• By JAMES MINTON
• Advocate Baker - Zachary bureau
• Published: Jan 7, 2010 - UPDATED: 7:55 p.m.

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ANGOLA — Convicted child rapist and murderer Gerald J. Bordelon died Thursday night by lethal injection after expressing remorse for his crimes and apologizing profusely to the victim’s family, Louisiana State Penitentiary Warden Burl Cain and media witnesses said.

Bordelon, 47, was pronounced dead at 6:32 p.m., a few minutes after being administered three drugs to put him to sleep, stop his breathing and stop his heart, Cain said.

A Livingston Parish jury convicted Bordelon of first-degree murder and sentenced him to death in 2006 for kidnapping, molesting and killing his 12-year-old stepdaughter, Courtney LeBlanc, in November 2002.

Bordelon was a two-time sex offender on parole when he kidnapped LeBlanc from his estranged wife’s mobile home on Linder Road north of Denham Springs on Nov. 15, 2002. He said in a taped confession that he took the girl to Mississippi, where he said he forced her to perform oral sex on him.

Investigators found LeBlanc’s body 11 days later when Bordelon led them to a wooded area on the East Baton Rouge side of the Amite River near Denham Springs. She had been strangled to death.

Associated Press reporter and execution witness Melinda Deslatte said Bordelon specifically addressed LeBlanc’s mother, sister and uncle before they witnessed the execution.

“I’m sorry. I don’t know if that brings any closure or peace. It should have never happened, but it did and I’m sorry,” Deslatte quoted Bordelon as saying.

Livingston Parish News Managing Editor Mike Dowty, another execution witness, said Bordelon seemed more focused about the “things between the family and his family” than on his death.

Bordelon was the 28th person executed for murder in Louisiana since executions resumed in 1983 following a 1972 U.S. Supreme Court decision that threw out all existing death penalty laws in the nation.

Bordelon was the eighth executed by lethal injection and the first in modern times to die without exercising his constitutional rights to appeal his conviction and sentence. Before Bordelon’s death, Louisiana’s last execution occurred in May 2002.

Angola spokeswoman Cathy Fontenot said 81 prisoners remain on Death Row at Angola, and two women condemned to die are housed at Louisiana Correctional Institute for Women at St. Gabriel.

Television reporter Chris Nakamoto, who also witnessed the execution, said Bordelon wore a gold cross on a chain that his daughter had given him. Bordelon gave his daughter a necklace with a cross made by an Angola inmate.

In a written statement read by his attorney, Jill Craft, Bordelon said the murder “shouldn’t have happened.”

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