Washington (AFP) – A former US Marine who confessed to raping and murdering a 16-year-old girl is to be executed in the southern US state of Mississippi on Wednesday. Thomas Edwin Loden, 58, is to be put to death at 6:00 pm Central Time (0000 GMT) by lethal injection at the Mississippi State Penitentiary in Parchman. Loden pleaded guilty to the June 2000 kidnapping of Leesa Gray, who had been stranded on the side of a rural road after her car had a flat tire. Loden, a gunnery sergeant and recruiter for the Marine Corps, confessed to repeatedly raping Gray in his van before suffocating and stra…