PARCHMAN — Funeral services will be in Vicksburg for a Mississippi man executed by the state Tuesday for his conviction in a 1995 sexual assault and slaying.

Larry Matthew Puckett, 35, was pronounced dead at 6:18 p.m. Tuesday after a lethal injection. Puckett was convicted of the Oct. 14, 1995, killing of Rhonda Hatten Griffis, a 28-year-old mother of two who lived northeast of Hattiesburg in Petal.

He had been an 18-year-old Eagle Scout when he was charged with murder.

On Tuesday night, Puckett said “no” when asked if he had a last statement. Wearing glasses, he stared up at the ceiling as he lay strapped to a gurney, not looking toward the victim’s parents seated in a viewing room. He took several deep breaths as the drugs began flowing into his body and then appeared to fall asleep.

Thousands of people had signed an online petition in support of Puckett, insisting on his innocence, and the man’s mother was the central figure in a rally Monday at the state Capitol urging his life be spared.

Her son maintained that he was innocent to the end, said Mary Stennett Puckett, a resident of Vicksburg, but he was at peace and concerned for her and his family in the hours before he died.

“I had a conversation with him for two hours yesterday,” she said this morning. “I know his soul was peaceful because of his deep faith as a Christian. I told him he had touched a lot of lives and had a lot of people that believed in him.”

But while Puckett’s family and supporters claimed the woman’s husband killed her in a jealous rage, the victim’s mother said she found Puckett in the home holding an ax handle, which prosecutors said was used in the killing of her only child. She watched the execution with her husband.

“I caught him in her house with the club in his hand,” Nancy Hatten had told The Associated Press recently. “Her husband wasn’t anywhere on the premises at the time. He drove up later.”

After the execution, Hatten read a statement on the family’s behalf, thanking those who had supported them over the years. She also stressed that despite the claims of others that Puckett was innocent, she was certain he killed her daughter.

“I know for a fact that he murdered Rhonda. You might ask, ‘How do you know for fact?’ I happened to be there,” she told reporters afterward.

Hatten, who lived next door, recounted Tuesday that she went to the house when she heard screams and found Puckett in her daughter’s home and he then came after her with the club-like handle. She said she dodged him, backing away when her daughter’s husband showed up with the two children, and the husband scuffled with Puckett before he fled.

Griffis’ husband found his wife’s battered body in the living room, according to court records. Puckett had worked as a landscaper for Griffis’ husband, and the crime occurred weeks before Puckett was scheduled to leave for basic training with the Navy.

Puckett, after running from the home, was captured two days later. He confessed to being at the home to burglarize it, but claimed Griffis’ husband killed her, according to court records. Puckett was sentenced to death on Aug. 5, 1996.

His supporters rallied Monday at the Capitol in Jackson alongside Mary Puckett. They raised a sign that read “Take a Stand, Save Matt” and many wore black T-shirts with words in white lettering: “Save Matt.”

But Gov. Phil Bryant refused to grant a reprieve after the U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday afternoon denied his final petition. Bryant said in a statement that he had reviewed the facts of the case but decided against intervening, noting Puckett had been “convicted by a jury of his peers more than 15 years ago.”

Earlier Tuesday, Puckett was visited by his parents, brothers, uncle and a spiritual adviser at the Mississippi State Penitentiary at Parchman, where the death chamber is housed. About a dozen people rallied against the death penalty outside the gates Tuesday evening.

Mississippi Corrections Commissioner Chris Epps said Puckett was “somber” in his last hours. He added he talked to Puckett about his childhood and becoming an Eagle Scout in the Hattiesburg-Petal area, but the condemned man didn’t want to talk about the case.

“He said there’s more to the story, and he denied committing the crime,” Epps said.

Mary Puckett said her son grew up in Baytown, Texas, and Perry County, Miss., attending Perry County schools. She said he never lived in Vicksburg.

Epps said after the execution that he asked Puckett en route to the death chamber if he had committed the crime.

“He went to his grave denying it,” Epps said.

“Matt maintained he was innocent because he was innocent,” Mary Puckett said today. “He was an amazing young man, the strongest man that I have ever known.”

Epps said Puckett requested that his relatives and lawyer not watch the execution, and Mary Puckett said the family spent the evening praying at Bovina Baptist Church, where her brother is a deacon.

“They were very generous and very kind to us,” she said. “They did not express their views on the death penalty, they just opened up a place for us to gather.”

Puckett had spent much of his time on death row writing letters to friends and family and essays on a variety of topics, even musing on what it would be like to be executed.

“Now picture yourself surrounded by big burly men with firm grips on you as they direct you to the execution chamber. The excitement and base fear course through you like no other time in your life. You sweat, you pant, you want them to stop. They won’t, they can’t, the whole process is inexorable,” he wrote on a website that prints prisoners’ letters. “Ironically, at the moment of your death your body proves you are the most alive.”

Puckett had requested that his body be released to his mother. Mary Puckett said her son would be cremated — “He wanted to be free,” she said — and the family planned a service for Saturday at Glenwood Funeral Home in Vicksburg.

He also is survived by his father, Larry Ross of Utica, two brothers, and a stepbrother and stepsister, she said.

His mother maintained her son’s trial was flawed and his treatment was unfair from the outset.

“Like a lot of people, I thought if someone was convicted of a crime, they were probably guilty,” Mary Puckett said. “But if this can happen to us, it can happen to anyone.”

Another Mississippi inmate, William Mitchell, 61, is scheduled for execution Thursday. Mitchell had been out of prison on parole for less than a year for a 1975 murder when he was charged with raping and killing Patty Milliken, 38, a worker who disappeared from a Biloxi convenience store.