Texas: Reginald Perkins executed

A convicted rapist and suspected serial killer was executed Thursday evening for strangling and robbing his stepmother in Fort Worth more than 8 years ago.

Asked by the warden if he would like to make a statement, Reginald Perkins responded, "I already made my statement. Appreciate it. Love y'all."

About an hour before he was executed, Perkins had summoned a prison official to his cell and gave him a statement professing his innocence.

"They didn't link me to nothing. I did not kill my stepmom," he said. "I loved her. Texas is going to kill an innocent man."

On the other deaths, Perkins said, "There's other suspects they questioned besides me. They let them go. I don't know what they're talking about. I can't tell you who killed them. I ain't killed nobody. I've never killed."

As the drugs were being administered, he said, "I can fill it going in." Just before the drugs took effect, he looked at the sister of his victim and told her he loved her.

He was pronounced dead at 6:24 p.m., 8 minutes after the lethal drugs began to flow.

His appeals had been exhausted, said Perkins' lawyer, William Harris. The Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles on Wednesday unanimously rejected a clemency request that sought to have his sentence commuted to life in prison.

Perkins was condemned for the 2000 slaying of 64-year-old Gertie Perkins, whose body was found stuffed in the trunk of her Cadillac. He led his father and police to his stepmother's body. Last week, from death row, he denied any involvement in her killing and 5 other murders authorities believe he committed in Fort Worth and Cleveland, Ohio, during the relatively brief times over a 20-year period when he wasn't in prison.

"I loved my stepmother," Perkins, a former dump truck driver, told The Associated Press. "I didn't have nothing to do with none of those killings. I have never taken an individual's life. They're just trying to pin them on me."

Kevin Rousseau, a Tarrant County district attorney who prosecuted Perkins, disagreed.

"He's a consummate liar and a con artist," Rousseau said. "I wouldn't believe anything he said. He's a serial killer. People look for more complicated rationale. But the bottom line is, he's a killer. He goes through quite a bit of trouble to kill folks."

Perkins pleaded guilty to the 1980 rape and attempted rape of two 12-year-old girls in Ohio and was sentenced to life in prison. Authorities suspected but couldn't get enough evidence to charge him with the 1980 strangling of Paula Nelson at her Cleveland home. Perkins was living with the victim's twin sister and later married her. He was suspected of the 1981 strangling of Jenny Morman, 43, at her Cleveland apartment, and the strangling 3 weeks later of Jerry Thomas, whose daughter he was convicted of trying to rape.

In 1988, he was paroled and moved to Fort Worth. A DNA database tied Perkins last year to the 1991 stranglings in Fort Worth of Shirley Douglas, 44, and her aunt, Hattie Wilson, 79. Police said Perkins had dated Wilson's granddaughter.

A parole violation returned him to Ohio in 1993 and remained in prison until 2000, when he was paroled again and returned again to Fort Worth. His stepmother's slaying occurred 10 months later.

Evidence at his trial showed Perkins pawned her wedding ring and wrote fraudulent checks from the account of the family trucking business in Fort Worth. He became a suspect after detectives learned of his previous convictions in Ohio for rape and attempted rape and that he had been a suspect in the Cleveland slayings. A Tarrant County jury in 2002 deliberated 30 minutes before deciding he should die.

From death row last week, he denied pawning his stepmother's ring, saying although his driver's license was used to verify the transaction, the license had been lost and he wasn't the person using it. He said he was framed, that the rape victims in the Ohio cases lied and that he pleaded guilty to the rape charges because of bad advice from a lawyer.

"Lies and false testimony," he insisted. "I ain't never hurt a person in my life."

Wednesday night, condemned inmate Frank Moore, 47, received lethal injection for the fatal shootings of Samuel Boyd, 23, and Patrick Clark, 15, outside a bar in San Antonio 15 years ago.

Perkins becomes the 3rd condemned inmate to be put to death this year and the 426th overall since Texas resumed capital punishment on Dec. 7, 1982. Perkins becomes the 187th condemned inmate to be put to death in Texas since Rick Perry was elected governor in 2001.

Next week, Larry Swearingen, 37, is set to die Tuesday the 1st of 3 executions on consecutive evenings in Huntsville for the 1998 abduction and slaying of Melissa Trotter, a 19-year-old college student from Montgomery County near Houston.

Perkins becomes the 5th condemned inmate to be put to death this year in the USA and the 1141st overall since the nation resumed executions on January 17, 1977.

Sources: Associated Press & Rick Halperin, January 23, 2009