Execution for ‘Tourniquet Killer’ stopped, for now

HUNTSVILLE, Texas — A judge Wednesday halted the scheduled execution of a man known as the Houston area’s “Tourniquet Killer” hours before it was to be carried out.

Anthony Allen Shore was to be put to death Wednesday evening for the killings of four female victims, but the judge withdrew the execution warrant. The judge was responding to a request from prosecutors who want to further investigate an alleged scheme in which Shore said another death row inmate asked him to confess to his crime.

Shore’s execution is now set for Jan. 18.

Montgomery County District Attorney Bret Ligon has said that investigators from his office spoke with Shore on Tuesday, and he told them inmate Larry Swearingen asked him to take the blame for the 1998 killing of 19-year-old Melissa Trotter.

Swearingen was convicted of her slaying and is scheduled to be executed for it Nov. 16.

Ligon said Shore told the investigators that he decided to expose the scheme and not cooperate with Swearingen. The prosecutor said Swearingen tried a similar scheme before his trial for Trotter’s killing.

Shore confessed to killing four female victims from 1986 to 1995 after a tiny particle collected from under the fingernail of 21-year-old Maria del Carmen Estrada, whose body was dumped in a Houston Dairy Queen’s drive-thru lane, was matched to his DNA.

The 55-year-old Shore would be the 21st inmate given a lethal injection this year in the U.S., one more than the total number put to death in 2016.