Execution date set for man who killed girl

ST. LOUIS -- The Missouri Supreme Court on Friday set a May execution date for a St. Louis man convicted of killing a neighbor girl.

Vernon Brown is scheduled to die by injection at 12:01 a.m. May 18 at the Eastern Reception, Diagnostic and Correctional Center in Bonne Terre.

Authorities said Brown, using the alias Thomas Turner, was at the home of his stepsons in north St. Louis in October 1986 when 9-year-old Janet Perkins walked by. He enticed her into the house and locked his stepsons in their bedroom.

Brown then took the child into the basement, bound her feet and one hand with a wire coat hanger, and then strangled her with a rope. Police found the child's body in two trash bags in an alley behind Brown's house the next day.

Missouri has executed one man this year. Stanley Hall was put to death March 16 for abducting a St. Louis County woman and throwing her over a bridge railing to her death.

A second execution is scheduled for April 27. Donald Jones was convicted of killing his grandmother in St. Louis.