New York mum seeks donations to fund trip to witness execution of her daughter’s killer

Tina Curl is desperate to see murderer’s last breath

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Tiny Curl pictured with her husband Dave Curl, inset her daughter Becky O’Connell and killer Donald Moeller

Photo by nydailynews.com

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A distraught Irish-American mom is desperately trying to raise $4000 to witness the execution of her nine-year-old daughter’s murderer.

Tina Curl wants to travel from her New York home to South Dakota to see killer Donald Moeller executed by lethal injection.

Her daughter Becky O’Connell went to a store to buy candy on May 8th 1990 and never came home.

The following morning, her body was found in a wood in the Lincoln County area of South Dakota.

Moeller raped little Becky before he slit her throat and dumped the body into a ditch.

Mum Tina and husband Dave Curl had moved to South Dakota from New York to bring Becky up in a safer environment. She now lives in a mobile home in Lake Luzerne and has survived on.

Tina told the New York Daily News: “I’ve just got to see him die. I’ve got to see him pay for what he did to my baby.

“She was all I had, she was something that I thought no one would take away from me. I finally had something that was all mine, and he took that away from me.

“We will only find justice when Donald Moeller is strapped to a gurney, fighting for his final breath. It’s something I need to see with my own eyes.”

Curl told the paper she remains haunted by her decision to let Becky go out by herself to buy candy in the local convenience store.

She added: “I live with that every day. She left home just after 5 o’clock that day. The next time I see her, she was lying in a casket.

“He watched my daughter take her last breath. I want to watch him take his last breath.”

Tina Curl’s attitude to life deteriorated after her daughter’s murder.
She became an alcoholic and suffered serious health issues including a heart attack and a vascular disease in her legs.

Husband David was laid off last month, leaving the family with no cash to fund the trip to Sioux Falls to witness Moeller’s last stand, according to the report.

The New York Daily News says the couple are currently living off a monthly $720 disability check.

A recent fundraiser helped the family raise almost a thousand dollars towards the cost of the trip, with Tina looking to donors to allow her to take a road trip to see Moeller die at the end of October.

Tina said: “I don’t like to ask people for anything but at this point, I’m ready to beg, borrow and steal.

“I suspect some people are reluctant to donate because it involves an execution.

“I believe that if it was their daughter, they’d believe in it and they would want people to help them.”

Moeller was a neighbour of the curls in South Dakota. He was initially convicted in 1992 but retried and found guilty a second time after an appeals court overturned the verdict.

His death penalty case had dragged on for years in federal court until earlier this month when he told a federal judge that he wanted the execution to go forward.

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