Hatchell was bound with Venetian blind cords and then had her head slammed repeatedly into the floor until she died.

[1] On September 26, 1978, Coppola was convicted of capital murder and sentenced to death in Virginia's electric chair.

Frank was close to his father, who worked as a bookkeeper, with the two sharing a mutual love for athletics.

Within his first twelve months of service, he was dismissed, due to submitting a false statement to the chief of police and for failing to report an assault on a prisoner.

[9] Over the next few years, Coppola worked multiple jobs and was a finance worker, a co-owner of a drive-in restaurant, a car salesman, and a carpenter's assistant.

Mills, Coppola, and Miltier then gained access to the house, while Karen waited as the getaway driver in a nearby vehicle.

According to trial testimony, Coppola repeatedly smashed Muriel's head against the floor, demanding to know where she kept all her money.

Payton survived the beating and remained in the hospital for three weeks, requiring a permanent steel plate in his forehead from where blows inflicted by Coppola had fractured his skull.

His fingerprints were found on Hatchell's car and Mills testified against him, describing to the jury how Coppola beat and murdered Muriel.

[12] He chose to do so because he did not want to spend the rest of his life in prison and wished to spare his family any possible further agony.

[14] He was pronounced dead at 11:27 p.m.[9] At the time of his execution, members of the jury that had convicted him were asked if they stood by the decision to sentence him to death.

[15] After the execution, one of Coppola's attorneys claimed that the execution had been botched, alleging that the first jolt of electricity administered did not kill him, while the second jolt produced "the odor and sizzling sound of burning flesh," and the death chamber filled with smoke as fire was emitted from the electrodes on his head and leg.

[16] Since the reinstatement of capital punishment in 1976, Coppola was the first person to be executed in Virginia, and the fifth in the United States, after Gary Gilmore, John Spenkelink, Jesse Bishop, and Steven Timothy Judy.