HARTFORD, Conn. (AP) – Marjorie Henry’s home was directly across the street from the Wethersfield prison where Joseph “Mad Dog” Taborsky was executed in the electric chair in 1960. The memory of that night causes her to cringe, even now.

What does she remember? Her face hardens.

“I just remember a chill. Being chilled to the core of the soul,” she said.

Sunday, the 71-year old Hartford resident was among about two dozen death penalty opponents who began a five-day, 30-mile walk that will eventually lead them to the Somers prison where serial killer Michael Ross is set to be executed Friday morning.

If legal maneuvers do not delay it, and Ross does not change his mind about forgoing his remaining appeals, the execution will be New England’s first since Taborsky was put to death 45 years ago for a series of killings and robberies. Henry, an Episcopal pacifist, is praying it doesn’t happen.

“I don’t want to go through it again,” she said.

Protesters plan to walk for periods each day through Thursday night, stopping at the state Capitol, at local churches and for vigils along the way. They began in Hartford on Sunday at 2:01 a.m., 108 hours before the execution, at Gallows Hill at Trinity College, the site where the state executed five criminals in colonial days.

Bundled in hats, scarves and gloves to block a crisp wind on an unseasonably cold spring afternoon, they held a moment of silence for the eight Connecticut and New York women Ross admitted killing in the 1980s and their families. Though many acknowledged there was little hope the execution would be halted, they hoped to send a message.

“So many people have asked me, Why are you doing this for Michael Ross?”‘ said Robert Nave, executive director of the Connecticut Network to Abolish the Death Penalty, who is leading the resistance effort. “We’re not doing this for Michael Ross. We’re doing this because it is state-sponsored homicide.”

Most opponents will not walk the entire 30 miles. They will instead come and go over the next few days, armed with bottles of pain relievers, water and comfortable sneakers.

For those who are marching the distance, local clergy have offered to open their homes to give them a place to rest and recharge at night.

The opposition is bigger and longer than it was in January, when Ross was first scheduled to die but legal questions about his competency halted the lethal injection.

People from around the region plan to come to protest as well. Ronal Madnick, from Massachusetts Citizens against the Death Penalty and the American Civil Liberties Union of Massachusetts, said people will ride a bus from Boston on Thursday.

Walter Everett, whose 24-year-old son Scott was gunned down and killed in Bridgeport in 1987, said the death penalty is not an answer. He never wanted his son’s killer to die, just to serve a long sentence. Everett, a pastor at United Methodist Church of Hartford, later testified in front of the parole board for the man to have an early release after serving time with good behavior.

To him, killing just doesn’t make sense.

“I’m convinced the death penalty is society’s way of admitting defeat,” he said.

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On the Net:

http://www.cnadp.org/

AP-ES-05-08-05 1650EDT