ST. LOUIS (AP) — A Missouri man who killed his girlfriend and her 2-year-old daughter with a butcher knife has been put to death.

Richard Strong was executed Tuesday at the state prison in Bonne Terre. He became the fourth man to die by injection in Missouri this year and the 16th since November 2013. Only Texas has executed more inmates over that span.

The bodies of Eva Washington and daughter Zandrea Thomas were found in October 2000 in Washington’s apartment in the St. Louis suburb of St. Ann. A butcher knife was found on a bed next to a pool of blood. Strong and Washington’s 3-month-old, Alyshia Strong, was on the bed but wasn’t harmed.

Alyshia is now 14 and pleaded for her father’s life in a clemency request to Gov. Jay Nixon.