ONE OF LIFE’S BAD GUYS MONSTERS OF DEATH ROW
KEITH
Houts was one of the good guys. He might have been a police officer, but even the people he handed traffic fines to respected his warm smile and easy-going attitude. Until, that is, Keith met one of life’s bad guys – evil Mario Woodward, who riddled him with bullets for no good reason...
IF a person’s time on earth can be judged by the strength of his funeral congregation, Keith Houts lived a rich life indeed.
Thousands lined the streets of Birmingham, Alabama, to give the 30-year-old the send-off he deserved.
A procession of some 400 cars and motorcycles, many from Keith’s own Montgomery Police Department and other neighbouring forces, paid their respects.
As the local fire department stationed engines by the side of the road, the American flag hoisted high in the air on the vehicle’s ladders, hundreds of residents stood above highway bridges to see his body being laid to rest.
Keith had devoted his life to helping others. He’d served in Iraq, he helped the local community through his church, he’d even met his devoted wife Ashley while serving in the forces abroad.
But despite battling terrorist insurgents in the Middle East, he hadn’t banked on encountering Mario Woodward on the night of September 30, 2006.
During what was a routine traffic stop, Woodward pulled out a gun and shot Keith in the face, shattering his jaw and severing his spine. Then, as Keith lay prone on the ground, Woodward emptied his gun into his defenceless body in a sickening act of brutal punishment.
Yet Keith still didn’t know when he was beaten.
He fought for life for three days before, tragically, succumbing to his injuries.
And, as Keith lies in his cemetery resting place, Woodward now rots on Death Row, having been found guilty of murder in September 2008.
Touched
Hardest hit was Keith’s widow.
Addressing Woodward in court after learning he’d be sentenced to death, Ashley revealed: “There’s not a day goes by that I don’t have someone come and tell me how Keith touched their life.
“You’d be surprised how many people in this community come up and say, ‘He pulled over after work and changed my tyre,’ or, ‘He gave me a ticket but he smiled and was real nice when he did it’.
“Just different things. They say he brightened their day. This was a loss not just for our family but for the entire community.”
Speaking in 2007, Ashley added: “He made me who I am today.
“We were only married a year and three months but we made a lifetime of memories.
“Sometimes I want to call and tell him what happened in my day, but I can’t call.
“I know he holds a special place in the hearts of everyone he met.
“Women police officers say he was the one who always held the door. That was Keith, he was polite.
“I know what he meant to me, but it’s important to know what he meant to everyone else.”
Keith Houts was always earmarked for good things. He excelled at school and won a scholarship to Troy University on the back of his ‘leadership abilities’.
He studied criminal justice before joining the
Army Reserves with the 926th Engineer Brigade.
It was while on active duty in Iraq and Kuwait, between 2004 and 2005, that he met Ashley.
They returned to the US and Keith joined the Montgomery Police Department.
On September 30, 2006, he was cruising around town in his police car when he crossed paths with Mario Woodward.
This was a man with an extensive criminal record that involved firearms and possession of a large quantity of marijuana.
Court documents reveal: “Keith Houts was on patrol in a neighbourhood in north Montgomery and he conducted a traffic stop at approximately 12.30pm.
“Shonda Lattimore testified that she was sitting on her porch when she saw a police officer begin to execute a stop on a gray Impala
being driven by a black man wearing a red hat.
“Ms Lattimore testified that she saw the driver of the Impala reach down for something as the Impala and the police car, with its emergency lights on, passed by the end of her street, before they went out of sight.
“Soon after the cars were out of her sight, she heard four or five gunshots.
“During the traffic stop, officer Houts entered the license tag of the Impala into the mobile data terminal in his patrol car.
“His car was equipped with a video camera that recorded the events that occurred during the stop. The video recording was played for the jury.
“It showed Houts getting out of his patrol car and approaching the driver’s side door of the Impala.
“Just as officer Houts reached the door, the driver of the Impala fired a gun and shot him in the jaw.
“Medical testimony established that the bullet entered officer Houts’ neck and severed his spine, causing him to collapse instantly.
“The driver then reached his arm out of the vehicle and shot officer Houts four more times before fleeing the scene in the Impala.
“Though the dashboard camera captured the shooting on videotape, it did not reveal the identity of the assailant as officer Houts’ patrol car was positioned behind the Impala and because his attacker did not get out of the vehicle.”
Amazingly, Keith survived the shooting. But he never regained consciousness and, two days later, he died from his extensive injuries.
Woodward fled to Alabama. The car he’d been driving – which he’d borrowed from girlfriend Tiffany Surles – was later found burned out and abandoned.
Tiffany testified that Woodward confessed the crime to her, claiming he’d simply said, ‘I messed up’.
When Woodward was arrested a day later, following a shopping trip to Birmingham, he immediately blurted out, ‘What’s going on? I didn’t shoot anybody’ – even though he had been unprompted about any crime.
Prosecution files said: “The only inference the jury could have drawn was that the reason Mr Woodward knew he was being arrested for shooting someone was that he had, in fact, shot someone.”
Woodward denied his guilt – but the weight of evidence soon started stacking up against him.
In explosive courtroom testimony, the jury was told how Woodward had a history of killing – he had pleaded guilty to manslaughter some 18 years previously following the death of Janice Albert.
She had been gunned down by Woodward in 1990, when he was just a teenager.
Janice’s daughter, Jennifer – who was just six years old at the time – told the court: “I always just wanted to be in the same room as him.
Devastating
“When I learned of Keith Houts’ murder, I thought, ‘He’s gotten out and he’s done it again’.
“I think he should have stayed in jail.”
But there was one more sting in the tail for Woodward.
Having been found guilty by a jury, he was initially sentenced to serve life in prison.
Judge Truman Hobbs, however, disagreed.
On September 25, 2008, he implemented what in American justice is called an ‘override’ and ordered Woodward be put to death instead.
There were scenes of jubilation when the sentence was dished out. Keith’s sister, Lori Holsomback, said: “It’s just someone that you think you’re going to grow old with. He’s my older brother – he’s 17 months older.
“Then, in just one phone call, he was taken from me.
“When Woodward was given a life sentence, that was devastating.
“It said to me that his life was more valuable than my brother’s.
“But the override was like someone had stood up for my family. Someone had stood up for my brother and for the Montgomery Police Department and the state of Alabama and said, ‘ This isn’t right, this isn’t fair. He’s killed more than one person. He’s going to Death Row’.”
District attorney Ellen Brooks said: “I’m emotional simply because justice was done today and it’s been two years coming.’
Keith’s father took the dignified step of extending an olive branch to the killer’s family, speaking of his pain for Woodward’s own father, Dion.
Eddie Houts said: “I’m sorry for Mario’s father. We both lost our sons.
“I know he lost his a long time ago when he chose the street.
“Because of that decision, I lost my son.”