. Louis-area strip club and hotel, and Gill later took a cross-country trip using Lape's ATM card for cash. He even married his girlfriend, Katina, in a Las Vegas chapel using Lape's money to pay for the ceremony, prosecutors said.

Gill's alleged accomplice, Justin M. Brown, 24, faces a jury trial Sept. 7 in Pulaski County on a change of venue and also could receive the death penalty.

Diane Miller, Lape's sister, said the family was satisfied with the jury's decision.

"Nothing will ever bring my brother back," she said. "But in the state of Missouri, when you commit capital murder, you make yourself eligible for the death penalty -- no one else does it, you do it to yourself. I think justice has been served."

Gill's mother, Mary Alice Gill of Portageville, was emotionally spent afterward.

"He's going to appeal," she said with a weary voice. "I'm not very happy with it."

The defendant's brother, Carl Gill, believes the jury was not racially balanced.

"The jury was six white men, five white women and one black female," he said.

The case was investigated by the Cape Girardeau-Bollinger County Major Case Squad. Squad commander Lt. David James of the Cape Girardeau County Sheriff's Department said the verdict was justification for a job well done.

"As always, the squad has done an excellent job of investigating and assisting the prosecution in putting together a case with a successful conclusion of a conviction," James said. "All the way up until last week, the squad members were helping the prosecution with this case."

Gill was the first defendant to receive the death penalty in New Madrid County since at least 1938, said New Madrid lawyer and local historian Lynn Bock.

"I even took my daughter this morning because I felt like this was a historical event for the county," Bock said.

mwells@semissourian.com

335-6611, extension 160