HUNTSVILLE, Texas (AP) — A Texas man convicted of fatally stabbing and decapitating three young children in a squalid, windowless apartment in 2003 was executed Thursday night, hours after Oklahoma put another man to death.
John Allen Rubio, 46, was pronounced dead at 6:47 p.m. after a lethal injection at Huntsville State Prison. The killings The life of the little girl and her two young children so shook the town of Brownsville, on the US border with Mexico, that the building was later demolished and the land transformed into a community park and garden.
After a spiritual advisor briefly prayed for him, Rubio thanked his friends and family for their “love and understanding” and said he was “not the same person I once was.” He thanked prison staff for teaching him how to find God and also expressed his love for his common-law wife, Angela Camacho, who is serving a life sentence for her role in the murders.
“I want to say I’m sorry to my wife’s family,” he said. “I can’t change the past but I can tell you that my life is going to be over. But that won’t make you happy.”
“I will soon be with my children,” he added. “I am ready to go to heaven to be with my lord and savior.”
As the lethal dose of the sedative pentobarbital began to take effect, Rubio took three breaths and began what sounded like snoring. Afterwards, all movement stopped and a doctor pronounced him dead 21 minutes after the injection began.
Earlier Thursday, James Pavatt, 73, received a lethal injection at an Oklahoma prison for fatal shot of his girlfriend’s ex-husband in 2001. The victim was killed when he arrived to pick up his two young children before Thanksgiving.
Thursday’s executions were the 36th and 37th this year, with the United States on track to exceed 40 executions for the second year in a row. a rhythm carried by Florida.
The death penalty has attracted renewed interest since the failure of the execution of Christine Pike in Tennessee in September. And last week, California Governor Gavin Newsom announced that he commute hundreds of death sentences before leaving office in January — which experts say would be the largest mass clemency in American history.
Texas victims included 2-month-old girl
Rubio and Camacho were accused of killing Julissa Quesada, 3, John E. Rubio, 14 months, and Mary Jane Rubio, 2 months, in the apartment they shared in Brownsville. Camacho received a life sentence after pleading guilty.
An appeals court overturned Rubio’s first capital murder conviction, ruling that Camacho’s statements were improperly admitted into evidence at his trial. At his second trial, Rubio again pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity, but was again found guilty and sentenced to death.
According to court records, Rubio was not the biological father of the two older children, but he treated them as his own.
On several occasions, Rubio claimed that the children were possessed and that he was the “chosen one” destined to save the world.
Defense experts diagnosed him with paranoid schizophrenia, a conclusion rejected by prosecution experts. Defense experts also testified that his childhood — marked by violence at home, “toxic” parents, drug use and prostitution — affected him developmentally.
Oklahoma advertising man killed in garage
When Oklahoma inmate Pavatt was asked if he had any last words before his execution, he shook his head no. As a chaplain read from the Bible, Pavatt appeared to speak words that could not be heard.
Pavatt was convicted of first-degree murder and conspiracy to commit murder in the killing of Rob Andrew, a 39-year-old advertising executive. Pavatt attended the same church as the Andrew family and had an affair with Rob Andrew’s wife, Brenda Andrew. She was convicted in a separate trial and is the only woman currently on Oklahoma’s death row.
Weeks before the shooting, Rob Andrew told police that someone was trying to kill him after his car’s brake lines were cut. Brenda Andrew told police after her husband’s death that masked intruders shot him in the arm and shot him.
Pavatt and Brenda Andrew fled to Mexico with her two children after the shooting and were arrested three months later while returning to the United States.
Also Thursday, former Oklahoma death row inmate Richard Glossip pleaded guilty to a lesser charge of being an accomplice to a murder that occurred in 1997 and awaits sentencing in December. Glossip, who had been on the verge of execution three times, was released on bail in May after nearly 30 years in prison. He was awaiting a retrial after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned his conviction.
____
Stengle reported from McAlester, Oklahoma.
Gn usa
