Tag: texas

Betty Lou Beets Execution

Betty Lou Beets

Betty Lou Beets was executed by the State of Texas for the murder of one of her husbands. Betty Lou Beets would be executed by lethal injection on February 24, 2000.

Betty Lou Beets was born in North Carolina on March 12, 1937. According to Betty Lou she was sexually abused by her father. Beets who was deaf due to a childhood bout with measles. When she was twelve years old her mother was institutionalized and she had to raise her younger siblings

Betty Lou would marry her first husband when she was fifteen years old and would last for seventeen years. Betty Lou who was no angel would rack up a series of arrests for public lewdness. Betty Lou would marry her second husband twice, the first would end after she shot him twice in the back of the head (he would survive and testify against her at the murder trial) and she was later acquitted of attempted murder charges. The same husband would remarry Beets but they would divorce again a month later.

Betty Lou Beets would marry her third husband and soon after attempted to run him over with a car. Her fourth husband would only last a year before he disappeared.

Betty Lou Beets would marry her fifth husband in 1981, two years later Jimmy Don Beets would be reported missing. Betty Lou son told the jury that she told him to leave the house and when he returned two hours later Jimmy Don Beets would be lying dead from two gunshot wounds. Betty Lou and her son would bury the body in the front yard before reporting her husband missing. Beets and her son also spilled some of her husband’s heart medication in his boat and set it adrift. Police believed that Jimmy Don Beets had drowned.

Betty Lou Beets would be arrested two years later. The police would find the body of Jimmy Don Beets buried in the front yard. Police would also find the body of her fifth husband in a well on the propert.

Betty Lou Beets would be convicted for the murder of Jimmy Don Beets and sentenced to death. She attempted to blame the murders on two of her children however the jury did not buy it.

Betty Lou Beets would be executed by the State of Texas by lethal injection on February 24, 2000.

Betty Lou Beets Videos

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ubxxq14J_zM

Betty Lou Beets More News

BETTY LOU BEETS, a 62-year-old woman convicted of the 1983 murder of her husband, was killed by lethal injection just after 6 p.m. CST at a state prison in Huntsville, Texas. The state leads the country in executions, with 208 since resuming capital punishment in 1982. Two United Nations experts on human rights had appealed to Governor Bush in a letter Thursday to spare her from execution, saying that the domestic “abuse and extreme violence” she suffered was not made known to the jury that sentenced her to die. A federal appeals court on Thursday upheld a lower court ruling rejecting her attorneys’ plea that her case be reexamined because she was a battered wife. Beets is the fourth woman executed in the United States since the 1976 Supreme Court ruling allowing capital punishment. She is the second woman and the oldest person to be put to death in Texas since the state resumed executions.

https://www.wired.com/2000/02/betty-lou-beets-62-executed/

Frequently Asked Questions

Betty Lou Beets Photos

betty lou beets 1
betty lou beets 2

Betty Lou Beets More News

The state of Texas executed Betty Lou Beets, a 62-year-old great grandmother, Thursday evening at Huntsville prison. Beets was the second woman to be put to death in Texas in the last two years—Karla Faye Tucker was executed in February 1998—and the fourth woman to die in the US since executions resumed in 1976.

Earlier in the day Beets’ attorney Joe Margulies told CNN, “She’s very scared. She doesn’t want to be strapped down to that gurney all alone.” Beets declined a last meal and gave no final statement as she lay strapped to the death chamber gurney. After she was injected with the lethal drugs she smiled at her attorney and pastor, coughed twice and gasped before being pronounced dead at 6:18 PM Central Standard Time.

Beets was convicted in 1985 of fatally shooting her fifth husband. Police found his body buried in the front yard of the couple’s trailer home near the small East Texas town of Gun Barrel City. She was also convicted of shooting and wounding her second husband and was charged with—but never tried for—killing her fourth husband. Prosecutors dubbed her the “Black Widow of Henderson County” and claimed she killed her last husband to collect insurance money.

The case attracted national and international attention because of revelations—never presented by her original trial lawyer—that Beets had suffered physical, sexual and emotional abuse both as a child and at the hands of her husbands. Her current attorneys argued that because she had inadequate defense counsel at her 1985 trial, the jury was never able to consider mitigating circumstances during the sentencing phase.

The attorneys also charged that the state parole board violated Beets’ civil rights by denying her the review process that the state legislature mandates for all murder cases involving battered women.

About 100 protesters, some holding photographs of a bruised Beets following a beating, gathered outside the prison before the execution. Death penalty opponents, domestic violence awareness organizations, Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and even officials from the UN Human Rights Commission had appealed to Texas Governor George W. Bush to commute the elderly woman’s sentence. According to the governor’s office, Bush received more than 2,100 calls and letters from people opposing the execution, while only 57 messages came from those endorsing it.

On Tuesday, the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles rejected Beets’ pleas for a 180-day reprieve and commutation of her sentence. On Thursday afternoon a federal appeals court in New Orleans denied a motion to stop the execution. In Austin, US District Judge James Nowlin dismissed the motion, saying it was “yet another example of a prisoner attempting to delay execution just prior to the execution date.”

Finally, about an hour before the execution, the US Supreme Court, without comment, refused to hear Beets’ case. Minutes later Texas Governor George W. Bush gave the go-ahead for the execution by turning down an appeal for a 30-day delay. The governor issued a cursory four-sentence statement.

“After careful review of the evidence in the case I concur with the jury that Betty Lou Beets is guilty of this murder,” Bush said. “I am confident that the courts, both state and federal, have thoroughly reviewed all the issues raised by the defendant. The courts, including the US Supreme Court, have rejected all of her appeals. I concur with the recommendation of the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles and will not grant a 30-day delay.”

Notwithstanding Bush’s claims to the contrary, Beets hardly received a fair trial and due process. Under Texas law, she could not be sentenced to death unless the state proved that she murdered her husband with premeditation, i.e., to recover a $100,000 pension and insurance policy. But her attorney, E. Ray Andrews, deliberately withheld from the jury the fact that she did not know about the insurance policy until a year-and-a-half after her husband’s murder, when Andrews himself told her about it.

This information would have seriously undermined the prosecution’s claim that Beets’ had killed for money. But to be a witness and provide testimony, he would have had to withdraw as her defense lawyer and give up his fee. His price for representing Beets was her signature on a contract surrendering all movie and book rights to her story.

“He said he was going to get rich on all this, and the case was going to be the biggest thing that ever happened to him,” Bob Miller, commander of the local Veterans of Foreign Wars post, told Beets’ appellate lawyers in a 1991 affidavit. “He said the case was going to turn into a big movie, and he had all the rights to it. It was something that he talked about pretty often.” Miller also said Andrews regularly drank heavily at the post prior to going into court to argue the case.

After becoming district attorney, Andrews was arrested by the FBI in 1994 for soliciting a $300,000 payoff to drop a death penalty case against a businessmen accused of killing his wife. He resigned from the prosecutor’s office, gave up his law license, and cried at his sentencing, saying he was a longtime alcoholic, prescription drug abuser and heavy gambler. He was sentenced to three-and-a-half years in federal prison.

Neither was the jury told that Beets had suffered years of abuse, beginning when she was a child in the 1940s. She grew up poor in a small Texas town, battling an alcoholic father and a mentally ill mother. Beets was sexually abused as early as age five and later suffered organic brain damage in a car accident. She first married at the age of 15, was beaten by many of her husbands and became an alcoholic.

In 1991, a federal court judge held that Beets’ defense attorney’s behavior violated her right to effective counsel and ordered a new trial. But the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals reinstated her conviction and death sentence, saying Beets could not show that either Andrews’ testimony or evidence of spousal abuse would have changed the trial’s outcome.

“All my momma’s life, she’s been abused,” her daughter Faye Lane said at a news conference earlier in the week. “I’ve seen it with my own eyes. And I know that if the jury heard the truth about my momma, she only could have done something like this if she’d been very scared or threatened.”

Shortly before her execution, Beets told the Athens Daily Review, “This is not a capital case, it’s about domestic violence…You don’t kill the one that survives it.”

The execution of Betty Lou Beets is a particularly gruesome example of the brutality and vindictiveness of the death penalty. But it is by no means the exception. The vast majority of the 3,600 inmates on death row come from impoverished and abused backgrounds and lack the resources for an adequate defense. They confront prosecutors, judges and politicians who want to further their careers by promoting the death penalty and appealing to the most backward and reactionary sentiments in the population.

Since becoming governor in 1995 George W. Bush, who is running for president as a “compassionate conservative,” has overseen 121 executions, more than any other governor in US history. The state parole board, which is dominated by Bush appointees, has only granted commutations to two death row prisoners. Rejections of appeals are so commonplace, the parole board rarely meets and instead votes on clemency appeals by fax. Overall, Texas is responsible for 208 of the 616 executions carried out in the US since 1976.

Support for the practice of state murder is by no means limited to the Republican Party. Just last week, President Clinton rejected calls for a moratorium on federal executions.

Advocacy of the death penalty is considered by the media and the political establishment to be a prerequisite for anyone seeking high national office. Even as evidence of wrongful convictions of death row prisoners generates growing public concern about capital punishment, reflected even in some official circles—as evidenced by a moratorium on executions by the Republican governor of Illinois—all of the current presidential candidates of both parties reaffirm their commitment to this barbaric practice. They make a point of aligning themselves with the law-and-order elements that hold sway in both big business parties.

https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2000/02/exec-f26.html

Betty Lou Beets FAQ

Why Was Betty Lou Beets Executed

Betty Lou Beets was executed for the murder of one of her husbands

When Was Betty Lou Beets Executed

Betty Lou Beets was executed on February 24, 2000

Karla Faye Tucker Execution

Karla Faye Tucker execution

Karla Faye Tucker was executed by the State of Texas for the murders of two men. On February 3, 1998 she was executed by way of lethal injection.

Karla Faye Tucker was born in Houston Texas on November 18, 1959 to parents in a volatile relationship. When Karla was ten years old she would learn that her father was not her father during her parents divorce proceedings.

Karla Faye Tucker was using drugs by the time she was twelve years old and would soon travel with her mother who was a groupie to a number of rock bands and would also work as a prostitute.

At the age of sixteen Karla Faye Tucker would be briefly married to an auto mechanic.

When Karla Faye Tucker was in her early twenties she would meet a man named Daniel Ryan Garrett who she would soon be in a relationship with. The two who spent a lot of time using drugs were short on cash and decided to rob someone they knew of his motorcycle

During the robbery they would grab the homeowner, Jerry Dean, and force him into the bedroom. Jerry Dean who made a grab for Karla Faye Tucker was beaten with a ball peen hammer. Tucker who was armed with a pick axe would strike Dean repeated with the tool causing his death.

When Garrett left the room to load more parts Karla Faye Tucker noticed a woman, Deborah Ruth Thornton, in the room and would strike her with the pick axe. The two women began to fight until they were separated by Garrett. Tucker would strike the woman repeatedly with the pick axe. Karla Faye Tucker would later tell people she has multiple orgasms when she killed the woman.

Karla Faye Tucker and Danny Garrett would be arrested five weeks later.

Karla Faye Tucker was initially charged with both murders however after agreeing to testify against Danny Garrett the murder charge for the Jerry Dean case was the only one she stood trial for. Danny Garrett would also only be charged with the Deborah Thornton murder. Both would be convicted and sentenced to death.

Karla Faye Tucker would be executed on February 3, 1998 by lethal injection. There was a ton of controversy around her execution for she completely changed her life while imprisoned and spent most of her time helping others. Most believed her death sentence should have been commuted.

Karla Faye Tucker Videos

Karla Faye Tucker More News

Karla Faye Tucker, the Pickax Killer turned born-again Christian, died of a lethal injection tonight, closing a long fight for her life as a crowd outside the Texas death house prayed for her soul.

Tucker, 38, was pronounced dead at 6:45 p.m. local time, becoming the first woman executed in Texas since the Civil War and only the second in the United States since the resumption of the death penalty in 1976. Although she and her attorneys had played down her gender in their many pleas for clemency, the fact that she was a woman helped arouse international interest in her cause and generate appeals for mercy from figures including Pope John Paul II and religious broadcaster Pat Robertson.

Wearing a white prison uniform and white tennis shoes, Karla Faye Tucker lay strapped on her back on a gurney as she delivered her final statements to the gathered witnesses, who included her husband, Dana Brown, a prison ministry worker she married by proxy in 1995, and Ronald Carlson, a Houston machinist and brother of one of the victims.

“I love all of you very much,” she said to the witnesses. “I am going to be face-to-face with Jesus now.”

Addressing her husband, she said, “Baby, I love you.”

Then a lethal dose of sodium thiopental began dripping into the veins of each arm, along with pancuronium bromide, which is a muscle relaxant, and potassium chloride, which stops the heartbeat. Within a few minutes, she was dead. Officials with the Texas Department of Criminal Justice said that Tucker also could have requested a sedative but did not.

“I never saw Karla Faye Tucker take the smile off her face,” said Vicente Arenas, a Houston television reporter who was among the witnesses.

The scene was emotional outside the Department of Criminal Justice facility here called the death house in this east Texas town of 35,000 about 60 miles north of Houston, where a record 37 men were executed last year. Several hundred people on both sides of the issue crowded against yellow police lines, some still arguing over the value of the death penalty, others praying and singing “Amazing Grace” and other hymns.

“Bye bye, Karla Faye,” read one sign. “Forget Injection, Use a Pickax,” read another.

But many others here were sympathetic to Tucker’s plight: “I’m Ashamed to be a Texan,” one sign read, and another said: “Jesus Loves Karla Faye and So Do I.”

Cheers went up from the pro-execution crowd when her death was announced.

The case had divided victims’ families. Carlson, brother of Deborah Thornton, one of the two people Tucker was convicted of helping to kill, participated in rallies at the state Capitol in Austin asking that Tucker be spared. Richard Thornton, the victim’s husband, argued that he was sick of the depiction of Tucker as “Miss Saint.”

Arenas said Thornton, who is in a wheelchair with severe diabetes and was a witness to the execution, muttered throughout the proceedings. “The world’s a better place,” he was heard to say during the execution.

It had become increasingly clear on Monday that despite Tucker’s efforts to show she was a changed person, notably in televised appearances on “60 Minutes,” Robertson’s “The 700 Club” and CNN, her quest to spare her life had failed. The state Board of Pardons and Paroles, which could have commuted her sentence to life in prison, voted 16 to 0, with two members abstaining, to deny her request. Tucker, who could have been eligible for parole in 2003 had the board agreed, had asked that she be given life in prison without the possibility of release, but there is no such sentence in Texas, and board members said they could not make a special case of Karla Faye Tucker.

After the board’s ruling, Tucker’s only hope was with the U.S. Supreme Court, which turned down two appeals without comment this afternoon, and Gov. George W. Bush (R), who, under the law, could grant her only one 30-day stay. But here in Texas, the national leader in executions with one in every three that occurs, governors have seldom intervened in death-penalty cases and Bush was no exception.

“May God bless Karla Faye Tucker and may God bless her victims and their families,” Bush said after declining to grant the stay.

No one disputed the fact that Karla Faye Tucker committed a nightmarish act. According to her own account, she began using heroin at age 10 and was a drug-addled prostitute when she and a friend, Daniel Garrett, entered the Houston apartment of Jerry Lynn Dean on June 13, 1983, to steal a motorcycle.

Garrett began beating Dean with a hammer, and Tucker, who said she was disturbed by the “gurgling” sounds the wounded man made, found a 3-foot-long pickax and began hacking at his body. Then she noticed a figure cowering under a pile of blankets and swung the pickax again, striking Deborah Thornton on the shoulder. She said that Garrett finished Thornton off; the pickax was found embedded in the woman’s chest.

Karla Faye Tucker, who testified against Garrett, was not tried for Thornton’s murder but received the death penalty for Dean’s slaying. Garrett, who was also sentenced to death, died of a liver ailment in prison in 1993.

But Karla Faye Tucker said that as she waited in the Harris County Jail for her trial, her head began to clear from the years of drugs, and meeting with jail ministry workers, she found religion and the peace that sustained her for more than 14 years on death row.

In her final days, an unusual assortment of people rallied to her cause, including the pope and Robertson, founder of the Christian Broadcasting Network and host of “The 700 Club,” who normally supports the death penalty. “The 700 Club” broadcast Tucker’s final interview today, in which she discussed what she might be thinking as she lay waiting on the gurney.

“I am going to be thinking certainly about what it’s like in heaven,” she said. “I’m going to be thinking about my family and my friends and the pain. I am going to be thankful for all the love.”

Repeatedly, in the weeks leading to her death, Karla Faye Tucker had told interviewers she was not afraid of dying. “I know that Jesus has prepared a place for me,” she said in a recent CNN report. “I know if I have to go February 3, he’s going to come and he’s going to escort me personally. I believe that.”

After the execution, Tucker’s body was taken to Huntsville Funeral Home, said prisons spokesman Larry Todd, where her husband was expected to claim it for burial.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/national/frompost/dec98/woman9.htm

Frequently Asked Questions

Karla Faye Tucker FAQ

Why Was Karla Faye Tucker Executed

Karla Faye Tucker was executed for a double murder

When Was Karla Faye Tucker Executed

Karla Faye Tucker was executed on February 3, 1998

Zephaniah Trevino Teen Killer Or Victim

Zephi Trevino

Zephaniah Trevino a Texas teenager who has been charged with capital murder is either a teen killer or a sex trafficking victim. According to police Zephaniah Trevino was present when the victim, Carlos Arajeni-Arriaza Morillo was fatally shot during a robbery. However Zephaniah Trevino family is saying the teenager was controlled by an older man.

According to police Zephaniah Trevino and two other men, Phillip Baldenegro and Jesse Martinez, lured the victim and another man to a home. When inside of the home the victim and the other man were shot, the other man survived the attack. Phillip Baldenegro has admitted to shooting both of the men.

However Phillip Baldenegro, Jesse Martinez and Zephaniah Trevino were all charged with capital murder. Police are saying that Zephaniah Trevino lured the two men to the apartment and that according to Texas prosecutors she will be tried as an adult and face life in prison

A number of celebrities have reached out and spoken about the Zephaniah Trevino case saying that she is a teenage victim and should be treated like a juvenile and not a teen killer. That the now seventeen year old was being forced by her boyfriend to have sex for money and that she was told to lure the two victims to the home in fear of her life. However prosecutors believe she was a willing participant.

Zephaniah Trevino Videos

Zephaniah Trevino More News

For a year, Zephi Trevino has been in custody at the Henry Wade Justice Center

She’s charged with capital murder for an incident in May 2019. Two other men also face capital murder charges.

Police and attorneys for all three suspects agree one victim was injured and another was killed in a shooting at the apartment.

But Zephi’s parents say she is a victim, not a suspect, and should be released.

Zephi Trevino played soccer and volleyball and was involved at church, until, her mother says, Zephi got involved with the wrong people.

“I think as parents we saw signs, we just didn’t know what they were,” said Zephi’s mother Crystal Trevino.

It wasn’t until May 2019 when Crystal realized what was going on with her daughter. At the time, Zephi was 16.

Crystal Trevino calls her daughter a sex trafficking victim and says it can happen to any young, impressionable girl. 

She says she even had safeguards for Zephi, including a phone tracker.

“We had things in place that we thought would protect her from a lot of things but it turned into my worst nightmare,” said Crystal.

One evening her mother couldn’t reach her, hours after Zephi said she was going to the mall with friends.

“I kept texting her. ‘Where are you? Come home.’ She just kind of went off the map and we didn’t hear back from her,” said Crystal.

Crystal says when her daughter got home that night Zephi seemed out of it, like she had been drugged, and went straight to bed.

“She woke up probably about 11:30-ish in the evening and crawled up next to me and did not move and cried,” said Crystal.

What Zephi Trevino’s parents didn’t know was that their daughter had been at an apartment in Grand Prairie.

She was there with two men, Phillip Baldenegro and Jesse Martinez, who were 18 and 19 years old at the time.

Police say Baldenegro and Martinez, with Zephi Trevino’s help, lured two men to the apartment, then ambushed and robbed them.

Baldenegro has admitted he shot both men, killing one of them.

Baldenegro, Martinez and Zephi Trevino are all charged with capital murder.

Attorney David Finn represents Baldenegro.

“She brought the guys to the apartment and set the whole thing up,” said Finn.

Zephi Trevino’s parents, her attorney and Baldenegro’s attorney agree the men were there to have sex with Zephi, but Zephi’s parents claim Baldenegro was forcing their daughter to have sex for money.

Baldenegro’s attorney says his client admits he pulled the trigger, but he is not a pimp.

“She is no victim. My client Philip Baldenegro is 19 and I think she was 16 at the time. They had a boyfriend-girlfriend relationship that is born out on my client’s cellphone,” said Finn.

“And the thought of your child with men. That’s a mother’s worst nightmare,” said Crystal Trevino.

She says Zephi Trevino told her Baldenegro and Martinez threatened to harm her family if she told them what was happening.

“I am angry because she is [in jail]. I’m angry the system has not fought for her and I am upset because she does not have counseling and she needs help to heal and she needs support and she is not getting that,” said Trevino.

Crystal Trevino says her daughter was offered a 10-year plea deal, which she declined. She faces up to 40 years in prison.

Zephi Trevino has been at the Henry Wade Justice center for a year.

“I can’t even hug her. I can’t even talk to her,” said Crystal.

For months, Zephi’s parents searched for an attorney to help them free their daughter. Civil rights lawyer Justin Moore is helping the family.

“When I heard the story and kind of what they had been going through and how they thought they were not adequately being represented, I decided to dig deeper and see if I could find a way to help them,” said Moore.

With Moore’s help, Zephi Trevino’s case has gotten the attention of record mogul Jason Flom, who heads Lava Records and once ran Capitol Records.

He is also one of the co-founders of the Innocence Project, which has helped secure the release of hundreds of wrongfully convicted people.

“It’s crazy to think that while we are sitting here today, she is sitting in a jail cell awaiting her fate. As a child. She’s a child. What the hell are we doing?” said Flom.

Flom says he thinks Dallas District Attorney John Creuzot should take a closer look at the case.

“On what planet does it make sense that we are going to charge her with capital murder? It’s a disastrously failed social policy,” said Flom.

The district attorney and prosecutors are prohibited by law from talking about juvenile cases. Moore says that’s part of the problem — almost everything in the juvenile courts is done in secret.

”I think we have a system that when children are being prosecuted, it’s hard for the parent, child and counsel to be on the same page because of the privacy laws that juveniles are, quote-unquote, ‘protected’ by,” said Moore.  

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/crime/zephi-trevino-didn-t-pull-the-trigger-but-this-teen-girl-is-charged-with-capital-murder/ar-BB17o2P4

Zephaniah Trevino Other News

A North Texas teenager whose murder case has drawn attention from celebrities including Kim Kardashian West will be prosecuted in adult court, a Dallas County judge decided.

Zephaniah Trevino of Grand Prairie, who turned 18 on Feb. 19, was booked into the Dallas County jail on Feb. 12 after state District Judge Cheryl Lee Shannon’s ruling in juvenile court. Trevino remains jailed in lieu of $750,000 bail.

Trevino’s family and lawyers have said she was the victim of sex trafficking and was coerced into the Aug. 3, 2019, robbery in Grand Prairie that left 24-year-old Carlos Arajeni-Arriaza Morillo dead. Trevino was 16 at the time.

“I believe that no child should be certified as an adult, and the fact that this child here has shown that she likely was victimized by the aggressors definitely compounds the stain on the certification,” defense attorney Justin Moore said

Trevino faces charges of capital murder and aggravated robbery. A capital murder charge carries only two punishment options: the death penalty or life in prison without parole. But the U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that defendants who were juveniles at the time of the crime cannot be sentenced to death or life in prison without the possibility of parole, even if they stand trial as an adult. If convicted on the capital murder charge, Trevino would automatically have to serve 50 years in prison before becoming eligible for parole.

Had she remained in juvenile court, she couldn’t face more than 40 years in prison.

Prosecutors initially offered Trevino 10 years in prison in exchange for a plea of guilty to the aggravated robbery charge. They then offered five years on the same charge shortly before the judge certified her as an adult, Moore said. Defense lawyers and prosecutors haven’t discussed where the offer stands since the hearing to certify Trevino, he said

Two men, Jesse Martinez and Philip Aguilera Baldenegro, face the same charges in the shooting. Both were 18 at the time of the crime. Anyone over 17 is automatically tried as an adult in Texas.

Grand Prairie police initially said Martinez and Baldenegro lured Morillo and another man to the 300 block of Northeast 5th Street with the intent of robbing them. The victims fought back, and Morillo was shot during the struggle.

Trevino’s lawyers have said Morillo and the other man were pursuing sex from her, even though they knew she was underage.

Baldenegro’s attorney, David Finn, has said his client doesn’t dispute being the triggerman. But Finn argues that Trevino orchestrated the robbery and was not a sex trafficking victim, and that Trevino’s supporters have concocted the story to garner sympathy.

Last year, the case was the subject of a podcast, Wrongful Conviction With Jason Flom. Actress Jamie Lee Curtis purchased a full-page ad in The Dallas Morning News calling on District Attorney John Creuzot to dismiss the charges.

“All the DA has to do is drop the charges against this innocent girl,” Curtis said. “She didn’t hold a gun. She didn’t create the scenario. She was being sold for sex.”

Creuzot has declined to talk publicly about the case.

In Texas, defendants can be found guilty of murder if they participated in a crime — regardless of whether they pulled the trigger.

https://www.dallasnews.com/2021/02/23/zephaniah-trevino-north-texas-teen-accused-of-capital-murder-to-be-prosecuted-as-adult-judge-rules/

Robert Pruett From Teen Killer To Death Row

robert pruett

Robert Pruett would be involved in his first murder when he was just fifteen years old that would send him to prison for ninety nine years. Just a few years later he would be involved in yet another murder that would send him to Texas death row and ultimately to his execution. In this article on My Crime Library we are going to take a closer look at Robert Pruett.

Robert Pruett Childhood

Robert Pruett grew up in a poor neighborhood in Texas where he would have to take food from garbage containers to eat. His father was in and out of prison for the majority of his childhood and when he was home he would physically and sexually abuse his children. Robert Pruett would talk about taking bathes behind stores using a garden hose. Drug abuse ran rampant through the home and by and early age Pruett was abusing drugs.

Robert Pruett First Murder

When Robert Pruett was just fifteen years old he was involved in an argument with his neighbor Ray Yarborough. Later that night Robert, his brother Howard Pruett jr and his father Howard Pruett Sr would confront Ray Yarborough that ended with Howard Sr stabbing the victim several times causing his death.

Even though Howard Pruett Sr would tell authorities his sons had nothing to do with the murder both of them would be charged. Howard Pruett Jr would be sentenced to forty years in prison, Howard Pruett Sr would be sentenced to life without parole and fifteen year old Robert Pruett would be sentenced to ninety nine years in prison. The two younger Pruett’s would be convicted under the Texas law of parties where even though they did not convict the murder they were still guilty because they were there.

Robert Pruett would be sent to an adult prison at the age of seventeen years old

Robert Pruett Prison Murder

In 1999 Texas Correctional Officer Daniel Nagle was found dead in his office. The cause of death was a heart attack that was induced after he was stabbed eight times with a homemade weapon.

Robert Pruett became a suspect as he had a run in with Daniel Nagle earlier in the day regarding taking food from the mess hall. That conduct report had been torn up and left at the murder scene.

A number of inmates would testify that they would saw Robert Pruett murder the officer however there was no physical evidence tying Pruett to the murder. Robert Pruett would be convicted and sentenced to death

Robert Pruett Texas Death Row

Robert Pruett was sentenced to death in 2002 and would spend the next fifteen years declaring that he was innocent and was set up as the fall guy.

Robert would point to Daniel Nagle reputation and that a number of fellow guards had issues with him as he was in the process of filing a grievance against corrupt officials in the Texas Department Of Criminal Justice.

Robert Pruett would avoid execution in 2015 when a judge ordered DNA testing on the metal rod used to kill Daniel Nagle. The DNA test came back inconclusive and a mysterious DNA of an unknown female was found on the weapon. The Texas courts refused to order more testings.

Robert Pruett Execution

robert pruett

Robert Pruett would be executed by the State of Texas on October 12, 2017 by lethal injection. Robert Pruett would give the final statement:

“I’ve hurt a lot of people, and a lot of people have hurt me … One day, there won’t be a need to hurt people,”

Robert Pruett was 38 years old. At the time of his execution he had spent over twenty three years in prison.

Robert Pruett More News

Robert Pruett was executed in Huntsville Thursday night, completing the death sentence he received more than 15 years ago in the 1999 murder of prison guard Daniel Nagle.

Nagle was 37 when he was repeatedly stabbed with a makeshift knife in a Beeville prison. His body was found in a pool of blood next to a torn-up disciplinary report he had written against Pruett.

Pruett, 20 at the time, had already been in prison for years, convicted as an accomplice and sentenced to 99 years in a murder his father committed when he was 15. Prosecutors argued Pruett killed Nagle because of the report, but Pruett consistently and adamantly insisted on his innocence.He argued he was framed by corrupt guards and inmates about whom Nagle was writing a “lengthy grievance,” according to a recent court filing. 

In his last words, Pruett expressed his love for the friends who witnessed his execution.

“I’ve hurt a lot of people, and a lot of people have hurt me … One day, there won’t be a need to hurt people,” 38-year-old Pruett said in his final statement, strapped to a gurney in Texas’ death chamber.

His last appeals were denied by the U.S. Supreme Court within an hour of his scheduled execution, and at 6:17 p.m. he was injected with a lethal dose of pentobarbital. He was pronounced dead 29 minutes later after chanting and shouting obscenities, the Associated Press reported. Several of Pruett’s friends, as well as the wife and in-laws of Nagle, were expected to attend the execution. Family of Ray Yarbrough, the man Pruett’s father killed, were also listed as witnesses.

Nagle’s sister, Nora Oyler, issued a statement through the Texas Department of Criminal Justice, saying she and other family members still miss Daniel every day.

“The execution will in no way minimize our loss,” she said. “We have chosen to spend this time together and away from the coverage so that we can celebrate Daniel’s life and not the tragedy of his death.”

Pruett’s 2002 conviction in Nagle’s murder was primarily based on eyewitness testimony from inmates, which his lawyers have argued is unreliable. He fought for years to test crime scene evidence for DNA in an attempt to prove his innocence. Courts twice ordered testing on clothes, the report and the weapon, but results were ruled inconclusive. In April, the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals said the results would not have affected his conviction, setting the path for a new execution date.

Jack Choate, executive director of the Special Prosecution Unit, which prosecutes crimes in Texas prisons, said that after all of the court reviews, he didn’t see “room” for an innocence claim, mentioning how Pruett admitted on cross-examination he had asked an inmate to testify that he had cut his hand the day of the murder. Pruett’s blood on a prison shirt, he testified, was because of an injury he got lifting weights.

“I think when people look at the whole picture … you can see what the jury saw and review that, and it makes for a very compelling case against Mr. Pruett,” Choate told The Texas Tribune on Monday.

But Pruett’s lawyers fought his execution until the last hour. In his final appeal, he sued in federal court, claiming recent refusals by the trial court and prosecution to proceed with further DNA testing violated his due process rights.

The DNA evidence that was tested and deemed inconclusive by Texas’ high appellate court needs more examination, Pruett argued in court filings, because a partial female profile had been found on the murder weapon in its latest examination. He argued further testing could identify a culprit, but the state argued the weapon was likely contaminated by people on the defense team and journalists who have handled it without gloves since the trial.

“The prosecution and the state courts have stood in the way of identifying the actual murderer,”wrote Pruett’s attorney, David Dow, in his filing.

Three levels of federal courts denied this request, with the U.S. Supreme Court issuing its denial around 5:15 p.m.

While Pruett awaited his execution, the prison guard community remembered Nagle. Nagle was the Beeville president of Texas’ prison guard union, and he uttered his last public words when he went to Austin the same month of his murder to speak of dangerous understaffing in prisons, saying somebody was going to have to die before the state realized it had a problem, according to Lance Lowry, president of the union’s Huntsville chapter.

Lowry said the ratio of prisoners to guards is still dangerously low today, and it was one of the causes of Nagle’s death.

“He died alone … he was killed in a room full of inmates,” he said. “Unfortunately, I expect to see more Daniel Nagles in the future here, and that scares me.”

https://www.texastribune.org/2017/10/12/texas-executes-robert-pruett-who-insisted-innocence-prison-guards-murd/

Robert Pruett Videos

Robert Pruett FAQ

Robert Pruett Execution

Robert Pruett was executed in 2017 by lethal injection in Texas

Erin Caffey

erin caffey

Erin Caffey was fifteen years old when she planned the murders of her father, mother and two brothers. In the end her father would be the only one to survive. Erin Caffey was sentenced to life in prison

Make Sure To Check Out Erin Caffey Main Page

Erin Caffey – Teen Plans Family Murder

On March 1, 2008, most of the deeply religious Caffey family, of Emory, Texas, was slaughtered in the dead of night with .22 caliber bullets and swords before their humble, cabin-style home was burned to the ground.

The patriarch, Terry Caffey, lived to tell what he heard that night, and the perpetrators shocked even seasoned investigators, according to “Killer Couples” on Oxygen.

The Caffeys — Terry and his wife, Penny, their two young sons, Tyler and Matthew, and 16-year-old Erin — lived to serve in their church. All of them played instruments, and Erin used to sing so passionately during services that she would sometimes break down in tears, according to Texas Monthly.

The kids were homeschooled, Terry was training to be a minister, and a Bible verse was etched into a wooden sign hanging above their driveway. However, in fall 2008, Erin found something that began to draw her interest away from godly things: She fell in love with 18-year-old Charlie Wilkinson

Wilkinson was a somewhat rough-and-tumble, outdoors type, and when he first ran into Erin Caffey at her part-time job serving at Sonic, roller skates and all, sparks flew. In December that year, Erin asked her parents to return to public school and, after they agreed, she and Wilkinson became inseparable, according to Texas Monthly.

Wilkinson gave her a promise ring that belonged to his grandmother and told his friends they would marry, according to “Killer Couples.” Terry and Penny were fine with the relationship until Erin’s grades started to slip and they took a closer look at Wilkinson, not liking what they found on his Myspace page. Then, Erin Caffey broke her “phone curfew” and in February 2008, they put their foot down and told Erin that she needed to break up with Wilkinson.

Erin’s parents believed she appeared to have accepted their decision. Wilkinson, however, was openly heartbroken and angry, according to “Killer Couples.” And friends of Erin told Texas Monthly that the same month, Erin started talking about killing her parents. It was the only way they could be together, she seemed to believe.

Although accounts still differ on who was the mastermind — Terry refuses to believe it was his daughter’s idea — a hideous plot was soon hatched.

Sometime late in the night of Feb. 28, 2008, or early on March 1, Wilkinson and his friend, 22-year-old Charles Waid, stormed into the Caffey home while Erin and Waid’s girlfriend, Bobbi Johnson, waited outside in the car.

Wilkinson would later tell investigators that he warned Erin that he would have to kill her younger brothers in order to leave no witnesses.

“I don’t care… just do what you gotta do,” she allegedly said, according to “Killer Couples.”

Inside, Wilkinson fired away with a .22 pistol in Terry and Penny’s room. Terry took five bullets and watched his wife die. When the gun jammed, Waid broke out a samurai-style sword and finished Penny off with it, nearly severing her head, according to Texas Monthly.

The two then went upstairs and murdered young Tyler and Matthew. One was shot in the face and the second was killed with a sword, according to Texas Monthly.

Wilkinson and Waid then ransacked the house for valuables — Wilkinson had allegedly promised Waid $2,000 that was stashed away — and set fire to the place with lighter fluid.

As his home burned around him, Terry awoke and made the unimaginable decision to crawl out a window for help. There was nothing he could do for his family at that point. He made an hour-long crawl to his nearest neighbor’s home to call for help and soon authorities were on their way.

After emergency surgery, Terry was stable enough to talk, and he told sheriff’s deputies that he was certain one of the attackers was Wilkinson. He recognized his voice, according to “Killer Couples.”

When authorities tracked down Wilkinson and brought him in for questioning, they also found Erin in the trailer where he was staying. She appeared to be in shock and claimed she had been kidnapped. Investigators were putting the case together quickly, however. Everyone knew everyone in Emory, so Waid and Johnson were also rounded up almost immediately.

Erin’s story fell apart while she was on her way to see her dad in a hospital in nearby Tyler, along with her grandparents and sheriff’s deputies. They received a call en route that Erin Caffey was now a suspect and cuffed her. Erin broke down in tears and assured her grandparents that she had nothing to do with the slaughter of her family, according to Texas Monthly.

Less than 24 hours after authorities responded, the Caffey home was a smoldering pile and all four suspects were in custody and talking.

Wilkinson told investigators that he had initially encouraged Erin to run away from home, but she told him, “No … I want my mom and dad killed,” according to police interview audio featured on “Killer Couples.”

All four were charged with three counts of capital murder, and prosecutors initially sought the death penalty against Wilkinson and Waid. Terry stepped in, however, still believing in the forgiveness his faith taught him, and asked prosecutors to take the death penalty off the table, according to “Killer Couples.”

All four eventually pleaded guilty. Wilkinson and Waid were given life without the possibility of parole; Johnson got 40 years. Erin was not sentenced to life without parole; she will be eligible after 25 years of her life sentence, according to “Killer Couples.”

Terry maintained a relationship with his daughter for years after the massacre. It wasn’t easy at first — in fact, he contemplated suicide briefly, according to Texas Monthly. However, he still visits Erin in prison in Greenville, according to ABC News.

Erin Caffey – Dad Wants Daughter In Triple Murder To Go Home

16 year old Erin Caffey made her first appearance before a Rains County Judge Monday.

Erin Caffey and three co-defendants are all accused of killing her mother Penny Caffey and her brothers Matthew and Tyler Caffey, before setting the family’s house on fire in Emory. Erin Caffey’s father Terry was shot several times in the attack, but survived. Ironically, he was one of those in court asking for Erin to be allowed to come back home.

Before the judge issued a gag order, defense attorneys confirmed that Terry Caffey testified on his daughter’s behalf, asking that she be allowed to go home with him rather than staying in juvenile custody in Hunt County. Erin’s grandmother also testified for her, but neither testimony would sway the judge, who ordered Erin Caffey to continue to be held another 15 business days.

Another issue is still pending in the case – whether she will be tried as an adult.  KLTV caught up with both the prosecution and the defense after the hearing.

“She’s facing a certification hearing. It’s not ready to go yet. The psychologist must evaluate her and her probation officer must work on her family report on her,” said William Howard McDowell, Erin’s defense attorney.

“We have received the initial case from the Rains County Sheriff’s Department, however the case is still under investigation there are additional things to be done,” said Rains County Attorney Robert Vititow.

As for the other defendants, they were all indicted Monday morning by a Rains County Grand Jury. Bobbi Gale Johnson, Charles Waid, and Charlie Wilkinson were each indicted for capital murder for the deaths of Penny, Matthew, and Tyler Caffey

One of them also faces a new charge. Wilkinson, Erin’s boyfriend, was also indicted for attempted escape. According to the indictment he dug a hole in the wall of his cell at the Rains County Jail on March 25th.

Rains County has requested the assistance of the Attorney General’s office. They are already there, and Lisa Tanner, who specializes in capital murder cases, is there to help. They will be there for the entirety of all four trials.

https://www.kltv.com/story/8132265/dad-wants-daughter-in-triple-murder-to-go-home/

Erin Caffey – Tragic Moment Father Realizes Teen Daughter Killed Entire Family

Terry Caffey’s daughter Erin Caffey made international headlines when she murdered her mother and two young brothers back in 2008.Severely injured from five gunshots, Mr Caffey was having his first interview with police after the incident when they had to inform him of the dark truth.

“I guess the first thing I want to know is how my daughter is … they won’t tell me a whole lot and they won’t let me watch the news,” Terry can be heard telling police officers.“She’s doing fine,” replied Deputy Fischer.He then asks: “I don’t want to know a whole lot of detail but…oh god…what kind of involvement did she…”Deputy Fischer replies: “Her involvement was great.”

At hearing this, Terry can be heard sobbing, as he realises his family’s tragedy was caused by his own daughter.The scene was screened in the first episode of Piers Morgan’s documentary Killer Women which aired on Wednesday in England.One of the incidents covered in the series is the Texas Family Murders – when 16-year-old Erin Caffey masterminded the execution of her entire family when they demanded she break up with her boyfriend, Charlie Wilkinson.A teenage choirgirl at the time, Erin has now been interviewed by Piers from prison for the series, and can even be seen giving him a rendition of Amazing Grace in a chilling scene in the trailer.Also in the episode, Piers takes father Terry back to the scene of the crime, now just a clearing in the woods, and asks him to recreate what happened there.

n part of his re-enactment, Terry describes how he tried to save his family, who had been shot, attacked with a samurai sword and their house set on fire.”I manage to get to my feet…I’m trying to get out the bedroom door to get upstairs to my children, but by this time the house is totally engulfed, and I’m hit by a wall of flames and forced back into the bedroom … and there’s Penny [his wife] laying there and when I saw her I immediately knew she was gone, because not only did they come in and shoot but he also came with this samurai-type sword and she would nearly be decapitated.”“My mind is thinking, if I die here I might not be able to tell who did this, I’ve got to stay alive long enough to identify who did this.”Erin Caffey is now 24 and is serving two life sentences in prison. She will be eligible for parole in 30 years.

https://www.nowtolove.co.nz/news/real-life/tragic-moment-father-realises-his-daughter-killed-entire-family-4623

Erin Caffey Videos