Ice pick killer has execution date set
Clemency is only remaining option for quadruple murderer
Everywhere he went, Danny Bible left behind chaos and carnage.
Slayings in North Texas. Kidnapping in Montana. Robbery in Houston. Rape in Louisiana.
Once, he took an ax to his girlfriend’s car because he didn’t like her haircut. Another time he set a woman’s car on fire.
But now — almost 40 years after the gruesome crime that landed him on death row — Bible is set to meet the state’s harshest punishment.
In a court hearing early Monday, a Harris County district judge signed a June 27 death warrant for the 66-year-old quadruple killer who is now in a wheelchair.
“Some criminals’ actions are so heinous, they earn the label ‘worst of the worst,’ ” Harris County District Attorney Kim Ogg said in a statement Monday. “The jury who listened to the facts and saw the evidence of the crimes Danny Bible committed clearly reached that conclusion by sentencing him to death.”
His attorney, Margaret Schmucker, said the death date has been a long time coming.
“It was not an unexpected event today,” she said. “I do think it’s unfortunate that the state of Texas is going to execute someone who is so little future danger that he can’t even get out of a wheelchair.”
A former drifter, Bible has a lengthy string of violence that dates back to at least 1979. In May of that year, a passer-by found the bloodied, half-naked body of Inez Deaton along the slope of a Houston bayou.
The 20-year-old was covered in bruises and had been stabbed 11 times with an ice pick before her killer posed her corpse by the water, according to court records.
The married mother of a 2-yearold had disappeared days earlier, when she stopped at Bible’s home to use the phone. No one ever saw her alive again.
For nearly two decades, Deaton’s slaying went unsolved. In the meantime, Bible crisscrossed the country and created a chain of violence.
Immediately after the Houston killing, Bible fled to Wyoming and Montana. While there, he terrorized his new girlfriend, once punching her face so hard she needed stitches, and another time dousing her car with gasoline before setting it ablaze.
After that relationship, he came back to Texas, where he landed a job in Weatherford, west of Fort Worth. There, in 1983, he murdered his sister-in-law Tracy Powers and her infant son Justin. Then, he killed Powers’ roommate, Pam Hudgins, and left her body hanging from a roadside fence.
Following the slayings, he fled to Montana where he kidnapped a woman and raped an 11-year-old girl.
Eventually, he was caught and in 1984 he pleaded guilty to Hudgins’ murder. He was sentenced to 25 years for the killing and 20 years for a Harris County robbery, according to court records.
He was released on parole after just eight years.
While still under supervision he repeatedly raped and molested five younger relatives, including a 5year-old. He sexually assaulted the girls in the back of a converted bus, they later testified, and even offered to pay a 12-year-old to have his baby.
He moved to Louisiana, and in 1998 he forced his way into Tera Robinson’s motel room, then tore off her clothes and raped her. At one point, he became enraged, binding and gagging the woman before stuffing her in a duffel bag.
She managed to break free and call for help.
Bible fled to Florida, where he was later arrested and brought back to Louisiana.
Bible was sentenced to life without parole in Louisiana and in 2003 a Harris County jury sentenced him to death in Deaton’s slaying after just three hours of deliberation. “I think it’s wonderful,” his cousin Wynona Bible — Deaton’s best friend — said after the sentencing. “Justice was done for Inez today.”
Weeks after his loss in court, Bible narrowly escaped death during a head-on collision as prison guards drove him to death row in July 2003. The officer behind the wheel, 40-year-old John Bennett, died after the wreck on U.S. Highway 190 near Polunsky Unit.
Although Bible survived, he spent months in the hospital, requiring multiple surgeries and ultimately ending up in a wheelchair due to lasting nerve damage in his left leg, according to appellate court filings.
The extent of his injuries formed a key part of his later appeals, when his attorney argued that he couldn’t be a future danger in his deteriorating condition.
Over the course of his nearly 20 years of appeals, Bible also challenged
the constitutionality of Texas’ death penalty, raised claims about alleged bias in jury selection and argued bad lawyering earlier in the case when his attorney failed to object when prosecutors re-enacted a rape in the courtroom.
The U.S. Supreme Court turned down his appeals in 2016.
On Monday, Bible appeared in the 351st State District Court in Harris County for a short hearing, according to the Harris County District Attorney’s Office. A judge signed off on the execution order and issued a death warrant.
There are no other pending appeals, according to his attorney.
“There’s nothing more I can do in the courts for him — but obviously there’s a clemency process,” she said. “That’s really all there is.”
The Lone Star State has already seen three executions this year, including another Houston serial killer, Anthony Shore. Aside from Bible’s, there are three more death dates on the calendar in Texas.