Serial killer gets a stay
Houston murderer wins reprieve after exposing plan of false confession
Notorious Houston serial killer Anthony Shore won a stay Wednesday, hours before his scheduled execution, after he agreed to tell prosecutors about other murders he may have committed and divulged plans to falsely confess to one he didn’t.
The last-minute push for the Tourniquet Killer’s reprieve came after the condemned man revealed that fellow death row inmate Larry Swearingen begged him to take responsibility for the 1998 Montgomery County slaying of college student Melissa Trotter, according to prosecutors.
Instead, Shore came forward and confessed to the plot.
The revelation sparked a flurry of legal machinations as Montgomery County prosecutors fired off a letter Monday asking the governor to halt the execution. Instead, state District Court Judge Maria Jackson approved resetting the killer’s date with death in response to a request from Harris County prosecutors.
Now, the former tow truck driver is slated to die by lethal injection in Huntsville on Jan. 18, the soonest date legally available.
Sitting in a holding cell outside the execution
chamber, Shore showed little emotion upon hearing of the court’s decision, according to Texas Department of Criminal Justice spokesman Jason Clark.
“If this was my day, God’s will be done,” he told Clark. “He gave me another day.”
Prosecutors made clear justice will be served in Huntsville.
“Anthony Shore is a serial killer,” Harris County District Attorney Kim Ogg said in a statement. “A Harris County jury said he deserves to die.”
Even Shore’s family hopes the end is near.
“It is frustrating,” said his youngest daughter, Tiffany Hall. “He can only avoid the inevitable for so long.”
Plans uncovered in July
Shore confessed to killing four young women and raping another in a gruesome string of strangulations that shook the Houston area over a nine-year period starting in 1986. But his family told the Chronicle this week that they believe he may be responsible for other slayings.
In recent weeks, Shore refused to discuss the Trotter murder with authorities but said he would answer written questions from the Harris County DA’s office “regarding his commission of other murders — on the condition that his responses would be revealed by his attorney after his execution,” according to Montgomery County DA Brett Ligon’s letter to Gov. Greg Abbott
Ligon said he is “absolutely certain” of Swearingen’s guilt in the Trotter case.
“Permitting Shore to claim responsibility for that crime after his execution would leave a cloud over the judicial proceedings in Swearingen’s case,” he wrote.
Swearingen is set to be executed Nov. 16.
Officials first got wind of the killers’ plans back in July, when Harris County prosecutors oversaw a search of Shore’s cell in anticipation of a last-minute appeal centered around mental health claims.
But what they uncovered didn’t relate to Shore’s case; it stemmed from Swearingen’s.
In a folder, prosecutors found about 10 items pertaining to Trotter’s death, including everything from photos to a December 1998 calendar to a hand-drawn map. It looked more like Swearingen’s writing than Shore’s, but Montgomery County prosecutors immediately launched an investigation.
In early September, Shore’s attorney, K. Knox Nunnally, said his client would answer questions about other killings but wouldn’t take responsibility for the Trotter slaying. The materials in his cell, he said, came either from Swearingen or from public sources.
A few weeks later, Nunnally said that Shore was no longer willing to confirm he’d gotten materials from Swearingen. Not long after, a death row visitor told investigators that Shore had confessed in a letter to Trotter’s death and said he wouldn’t let Swearingen be executed for the crime.
Then about 6 p.m. Tuesday — 24 hours before his scheduled execution — Shore admitted the Trotter confession plan was a farce, saying he’d become friends with Swearingen and agreed to try exonerating him as a favor, according to a release from Montgomery County prosecutors. He admitted Swearingen had allegedly given him the damning map to locations containing more physical evidence from the Trotter killing.
First thing Wednesday morning, investigators swarmed a field in the Sam Houston National Forest looking for evidence based on the new revelations. It’s not clear if they found anything.
“I’m sad for the family of the victims of Anthony Shore because they may have to be disappointed for a brief period of time while we sort these details out,” Ligon said. “My heart goes out to them.”
‘Plotting against the system’
Sandy Trotter, who has waited nearly 20 years to see her daughter’s killer punished, concurred.
“I feel for those victims’ families,” she said. “It’s just beyond words.”
The grieving mother also struck out at the killers.
“I think it’s ridiculous that these inmates are plotting against the judicial system together,” she said.
If Swearingen’s Nov. 16 execution date is called off in light of the abandoned scheme with Shore, it will be the state’s eighth thwarted attempt to end his life.
Montgomery County’s only death row inmate, the Willis man was convicted of raping the 19-year-old college student before strangling her with pantyhose and dumping her body in the Sam Houston National Forest.
Since then, prosecutors have repeatedly asked for execution dates — four of which a judge approved — only to have their efforts derailed by dogged appeals surrounding bids for DNA testing.
“We agree with the Montgomery County District Attorney’s Office that the governor should reprieve Anthony Shore so that his involvement in the Trotter case can be examined,” Swearingen’s attorney, James Rytting, said Wednesday.
He expressed hope that a stay could expose Shore’s “potential involvement in the Trotter case, but also in other possible murders since he is a serial killer and there may be other victims out there.”
Shore’s lawyers did not return requests for comment.
Other victims?
Even before officials uncovered the plot, Shore’s own family voiced concerns of a last-minute confession.
“He’s good at keeping things hidden,” his sister Laurel Scheel said earlier this month.
Gina Shore, another sister, also speculated about the possibility of additional victims.
“I know in my heart without a doubt that there are more,” she said. “There had to have been other girls.”
As far back as July, Shore hinted to his family that the October execution wouldn’t go through as planned.
“Just a quick note to let you know that my execution is scheduled for Oct. 18, 2017,” he wrote his father in a letter shared with the Chronicle. “I will likely get a stay, but ya’ just never know. I’d prefer to live a bit longer but am ready if it’s God’s will.”
Then on Tuesday, Shore dropped more hints about a different outcome when his youngest sister paid him a visit.
“He said that there was a possibility that he wouldn’t go today,” Scheel said Wednesday morning. “But I didn’t ask him why — I didn’t want to empower him.”
The former telephone technician was convicted in 2004 of raping and murdering Maria del Carmen Estrada and begged the court for the death penalty when he appeared for sentencing.
Shore’s victims date back to at least 1986, when he slaughtered 14-year-old Laurie Tremblay. Six years later, he raped and murdered 21-year-old Estrada before leaving her naked body in the drive-through of a Spring Branch Dairy Queen.
In 1994, he killed 9-year-old Diana Rebollar. When her battered body was found, she was wearing only a black Halloween T-shirt with a ligature twisted around her neck.
Less than a year later, he murdered 16-year-old Dana Sanchez, then called a local TV station to report a serial killer on the loose.
The cases went unsolved for nearly two decades. Shore was forced to register as a sex offender for molesting his two daughters, placing his DNA into a state registry. But it was another five years before authorities tested old evidence that allowed them to link Shore’s DNA to the Estrada cold case.
Fighting his fate
When they brought him in for questioning, Shore coolly confessed to a string of rapes and murders in the Harris County area.
But even though he asked for death at sentencing, the condemned killer has spent more than a decade fighting his fate.
In his final appeals rejected by courts earlier this month, Shore’s lawyers argued that brain damage from a 1981 car wreck rendered him morally inculpable, likening it to executing an intellectually disabled prisoner.
But a court disagreed, and shortly thereafter the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles slapped down his bid for clemency.