Convicted murderer Robert Gleason, Jr, killed two fellow inmates to ensure his execution in Virginia and requested the electric chair.

Just moments before his death on Wednesday night he was asked if he had any last words and responded, “Pog Mo Thoin,” a vulgar Gaelic phrase meaning ‘kiss my ass’. Later  he shouted “call my Irish buddies.”

The 42-year-old was first strapped to the wooden electric chair at his chest, arms and ankles, while seen occasionally smiling, winking and nodding at his spiritual adviser, the Richmond Times Dispatch reports.

Gleason uttered the vulgar phrase in Irish Gaelic, according to Larry Traylor, a spokesman for the Virginia Department of Corrections. The doomed man then shouted “Put me on the highway going to Jackson and call my Irish buddies. ... God bless.”

He was put to death at 9.08pm on Wednesday.

The Boston Irish American  was the first executed in the US this year and the first to choose to die by electric chair execution in over two years.

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According to the Daily Mail Online, in some of the numerous interviews that he has given to The Associated Press over the years, Gleason, speaking from death row in a thick Boston accent said: ‘Why prolong it? The end results gonna be the same, The death part don’t bother me. This has been a long time coming. It’s called karma.’

Condemned Virginia inmates can choose between lethal injection and electrocution, and Gleason is the first inmate to choose electrocution since 2010.

The 42-year-old born in Lowell, Massachusetts was already serving life in prison without parole. However during his time in prison he murdered another two inmates.

He also claimed he had killed others but refused to provide details. He also claimed he was different from the other men on Virginia's death row because he only killed criminals.

He told the Associated Press “I ain't saying I'm a better person for killing criminals, but I've never killed innocent people

“I killed people that's in the same lifestyle as me, and they know, hey, these things can happen.

“Someone needs to stop it. The only way to stop me is put me on death row.”

In May 2009 he admitted to using strips, made from bed sheets, to bind and strangle 62-year-old inmate Harvey Watson, at Virginia’s Wallens Ridge state prison. Gleason remained in the cell with Watson's lifeless body for more than 15 hours before officers discovered the crime.

He admitted to tying Watson's hands without a struggle after telling him he had come up with a way for the two to escape. Court records show he taunted Watson before he strangled him by pressing a urine-soaked sponge onto his face and a sock into his mouth.

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While awaiting sentencing for this murder at a high-security prison in the mountains, home to the state's worst inmates, Gleason strangled 26-year-old Aaron A. Cooper through the wire fencing that separated their individual cages on the recreation yard.

Gleason said he asked fellow inmate Aaron A. Cooper to try on a 'religious necklace,' which Gleason threaded through a wire fence separating the two while they were in solitary recreation pens.

During court proceedings, Gleason indicated he intended to keep killing unless he was given the death penalty, according to the state Attorney General's Office. Gleason told a federal judge earlier this month he did not want a lawyer and called for his execution to proceed.

His former lawyers said Gleason suffered from mental illness and had made several suicide attempts. Their final effort to halt the execution to allow for an evaluation of his mental competency was rejected by the U.S. Supreme Court on Wednesday.