Man executed for killing young daughters
Former Dallas accountant’s request for an 11th-hour reprieve was denied
She begged him not to. “No, Daddy, please don’t, don’t do it,” 9-year-old Faith Battaglia screamed before bolting for the door.
But her father didn’t listen.
Instead, John Battaglia opened fire, gunning down Faith and her 6-year-old sister, Liberty, while their mother listened on the phone in horror.
“Merry f***ing Christmas,” he growled.
Then he started shooting again.
On Thursday, after nearly four hours of delays sparked by last-minute claims of dated injection drugs and botched executions, the 62-year-old Dallas man was put to death for his crimes.
Before his death at 9:40 p.m., Battaglia stared toward the viewing room to smile at his ex-wife — the mother of his slain children — and greet her by name.
“Hi, Mary Jean,” he said. “See y’all later. Go ahead please.”
He took 22 minutes to die, according to a Texas Department of Criminal Justice spokesman.
Battaglia’s was the third execution of the year, in Texas and across the nation. Last year, amid a longterm decline in capital punishment, Texas put to death seven prisoners, the most of any state.
In the months before his death, appellate attorneys zeroed in on claims surrounding the former accountant’s mental competency. His lawyers said he didn’t have a rational understanding of his execution. The state said that he did.
Then, just four hours before he was slated to die, Battaglia’s defense counsel
asked for a reprieve in light of freshly surfaced claims about the state’s last two lethal injections, including one where witnesses said the prisoner appeared to be jerking in pain, and another where the inmate said the drug burned.
“Oooh weee, I can feel that it does burn,” Houston serial killer Anthony Shore said as the lethal dosage began coursing through his veins during his Jan. 18 execution, witnessed by a Chronicle reporter.
Less than two weeks later, William Rayford grimaced and twitched on the gurney before he died, witnesses said.
“William raised the upper part of his body to about 30 degrees. He was shaking and looked at me as if he wanted to say something, as if in distress, as if asking for help,” witness Liliane Sticher wrote in an affidavit. “He was shaking. The upper part of his body was shaking.”
The Texas Department of Criminal Justice begged to differ.
“This is nothing more than legal maneuvering,” said spokesman Jason Clark, pointing out that both men received more than twice the lethal dose of death drugs and were pronounced dead after 13 minutes. “The executions took place without incident. To claim otherwise is not factual.”
The problem behind the execution drug issues, lawyers for the condemned Dallas man allege, is that the state’s supplies of the lethal barbiturate sodium pentobarbital are too old, and should have been tossed close to a year ago.
“It looks like Texas might have caused a botched execution by using substandard compounded drugs that they knew had passed their original beyond use date,” said Maya Foa, an expert who works with pharmaceutical companies on protecting medicines from misuse in executions. “They have systematically flouted the regulations on compounding, using secrecy to hide their activities, and potentially causing enormous suffering to prisoners.”
But federal courts did not agree.
Years of inflicting abuse
Years before the killings that sent him to death row in 2001, Battaglia had a troubled history with women.
He terrorized his first wife, following her, tapping her phone, blackmailing her and even landing in jail after throwing a rock through her car window, according to court records.
But after he beat the woman unconscious and dislocated her jaw, she left him and fled to Louisiana.
Battaglia started over, this time setting his sights on Mary Jean Pearl. The couple married in 1991 and Pearl gave birth to Faith in 1992 and Liberty in 1995.
The girls were young when Pearl filed for divorce. But on Christmas of 1999, the paperwork wasn’t yet final when Battaglia showed up at his ex’s house to take the girls to church. He got angry and beat the woman in front of her children — so she had him arrested and he ended up on probation, records show.
A little over a year later, around Easter 2001, Pearl got an obscenity-laced message on her phone.
Fed up, she called Battaglia’s probation officer, who had a warrant put out for his arrest.
He didn’t find out until May 2.
That evening, he called up his girls to make dinner plans. He said he wasn’t hungry because he might be arrested that night and wouldn’t see them for a while.
A short time later, Pearl dropped her daughters off at their father’s. Afterward, she drove over to a friend’s. When she arrived she found a message from her ex.
When she called back, Battaglia answered and put the call on speaker, saying the girls had something to ask.
“Mommy,” Faith said, “Why do you want Daddy to go to jail?”
Pearl pleaded with her ex, then heard her older girl begging — and screamed for her daughters to run.
Next, came the gunshots — and the obscene outburst.
The gunfire continued, and Pearl hung up and called 911.
Police found Faith with three gunshot wounds, including one to the back of the head and another that severed her spinal cord, according to court records.
Liberty was shot five times. Both girls were left face-down in puddles of blood.
Chilling message
Liberty had made it just 10 feet from the front door.
Authorities found multiple guns, and a chilling answering machine message left just after the murders.
“Good night my little babies. I hope you’re resting in a different place,” Battaglia said. “I wish that you had nothing to do with your mother. She was evil, vicious, stupid. You will be free of her.”
After the slaying, Battaglia went to a bar before stopping at a tattoo parlor — where he got inked with red roses to commemorate his daughters.