One Christmas day when Stacie Reed was still a little girl, she opened a package to find a huge doll house made by her grandfather.

"She let out this blood-curdling scream," said her grandmother Anne McLaughlin as she described her granddaughter's excitement. "That was typical Stacie."

Stacie's mother Lorraine Reed Whoberry, added that Stacie was "a little dramatic at times."

But Whoberry described a mentally tough girl who responded to a call of duty from a Navy recruiter and wanted to be the first female Navy SEAL when she signed up for JROTC as a student at Osbourn Park High School in Manassas.

Her dreams ended on Jan. 29, 1999 at the age of 16 when Paul Warner Powell stabbed her through the heart and stomped on her throat before binding, raping, slashing and stabbing her 14-year-old sister Kristie.

Kristie survived the attack and went on to identify Powell, who was executed last week for Stacie's murder.

Over time, through silent conversations she said she had with God, Whoberry learned how to forgive not the act Powell committed, but Powell himself.

Whoberry said she believes God condones capital punishment.

"It's in the Bible," she said two days before Powell's execution. But she added she still prays for Powell's family and asked him to find peace with God too.

It took until last Wednesday for Powell to apologize to Stacie's family, one day before the Commonwealth of Virginia carried out his death sentence.

During a phone conversation with Powell the day before his death, Whoberry heard what she said she'd been wanting to hear: remorse.

On Thursday, March 18, McLaughlin, Lorraine and her husband, Richard Whoberry traveled back to Virginia to see Powell die.

Both women wore crucifix necklaces and the cross of St. Teresa on rings. Whoberry's sister had slipped an identical ring on then-14-year-old Kristie's finger while she laid in a hospital bed after Powell tried to kill her 11 years ago.

During Powell's trial, Kristie kept the ring with her as a safeguard and soon other women in the Reed family bought their own.

"It's kind of a security, that we know the Lord is with us through all of this," said McLaughlin

The crosses stayed with the family as they entered the execution chamber to watch Powell die in the electric chair at 9 p.m.

The execution

Inside the Greensville Correctional Center, prison official David Bass described exactly what would happen to Powell as his days on death row came to a close.

Numbers alone told the story: 1,800 volts at 7.5 amps for 30 seconds then 240 volts for 60 seconds. Then repeat and wait five minutes.

The attending physician then listens for a heartbeat and if the condemned is still alive, they again run electricity from his skull through his right calf -- enough power to light more than 100 lightbulbs.

In the 93 executions Bass has witnessed, he said he'd never seen a case that required the second dose.

Reporters and 14 citizen witnesses -- all men but for one reporter -- sat in a separate viewing room.

Prince William County Commonwealth's Attorney Paul Ebert joined the extended Reed clan in a special witness room just for the family.

The 10-term prosecutor had twice convicted Powell of murder and twice seen him sentenced to death.

After Powell's initial trial, he was convicted and sentenced to die but the Virginia Supreme Court overturned that ruling.

In 2001, however, Powell wrote a letter to Ebert, taunting him for the technicality that allowed his death sentence to be overturned.

In the note, Powell bragged that he had attempted to rape Stacie, a fact previously unmentioned in the first trial.

Though Powell thought double jeopardy laws would prevent him from being retried, he was wrong. The note gave Ebert a reason to retry the case.

Powell was again sentenced to death and this time, the appeal was eventually rejected.

Powell entered the brightly-lit, white death chamber at 8:53 p.m. on March 18, flanked by two wardens on each side.

His once-scraggly beard had been shaved away, along with the hair on his head and right leg.

Wearing a light-blue collared shirt with the top button undone, Powell took his seat and stared straight ahead unblinking with his eyes on his attorney, Jon Sheldon.

His navy blue pants had been cut at the right thigh and sponges doused in brown seawater were placed below the knee. Similar sponges lined the inside of the metal helmet placed on Powell's head at 8:55 p.m.

As guards tightened a strap across his chest, Powell's arms began to redden and his veins rose. His Adam's apple bounced in his throat as he gulped and he blinked more, occasionally looking up to the ceiling but mostly fixating on Sheldon.

One warden stayed on the red phone connected to the governor's office but there was no last-minute clemency.

Powell turned down the offer to make a statement and the last strap - which covered his entire face, was put into place.

At 9 p.m., the executioner was ordered to proceed.

As the electricity hit, Powell's body jolted upward and back into the black padding of the seat with so much ferocity it sounded like a car crash.

But there was no noise from the machine or from Powell, whose body went slightly limp after the high voltage gave way to the lower current.

After 90 seconds, his body shot upright and slammed again to the back of the chair as the 1,800 volts struck him for another 30 seconds.

Powell's fists remained clutched, his thumbs on the outside of his fingers. White blots began appearing around the perimeter of his knee cap with a splash of violet in the center. His shin went pale while his feet darkened.

By 9:09 p.m., it was over. The attending physician placed his stethoscope over Powell's heart and listened, before declaring the time of death.

A blue curtain was drawn in front of the witness room.

'A much more gentle death'

Outside, Ebert told reporters the family members seemed "very relieved."

"It was very emotional," he said of the scene inside the family witness room.

Minutes later back in the entrance parking lot, Sheldon said Powell was "remorseful for the choices he made."

"He did it in the way where he took responsibility," said the attorney.

As Ebert walked through the parking lot to the podium in front of camera crews, Sheldon put his hand on the prosecutor's back and said, "Sorry for everything that you went through in this case."

Known for sentencing more criminals to death row than any other county prosecutor in the nation, Ebert said he does not take "any pleasure in seeking the death penalty" and does not take "any pleasure in watching someone die."

That being said, Ebert still had choice words for Powell.

"He died a much more gentle death than Stacie," said Ebert. "People that get the death penalty are the worst of the worst and, in my opinion, Mr. Powell is near the top of that list."