The state of South Dakota carried out its first death sentence in 60 years Wednesday night with the execution of an admitted killer who asked to be put to death for brutally torturing and murdering his friend.

Elijah Page, 25, was pronounced dead at 10:11 p.m. in the South Dakota State Penitentiary in Sioux Falls. He declined to deliver any last words before an audience consisting of members of the media, Gov. Mike Rounds and the mother of victim Chester Allan Poage, 19.

After the execution, Poage's mother, Dottie, showed off a childhood picture of her son as she spoke to the media.

"Elijah Page had the ultimate penalty for the ultimate crime," Dottie Poage said, according to the Rapid City Journal. "I never dreamt I'd be dealing with what I have dealt with these last seven years."

Page pleaded guilty in 2000 to kidnapping Poage with two friends, forcing him to drink hydrochloric acid and torturing him to death in the wintry woods of western South Dakota so the group could burglarize Poage's Spearfish home.

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Page and co-defendants Briley Piper and Darrell Hoadley told police that they kicked, stabbed and stoned Poage for over two hours before leaving him to die in a creek where his partially clad body was discovered almost a month later.

Chester Allan Poage, shown in a 1997 picture

A judge sentenced Page and Piper, who were 19 when the crime occurred, to death in 2001 after they entered guilty pleas. Hoadley was sentenced to life in prison in a jury trial.

After the state Supreme Court upheld Page's sentence in 2006, Page wrote a handwritten letter to the governor saying he wanted to drop his appeals and proceed with the death sentence.

In the letter, he also attempted to take blame off Piper, one of three remaining inmates on South Dakota death row, by claiming full responsibility for plotting the burglary and the murder.

"Piper really wanted nothing to do with it all, but if Darryl and I were in it, we weren't going to let Piper be out of it," Page said of Piper, whose appeals are still pending.

"I am writing this because I have decided to end my appeals and face execution. But before I could do this, I had to let people know. I have nothing to gain or lose from this," Page said in the January 2006 letter.

Page's death also marked the state's first execution by lethal injection since South Dakota stopped using the electric chair in 1984. He was originally scheduled to be executed in August 2006, but Gov. Rounds postponed it so the legislature could revise the 1984 statute, which provided for the use of a two-drug cocktail instead of the three-drug mixture in wide use today.

George Sitts was the last condemned prisoner to be executed in South Dakota in 1947 for killing two lawmen.