29 June 2018 :
Danny Paul Bible, 66, White, was executed Wednesday for a 1979 rape and murder that went unsolved for 2 decades until he confessed. Bible received a lethal dose of pentobarbital after unsuccessful appeals contended his multiple health issues made it likely his execution would be botched and cause him unconstitutional pain. As the drug started to take effect, Bible started taking quick breaths, muttered at one point that it was "burning" and that it "hurt." His breaths then became snores and about a minute after the procedure began, all movement stopped. Despite fears from his attorneys that a vein would not be found for the IVs, prison technicians had 1 needle inserted in his left hand 3 minutes after he was strapped to the death chamber gurney. The 2nd IV was inserted in his right hand after another 3 minutes. Bible was a drifter with a record of violence in several states when he was arrested in Florida, in 1999 for a rape in Louisiana. He told detectives in Louisiana about 4 Texas killings and at least nine rapes. The 4 slaying victims included 20-year-old Inez Deaton. The woman was killed on 27 May 1979. The killing went unsolved for decades before Bible linked himself to the case, and a jury decided in 2003 that the man who became known in Houston as "the ice pick killer" should die for the slaying. The 3 other killings all occurred in North Texas on the same day in May 1983. The victims were Bible's sister-in-law, Tracy Powers; her 4-month-old son, Justin; and Powers' roommate, Pam Hudgins. Bible pleaded guilty to Hudgins' death and was sentenced to 25 year in prison. He served 7 and was released to Montana in 1992 on a form of parole known as mandatory supervision. At his trial for Deaton's slaying in Texas, Harris County prosecutors presented evidence of robberies, thefts, assaults and abductions, including the rape of an 11-year-old girl in Montana and his confessions to repeated sexual assaults of young girls from 1996 to 1998. Bible becomes the 7th inmate to be put to death this year in Texas, the 552nd overall since the state resumed capital punishment on December 7, 1982, the 12th inmate to be put to death this year in the USA and the 1,477th overall since the nation resumed executions on January 17, 1977.
