By GARRY MITCHELL

ATMORE, Ala. — A man who spent nearly 18 years on Alabama’s death row for the 1990 slashing death of an elderly mother of six was executed Thursday as all the woman’s gray-haired children watched from a witness room steps away.

Willie McNair, 44, never looked over at the victim’s children before slipping into unconsciousness and being pronounced dead at 6:17 p.m. after the lethal injection was administered at Holman Prison in Atmore. He was condemned for the death of Ella Foy Riley, a 68-year-old retired textile worker whose throat was slashed with a pocketknife at her home May 21, 1990.

Riley’s daughter, Patricia Riley Jones, 62, of Abbeville, and her five brothers all watched from behind a glass partition steps away as the lethal drugs began flowing into McNair’s body. Each of the children wore a button bearing their mother’s photograph and the words: “You are not forgotten.”

McNair had no final statement and rejected a prison’ chaplain’s offer to share a prayer.

“It was too easy,” Riley Jones said at a post-execution news conference. But she said she was at peace now that the death sentence had been carried out.

Jones and her brothers expressed disappointment that McNair never looked at him in his final minutes.

“He would not face us today,” said John Riley, one of the victim’s sons.

“It took us 19 years to see this happen,” added Wayne Riley, the youngest of the woman’s six children.

In a written statement, Wayne Riley said: “I thank God for keeping myself and my four brothers and my sister alive and in good health so that we were able to see justice finally done. I ask that you pray for my family in the coming days and for the Willie McNair family because they, too, have suffered for what he has done.”

Gov. Bob Riley, who is unrelated to the victim, had signed a bill into law recently to allow six people from the victim’s side and six from the inmate’s side to witness a state execution. Previously it was two from each side.

No relatives for McNair witnessed execution, at his request. His lawyer and a spiritual adviser were on hand.

When the curtain to the witness room opened Thursday evening, McNair smiled and nodded in the direction of his lawyer and spiritual adviser. Strapped to a gurney, McNair declined a chaplain’s offer of a prayer and kept his eyes fixed on the ceiling.

McNair showed no reaction as the drugs began flowing and he slipped into unconsciousness during a 17-minute procedure that authorities said went as planned.

Court records show Ella Fox Riley was stabbed to death in her Abbeville home after refusing to give $20 to McNair. Authorities said in documents that McNair had been described as a cocaine addict and had worked in the woman’s yard before the attack.

The blade of a pocketknife broke in the woman’s neck and McNair also used a kitchen knife on her during a violent struggle, authorities said. Riley’s daughter had found her mother’s body on her kitchen floor.

McNair’s co-defendant, Olin Grimsley, received a life sentence for first-degree robbery for his role in the attack. McNair’s confession indicated Grimsley handed him a kitchen knife used in the killing.

The U.S. Supreme Court refused to block the execution of McNair earlier.

His was the fourth execution in Alabama this year and the first since April 16. There are more than 200 inmates on Alabama’s death row.

McNair’s attorneys had filed for a stay earlier this week, citing a jury’s recommendation that he be given life without parole.

In opposing the stay, Attorney General Troy King told the high court that McNair’s claims had already been rejected by appeals courts or were barred from further review. Authorities also said a judge noted the “heinous” nature of the crime in sentencing McNair to death.