28 March 2018 :
Rosendo Rodriguez III, 38, Hispanic, was executed.
He was sentenced to death in Randal County on April 1, 2008 for the Sept. 12, 2005 slaying of Summer Baldwin, 29, and of her unborn child. Baldwin was about 10 weeks pregnant at the time. The naked body of the woman was stuffed into a new piece of luggage and tossed in the trash. Workers at the Lubbock city landfill spotted a new suitcase in the trash, opened it and discovered the body.
Detectives used a barcode label sewn to the luggage to establish it was purchased a day earlier at a Walmart. Debit card records and store surveillance video identified the buyer as Rodriguez.
He gave police a statement saying he killed her in self-defense when she pulled a knife on him after the two had consensual sex.
Rodriguez also was linked to at least five other sexual assaults and had confessed to killing Joanna Rogers, a 16-year-old missing for a year when her mummified remains were found inside a suitcase at the same city garbage dump. Five women testified he raped them. Rodiriguez was the 4th prisoner put to death this year in Texas, the 549th since the state resumed executions in 1982, the 7th prisoner put to death this year in the U.S., and the 1,472th in the United States since USA resumed executions in 1977.