KEITH EUGENE WELLS BURIED J UST HOURS AFTER HIS EXECUTION

BOISE Double murderer Keith Eugene Wells was buried in a private service

Thursday morning, less than 12 hours after becoming the first man executed by the state of Idaho in more than a generation.

''Keith did not pay for any crime. His death is not payment for anything,'' Wells' sister, Cherie Fehringer, said just minutes after the execution. ''His death is for peace.''

Wells, 31, who dropped all appeals and demanded his death sentence be carried out, died by lethal injection at 12:50 a.m. Thurs

day MST (11:50 p.m. Wednesday PST), about 90 minutes after he offered his only public apology for beating two people to death only because ''it was time for them to die.''

He had confessed to the 1990 murders of John Justad, 23, and Brandi Rains, 20, without remorse two weeks earlier. But with spiritual adviser Jac

k Risner of the Mount Hood Christian Center in Oregon with him through his final hours, Wells telephoned Boise anchorwoman Dee Sarton of KTVB-TV at home and asked her to express his sorrow to the victims' families.

''I would like to ask for their forgiveness because it just happened,'' Sarton quoted Wells as saying. ''I am very sorry.''

Wells, who spent nearly all his adult life behind bars, said he was obeying God by offering the apology, Sarton said.

Fehringer said just before the execution that her brother was willing to die, and ''if this isn't remorse, I don't know what is.''

As the execution was about to begin, Wel

ls turned his head to the 17 witnesses in the death trailer, smiled and then turned his face back toward the ceiling. He blinked and swallowed several times after the injections, took a deep breath after about two minutes and then appeared to go to sleep.

''I knew when I signed the orders ... the end result is the termination of human life,'' said 4th District Judge Gerald Schroeder, who sentenced Wells. But ''the reality, I suppose, is always greater then the abstract.''

It was the nation's first execution in 1994 but only Idaho's 10th in this century. Wells

was the

227th person executed in the nation since the U.S. Supreme Court reinstated the death penalty in 1976.

Idaho's last execution was Raymond Allen Snowden. He was hanged on Oct. 18, 1957, for the murder and mutilation of a woman he met at a suburban Boise bar.

Last-ditch legal attempts to stay the execution over the objections of Wells and his family went all the

way to the U.S. Supreme Court before their final rejection. The 7-2 high court vote, with Justices Harry A. Blackmun and John Paul Stevens dissenting, delayed Wells' death by 39 minutes.

''Keith and I know we'll meet again,'' his wife, Cindy, 35, said after her final visit with Wells Wednesday afternoon.