Serial killer Bible executed
Lawyers for aging Houston man worried his injection process would be too cruel, painful
Danny Paul Bible, who was accused of four killings and at least nine rapes, is executed for a 1979 rape and murder in Houston that went unsolved for two decades until he confessed.
HUNTSVILLE — Shaking from Parkinson’s tremors, voice quavering as he muttered “it hurts,” Houston serial killer Danny Bible took his last gasping breaths on the gurney in Huntsville before closing one eye, snoring and falling forever silent.
He offered no final statement Wednesday night, but protesters outside shouted angrily into a megaphone, defending the aging four-time killer.
Afterward, in a quiet conference room above the warden’s office, the family of one of Bible’s victims offered a final word.
“Danny Paul Bible is as vile and evil a person that has ever drawn breath,” said Larry Lance, whose sister fell prey to Bible’s wrath in 1983. “We are glad to have witnessed him draw his last breath. I know that he will burn in hell for eternity.”
Despite concerns about the difficulty of finding a vein on the ailing murderer, the lethal injection team hooked up IV lines in under 15 minutes. After the lethal dose started at 6:17 p.m., Bible started breathing heavily before saying it “burned.” He stopped moving three minutes later and was pronounced dead at 6:32 p.m. He was the seventh killer to die in Huntsville this year.
Bible was sent to death row in 2003 after zigzagging across the country in a crime spree for the better part of 20 years. Though he murdered two other women and a baby, raped five young relatives and claimed an assortment of other violent crimes, it was his first killing — back in 1979 — that sent him to the death chamber.
That May, Inez Deaton walked next door to use the phone and vanished, like the smoke from her
killer’s cigarette.
Days later, a passerby found her half-clothed body on the slope of Greens Bayou. The 20-year-old mother had been stabbed 11 times with an ice pick, then posed by the water like a broken mannequin.
Over the next two decades, leads went stale and the case grew cold. Then, in 1998, police picked up a man in Florida.
In exchange for a pack of Winstons and the promise of avoiding the death chamber, Bible confessed to the crime. Fears abated
But despite the detective’s premature promise, Bible was sentenced to die — an outcome he fought up to the last minute.
In the weeks leading up to his execution, his defense team launched a flurry of legal claims, arguing that the aging prisoner might be too sick to execute. Instead, they said, he should die by firing squad or nitrogen gas. In the end, the lethal injection team found viable veins in Bible’s hands.
The so-called ice pick killer had a “galaxy of medical issues” that raised the possibility of a prolonged and painful lethal injection process his lawyers argued would violate the Eighth Amendment’s ban on cruel and unusual punishment.
“Texas will almost certainly join Alabama and Ohio and add itself to the unconscionable list of botched executions in America,” his attorney Jeremy Schepers predicted beforehand.
Earlier this year, an execution gone awry in Alabama garnered attention after a lethal injection team spent hours poking Doyle Hamm’s arms, legs and groin to find a usable vein before ultimately giving up as the midnight deadline approached. Previously, Ohio saw two similarly botched procedures.
But Texas hasn’t had any of those problems, the state argued in its response, pointing to its long history of successful executions and status as the “most prolific death penalty state.”
Bible’s attorneys Wednesday took his case all the way to the Supreme Court. Denying his challenge, they argued, could shut the door on any other similar claims from ailing prisoners who could suffer botched executions. But the high court denied his plea just after 5:30 p.m.
A former drifter, Bible’s lengthy string of violence dates back to at least 1979, when a passerby found Deaton’s bruised and bloodied body.
Afterward, Bible fled to Montana, where 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.
Returning to Texas, he landed a job in the town of Weatherford, west of Fort Worth. There, in 1983, he murdered his sister-in-law Tracy Powers and her 4month-old son. He stabbed them, stuffed them in garbage bags and dumped them in a field. Then he killed Powers’ roommate, Pam Hudgins, and left her body hanging from a roadside fence. Her brother came to witness the killer’s execution. Back in custody
Following the slayings, Bible fled to Montana, where he kidnapped a woman and raped an 11year-old girl.
He was caught in 1984 and sentenced to 25 years for Hudgins’ murder — then released on parole eight years later, only to repeatedly rape and molest five younger relatives in the back of a converted bus.
Then he moved to Louisiana and in 1998 forced his way into Tera Robinson’s motel room, where he tore off her clothes and raped her. When he couldn’t maintain an erection, he became enraged, binding and gagging the woman before stuffing her in a duffel bag.
She managed to break free and call for help.
Police picked Bible up in Florida and brought him back to Louisiana, where he readily admitted to the rape.
“Then he said, ‘Can you get me a Bible and pack of cigarettes? I’ll talk to you in the morning,’” Detective Randy Walker told reporters at the time. “The next morning, he said, ‘I’m ready to tell y’all some of it.’”
Despite the promise to take execution off the table in exchange for a confession, Bible was sentenced to death when he was brought back to Texas. It took the jury just three hours to decide his fate.
Weeks after his loss in court, Bible narrowly escaped death during a headon collision as prison guards in July 2003 drove him to death row. The officer behind the wheel, 40year-old John Bennett, died. Bible ended up in a wheelchair.
The crash became a centerpiece of his years of appeals, as lawyers repeatedly argued that he was no longer a future danger — one of the requirements for a death sentence in Texas.
The Lone Star State has now executed seven men this year, including another Houston serial killer, Anthony Shore. There are seven other death dates on the calendar in Texas.