'Railroad Killer' executed in Huntsville

Wednesday, June 28, 2006

(6/28/06 - HUNTSVILLE, TX) (KTRK) -- The last ride for infamous train-hopping serial killer Angel Maturino Resendiz was in a Texas prison van, from death row to the death house.

Resendiz, 46, received lethal injection Tuesday evening for the fatal stabbing and beating of a Houston-area physician 71/2 years ago. He had roamed the country by jumping aboard freight trains and was linked to at least 15 indiscriminate murders near railroad tracks around the nation, earning him the nickname the "Railroad Killer" and a spot on the FBI's Most Wanted list.

The Mexican drifter, speaking from the death chamber gurney, asked for forgiveness from God and from relatives of some of his victims watching through a glass a few feet away. He then was executed for the slaying of Claudia Benton, 39, at her West University Place home during a deadly spree in 1998 and 1999.

"You did not deserve this," he said, looking at them, his feet nervously tapping under a white sheet. "I deserve what I am getting."

Seven minutes later, he was pronounced dead.

Benton's husband, George, was among those watching him die.

"It was very hollow," Benton said of Resendiz's final comments. "He never experienced any sense of remorse or sense of guilt in the past. He was very manipulative. He was a very smart man, he knew how to manipulate society. He knew how to manipulate our system, so I found it very shallow."

The punishment, the 13th this year in the nation's busiest death penalty state, was delayed for two hours while multiple appeals were considered by the U.S. Supreme Court.

Benton was stabbed with a kitchen knife, beaten 19 times with a 2-foot-tall bronze statue and raped in her home eight days before Christmas in 1998 in the Houston enclave, just down the street from a railroad track.

Her death was among eight in Texas linked to Resendiz. Two more were tied to him in both Illinois and Florida, and one each in Kentucky, California and Georgia.

At midday Tuesday, Resendiz, handcuffed and shackled, was put aboard a van at death row at a prison near Livingston and transferred to the death chamber at the Texas Department of Criminal Justice Huntsville Unit, about 45 miles to the west.

"He was very polite and listened silently as the warden talked," prison spokesman Michelle Lyons said of Resendiz's arrival in Huntsville. "He wanted to make phone calls to some of his family."

Appeals that delayed the punishment focused on his competency, the constitutionality of the lethal injection procedure and a lower court's ruling that barred additional appeals because an earlier court-appointed lawyer missed legal deadlines for appeals. Another appeal claimed the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, a Washington-based international group that investigates human rights violations, should have had time to review Resendiz's case. The Mexican government filed an appeal of a lower court ruling that said Mexico could not be party to the Resendiz case.

Resendiz's lead appeals lawyer, Jack Zimmermann, of Houston, argued Resendiz believed he was half-man and half-angel and told psychiatrists he couldn't be executed because he didn't believe he could die. Federal courts have ruled inmates are ineligible for execution if they don't understand they will be put to death, when they are being put to death and why they are being put to death.

"I thought the evidence was overwhelming in our favor," Zimmermann said.

Late Tuesday afternoon, several people from the Mexican consulate in Houston were in Huntsville but did not see Resendiz. Capital punishment is not allowed in Mexico.

"The execution was carried out despite the existence of medical evidence of severe mental problems that, in principle, should have excluded the application of this penalty," Mexico's Foreign Relations Department said in a statement.

George Benton said Mexican citizens "who have come to pursue a better life through hard work and sacrifice should be ashamed and embarrassed of the Mexican government's financial support for the death penalty appeals of this killer."

"And I would be every bit as ashamed in my government if they were supporting a U.S. citizen who had gone into Mexico and killed random Mexican citizens without cause," Benton added.

The Border Patrol picked up Resendiz for illegal entry in June 1999 near El Paso and released him back into Mexico, saying they were unaware Resendiz -- who used some 30 aliases -- was on the FBI's Most Wanted list. He committed four slayings after his release.

Resendiz's killings began with a murder in San Antonio in 1986. Benton was among 13 people killed over a 16-month period that ended in June 1999 with a double slaying in Illinois.

A month later, Resendiz walked across the international bridge at El Paso and surrendered to a Texas Ranger as part of a deal arranged by his sister in New Mexico.

The sister, Manuela Karkiewicz, was among six people Resendiz selected to watch him die.

Resendiz initially was tied to more than one slaying through DNA matches from the Benton killing and the slayings 41/2 months later of Weimar church pastor Norman "Skip" Sirnic, and his wife, Karen.

The couple was fatally beaten May 2, 1999, with a sledgehammer as they slept in their house adjacent to their church and across the street from a railroad track that runs through the heart of their small town about 100 miles west of Houston. Like Benton, Karen Sirnic was raped.

In an interview with The Associated Press shortly after arriving on death row in 2000, Resendiz said he remembered each of his attacks and compared them to watching something through a tunnel.

"Everything you see is in a distance," he said. "Everything is slow and silent."

He said some murders were in response to the deaths of the Branch Davidians in Waco, others on Serbian atrocities. Others he blamed on his anti-abortion beliefs or because he believed the victims may have been homosexual.

Get more News »