Denard Manns put to death in Huntsville, Texas

A New York parolee with an extensive criminal record was executed Thursday [Nov. 13, 208] night for robbing, raping and fatally shooting an Army medic at her apartment near Fort Hood.

"From Allah he came and from Allah he shall return," Denard Manns said from the death chamber gurney.

He criticized by name his trial attorneys for what he said was an unfair trial, criticized an appeals lawyer for "purposely bringing up claims that did not exist," and thanked another lawyer for taking on his appeal after he was supposed to be off the case.

Manns expressed love to friends and then said, "I'm ready for the transition."

He uttered what appeared to be a brief prayer 3 times and was pronounced dead at 6:24 p.m. CST, 10 minutes after the lethal drugs began to flow.

Manns, 42, who came to Texas after a 2nd prison sentence in New York for armed robbery, was condemned for the murder 10 years ago of Michelle Robson, 26.

Manns' appeals in the courts were exhausted and the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles, acting Wednesday on a petition filed by his lawyer, refused to commute his sentence to life in prison.

The former hair stylist and mural painter from Harlem in New York City insisted he had nothing to do with the 1998, attack on Robson, who lived a few doors down from where Manns was living with a half brother and a cousin at an apartment complex in Killeen in Central Texas.

Asked last week if he knew who committed the murder, Manns told The Associated Press from a tiny visiting cage outside death row: "That's not for me to discuss. Police get paid to ask those questions and find out. I would never tell them."

DNA and fingerprint evidence implicated Manns, who also was found with some of the slain woman's property, Murff Bledsoe, the Bell County prosecutor who handled the case, said.

"You don't forget death penalty cases," he said. "It was a very bad crime. ... There wasn't any evidence he knew her very well. There was no evidence they were friends."

Investigators believed Robson, from Newton, Iowa, at least recognized her killer because there was no indication of a break-in at the apartment where she lived with her husband, also a soldier stationed at Fort Hood. Clay Wellenstein had gone home for a Thanksgiving visit to his family in upstate New York when he learned of his wife's slaying.

He said he knew Manns only enough to say hello if they passed each other.

"I would like to know: Why?" Wellenstein, who had been married to Robson for less than a year, said this week. "And there's never going to be an answer to it."

Manns, he said, "should be strung out to hang and suffer."

Manns said DNA evidence tying him to the crime was wrong.

"I know for a fact they weren't going to give me a fair break anyway," he told the AP.

Robson was found dead in a bathtub, shot 5 times with a .22-caliber pistol.

Manns' cousin, Eric Williams, owned such a pistol, found a bullet on the floor in his room and turned the gun over to police after learning of his neighbor's death with a similar weapon. Tests showed at least one of the bullets recovered from the woman had been fired from the gun. Tests also showed Manns' fingerprint on the weapon. Other evidence showed Manns left a jacket belonging to Robson at the home of a friend the day her body was discovered and that he had a ring of Robson's.

Manns said he got the jacket from a friend and the jewelry belonging to the victim from a drug addict. He said he took the gun from some friends who were trying to shoot it, accounting for his prints.

Manns was arrested the following month and tried in 2002.

"He was a very unusual person," one of his trial lawyers, Frank Holbrook, recalled, noting Manns sometimes refused to go to court during jury selection.

"He was just bored with it," Holbrook said.

Then after his conviction, Manns again refused to appear in court at the punishment phase of the trial.

"He said he didn't want to," Holbrook said. "He was taking a nap."

Jurors who decided he should die learned he'd been indicted in 1992 for 15 counts of robbery in the Bronx, N.Y., where he was known as a subway bandit who preyed on commuters traveling alone. He pleaded guilty to two counts. He also had convictions in New York for disorderly conduct, criminal mischief, larceny, controlled substance possession and unauthorized use of a motor vehicle.

"I'm not no angel, far from an angel," Manns acknowledged from prison.

Manns was paroled in early 1998 after serving nearly 6 years of a 5- to 10-year term for armed robbery his 2nd prison term for armed robbery, then came to Texas.

Manns becomes the 17th condemned inmate to be put to death this year in Texas, and the 422nd overall since the state resumed capital punishment on December 7, 1982. Manns becomes the 183rd condemned inmate to be put to death in Texas since Rick Perry became Governor in 2001.

3 more executions are scheduled for consecutive nights next week in Texas, starting Tuesday with Eric Cathey, 37, condemned for the abduction and fatal shooting of a Houston woman whose boyfriend was reputed to a drug dealer.

Manns becomes the 33rd condemned inmate to be put to death this year in the USA and the 1132nd overall since the nation resumed executions on January 17, 1977.

Sources: Associated Press & Rick Halperin