(Court TV) — Justin Chaz Fuller was executed Thursday night for the robbery and shooting death of a 21-year-old East Texas man in 1997.

With his parents and those of his victim watching through a window, Fuller, 27, thanked his family for their support before given a lethal injection. He was pronounced dead at 6:18 p.m. CT.

"I would like to tell my family 'Thank you for your support' and my friends," Fuller said. "And let everyone know that you must stay strong for each other. Take care of yourselves."

Fuller was 19 years old when a Smith County jury convicted him and sentenced him to death in 1998 for the robbery, kidnapping and murder of Donald Whittington III, a hardware store employee.

Fuller admitted to authorities that he and three friends abducted Whittington from his Tyler apartment and used his car to drive him to a nearby ATM, where they forced him to withdraw $300.

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He told authorities that the group then drove Whittington, bound and blindfolded, to a picnic area near Lake Tyler, where he was shot twice in the head. They then torched Whittington's car.

"The initial plan was to just drop him off, and you know, let's go back home," Fuller told CourtTVnews.com in an Aug. 2 interview. "But things escalated from that point on, and that's when it got out of hand."

Whittington's body remained there for four days, until a high school student reported the body to authorities. The teen told police that 18-year-old Fuller, a recent graduate of Chapel Hill High School, had led them to the body and bragged about shooting Whittington.

"It was too easy. Compared to what my son went through, it was really too easy," Donald Whittington Jr., the father of the victim, told the Associated Press Thursday after the execution. "He showed no remorse in court, and he showed no remorse being injected."

In an interview with CourtTVnews.com, Fuller said he was sorry for Whittington's death, but denied he pulled the trigger or that he told others that he killed him.

Instead, he implicated co-defendant Samhermundre Wideman as the triggerman. Wideman is serving a life sentence for his role in the murder.

On Thursday, the U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear Fuller's appeals based on new information from co-defendant Elaine Hays, who recently told Fuller's appellate attorney that Wideman had claimed responsibility for the shooting and remarked that "it felt good" to shoot someone.

In his petitions, Fuller claimed that his trial lawyers never told him that prosecutors had offered him a plea deal. He also complained that his first post-conviction attorney filed pleadings on his behalf intended for someone else, but with his name replaced in the paperwork.

Ellis Fuller, who last spoke with his son earlier Thursday, told CourtTVnews.com that his son was at peace with his fate.

"He was in good spirits. I think he's come to terms with what he did or did not do," Ellis Fuller said earlier Thursday. "It's between him and the Lord."

The Associated Press contributed to this report.