birth_place other_names nationality birth_date spouse notable_works article_title education birth_name occupation
west hartford , ct , usa lori urs lori o'dell lori ann st john american 08 march 1956 walter hours -rrb- k. urs 1981-1995 joseph o'dell 1997 -lrb- 6 '' the corruption of innocence '' -lrb- 2013 -rrb- lori st john
 u. of law rutgers law school conn. , bs , accounting new england school lori st john anti-death penalty activist lawyer
lori st john

lori st john , also known as lori urs , is an american advocate against wrongful death penalty decisions .
in addition , she is a certified public accountant and author .
in the early 1990s , st john studied law at the new england school of law and later at rutgers school of law .
in the 1990s , she led a determined public relations effort to prevent the execution of convicted murderer joseph roger o'dell .
her public relations campaign in the media drew widespread international support , particularly from the italian city of palermo , as well as from mother teresa and pope john paul ii and the italian and european parliaments , who petitioned unsuccessfully for o'dell not to be executed .
she was an investigator on o'dell 's legal team .
she married the convicted murderer hours before his execution , partly in an effort to gain control of evidence .
the marriage was officiated by a death row chaplain , with vows exchanged between bars of the cell , and the newlyweds were not permitted to touch for security reasons .
soon thereafter , before being executed by lethal injection , o'dell pledged to love his bride `` throughout eternity . ''
her efforts pushed for greater use of dna profiling in capital crimes cases .
her advocacy generated serious interest on the world wide web as well as in the nation of italy , where the 1997 execution of o'dell was watched by millions of television viewers .
according to an account in the `` los angeles times '' , o'dell became the `` unofficial martyr of italy 's campaign against capital punishment in the rest of the world . ''
o'dell was buried in the city of palermo , italy , even though he had never visited there .
in 1998 , she was briefly in the news when she helped secure the release of her teenage daughter , who was being held hostage by a man she once lived with .
