Texas executes Dale Devon Scheanette

Dale Devon Scheanette

A Louisiana man condemned for strangling and drowning a suburban Dallas woman, charged with the slaying of a 2nd and blamed for the rapes of at least five other women was executed Tuesday evening.

Asked if he had any final statement, Dale Devon Scheanette paused and said, "My only statement is that no cases ever tried have been error free. Those are my words. No cases are error free."

Scheanette then told the warden he could proceed. He selected no witnesses for his death. 6 relatives of his 2 murder victims watched as he took his final breath. He never looked at them.

9 minutes after the lethal drugs began to flow, he was pronounced dead at 6:21 p.m.

Scheanette, 35, became known as the "Bathtub Killer" after 2 women at the same apartment complex in Arlington in 1996 were found dead in half-filled bathtubs, strangled, raped and bound with duct tape.

He was sent to death row for the Christmas Eve 1996 slaying of Wendie Prescott, 22, and charged but not tried for killing Christine Vu, 25, 3 months earlier.

Scheanette, acting as his own lawyer, had appeals rejected Monday in the federal appeals courts. The Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles also voted 7-0 to turn down a clemency request.

A woman identifying herself as Scheanette's sister filed a three-page handwritten motion on his behalf Tuesday with the U.S. Supreme Court seeking a reprieve so he could get a court review of the appeals rejected Monday. The high court turned down the appeal less than an hour before Scheanette was scheduled to die.

The slayings that terrorized the suburban Dallas-Fort Worth area went unsolved for more than three years because detectives couldn't match a fingerprint at the murder scenes to anyone in criminal databases. Finally, in 1999, Scheanette was arrested for a burglary outside Dallas and his prints were tied to the killings. DNA then strengthened the confirmations and also pointed to his involvement in the other rapes.

"He personifies evil," said Greg Miller, the Tarrant County district attorney who prosecuted Scheanette in 2003. "I've been doing this 35, 36 years. I've had others who have killed and done bad things. But he's at the top of the list."

Prosecutors and defense lawyers said it was uncertain what set Scheanette off. Evidence showed that at some time before the Prescott and Vu killings, the native of Ouachita Parish in northern Louisiana had lived at the apartment complex where both women lived and died.

Scheanette declined to speak with reporters as his execution date neared. At his trial, lawyers tried to show the evidence was insufficient to convict him.

"We brought in his family to show he had a pretty good family unit and that he got along well," said J.R. Molina, his trial attorney. "The DNA evidence, the fingerprint evidence that came in, were very strong. Several other instances of burglary, break-ins and rapes that he committed, that was pretty strong evidence to show to a jury."

Prescott's aunt and uncle, concerned when she failed to show up for a shopping trip with her sister, went to her apartment and found her dead.

"I hope he asks God to forgive him and save his soul," Brenda Norwood, Prescott's aunt, told The Dallas Morning News. "I had to forgive because I can't live like that. I can't hate him for what he did because that would not bring Wendie back. You have to move on."

After jurors convicted him of capital murder for the Prescott slaying, prosecutors in the punishment phase of the trial called to the witness stand 5 women who testified how they were beaten, threatened and raped by Scheanette.

"I am convinced that testimony of those 5 women was very therapeutic for them," Miller said, describing the women as crying and hugging 1 another after leaving the witness stand. "It was a pretty moving event. ... It was a miracle he didn't kill any of the other women."

Miller, however, said he was left to wonder how many others Scheanette may have raped or killed.

"The possibility certainly exists," said Tommy LeNoir, the Arlington homicide detective who investigated the slayings. "I will tell you this, without reservation, that the right person is in this position, that the person who took the lives of these 2 ladies, I have absolutely no reservation that the person responsible is Dale Scheanette."

Scheanette becomes the 7th condemned inmate to be put to death this year in Texas and the 430th overall since the state resumed capital punishment on December 7th, 1982. Scheanette becomes the 191st condemned inmate to be put to death since Rick Perry became governor in 2001.

On Thursday, another inmate linked to multiple slayings and rapes was set to die. Johnny Ray Johnson, 51, was convicted of the 1995 rape-slaying of Leah Joette Smith, whose head was slammed repeatedly into a cement street curb in Houston after she refused to have sex with him.

Scheanette becomes the 10th condemned inmate to be put to death this year in the USA and the 1146th overall since the nation resumed executions on January 17, 1977.

Sources: Associated Press, Rick Halperin, Feb 11, 2009

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