Billy Wayne Coble, 70, who was convicted of the 1989 slayings of his brother-in-law Bobby Vicha, a Waco police sergeant, and Vicha’s parents in Axtell, is set to die on Feb. 28, having exhausted all of his avenues to appeal.
Coble, 70, learned last week the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals had rejected his latest request for a stay of execution, citing it as a, abuse of the appeals writ process, which cleared the way for imposition of his sentence.
The execution would be the 2nd of the year in Texas.
Coble was convicted of the killings of Bobby Vicha and his father and mother Robert and Zelda Vicha, then of tying up 4 children who were at the scene, restraining and kidnapping his estranged wife Karen Vicha Coble, whom he’d threatened to rape and kill.
He led authorities on a high speed chase into Bosque County but was caught and arrested after he wrecked his car.
He has been granted several stays of execution over the years after filing a number of appeals on several different grounds.
Coble has a federal appeal pending but it, too, likely will not be successful.
The U.S. Supreme Court rejected Coble’s latest appeal in that court last October, soon after which 54th State District Judge Matt Johnson set the execution date.
Coble has a list of appeals.
The only successful one was filed in 2007 with the U.S. Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals.
It resulted in the dismissal of the death sentence and an order for re-trial on punishment after the court’s opinion stated Coble’s jury faced 2 questions that were unconstitutional.
The punishment re-trial ended with the same result, a death sentence.
Truman Simons, a former police officer, sheriff’s deputy and now a private investigator, worked on the Coble case back in 1989.
“He killed his (father-in-law) first and wrapped him up in a rug,” Simons said.
“Then he tied up the 2 kids and shot Bobby Vicha.
“Then he ...waited in the garage where he killed Zelda (Vicha) and kidnapped (his estranged wife) Karen,” Simons said.
Former McLennan County Assistant District Attorney J.R. Vicha, one of the children Coble tied up that day, was only 11-years-old at the time his family was murdered.
The boy, along with 2 of his cousins, were tied up inside the home while the killings took place.
During the 2008 punishment re-trial trial, prosecuted by retired Assistant District Attorney Crawford Long, Long told the jury that Coble “has a heart filled with scorpions.”
Source: KWTX news, Paul Gately, February 19, 2019
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"One is absolutely sickened, not by the crimes that the wicked have committed,
but by the punishments that the good have inflicted." -- Oscar Wilde
