‘Tourniquet Killer’ gets execution date

He was a musician. A hardworking father. A charismatic charmer. But now, he’s just a convicted killer who has a date with death.

Houston’s so-called “Tourniquet Killer” — a 55-year-old who admitted to raping and killing young Hispanic women in Harris County for nearly a decade — is slated for execution this fall.

Anthony Allen Shore terrorized the county in the 1980s and 1990s, leaving behind a trail of young victims in a gruesome set of crimes marked by the killer’s use of handmade tourniquets.

He was found guilty in 2004. On Thursday state District Judge Maria T. Jackson set his execution for Oct. 18. He is the only inmate from Harris County with a death date on the calendar.

“There’s a reason we have the death penalty in Texas and Anthony Shore is a poster child for why,” said Andy Kahan, Houston’s victim advocate.

One final long-shot plea for consideration is pending before the U.S. Supreme Court.

“I would certainly say that the odds are not in our favor,” said his attorney, K. Knox Nunnally, of Houston. “But we believe that we have a strong argument.”

The brutal killings went unsolved for nearly two decades until Shore was arrested for molesting two girls — both of whom were relatives — and a

DNA breakthrough cracked the cold cases.

As a convicted sex offender, Shore’s DNA went on file. And after testing cold case evidence, investigators realized that Shore’s sample matched a speck recovered from underneath the fingernails of a dead woman. When police confronted Shore with the newfound connection to the killing, the former telephone technician calmly confessed to four crimes, starting with the slaying of 14-year-old Laurie Tremblay in 1986.

Six years later, he raped and murdered 21-year-old Maria del Carmen Estrada before leaving her naked body in the drivethrough of a Spring Branch Dairy Queen.

In 1994, he killed 9-year-old Diana Rebollar. When he snatched her, his youngest victim was on the way to the store to buy sugar so her mom could make lemonade.

The following year, Shore killed 16-year-old Dana Sanchez, who vanished while hitchhiking to her boyfriend’s house in north Houston.

All of the victims were raped and tortured before he strangled them with handmade tourniquets.

‘True serial killer’

At the time of his 2003 arrest in the slayings, Shore was still on probation for the earlier molestations.

Shore is a “true serial killer, a person deserving of the ultimate punishment,” Harris County District Attorney Kim Ogg said in a statement Thursday. “His crimes were predatory, and his victims the most vulnerable in society — women and children. For his brutal acts, the death penalty is appropriate.”

Before he was sentenced in 2004, Shore stunned listeners in court by requesting the death penalty, and a Harris County jury quickly complied.

Prosecutors at the time chalked his bizarre request up to a deranged mind and psychopathic narcissism.

Now, Shore’s lawyers are still fighting for their client’s life.

Nunnally, who’s represented Shore as appointed pro bono counsel through the federal appeals process, said there’s currently a petition for a writ of certiorari pending in the U.S. Supreme Court. If granted, that could require a lower court to reconsider a request for appeal.

Brain damage discovered

The crux of the appeal is that Shore has previously unrealized brain damage.

“In the course of our appeal we discovered he suffered a traumatic brain injury prior to the times he committed the crimes he was accused of,” Nunnally said. “That possibly could have affected his reasoning and determination of what is right or wrong.”

His lawyers aren’t seeking to exonerate him, though.

“This is not a guilty/innocent argument,” Nunnally said. “This is a death/life-in-prison argument.” Shore’s scheduled execution comes amid a dip in the use of capital punishment both statewide and across the nation. So far, Texas has executed four offenders this year, and six more — including Shore — are scheduled to die before the year’s end.

“This will be the first execution date out of Harris County this year and leaving aside any particulars about his case, we’re seeing a general downward trend in both executions and death sentences,” said Kristin Houle, executive director of the Texas Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty. “But it’s always disappointing to see new dates added to the list.”