By Daily Mail (U.S.) | Created at 2024-10-02 06:30:37 | Updated at 2024-10-03 09:13:41
1 day ago
Garcia Glenn White showed remorse before being executed by lethal injection in Texas on Tuesday, 35 years after he brutally murdered 16-year-old identical twin sisters.
White, 61, was put to death at a Texas state penitentiary in Huntsville, marking the sixth execution of a death row inmate in just under two weeks.
White confessed to murdering five people over a six-year span in the late 1980s and 1990s. However, prosecutors only charged him in the deaths of the teenaged victims Annette and Bernette Edwards.
He was pronounced dead at 6:56pm, USA Today reported.
'I apologize, and I pray that you can find peace, comfort and closure in your heart for the wrong I have done and the pain I have caused you, and anybody else I’ve caused pain to,' White told some of his victims' family members as he was strapped to the execution table. 'I’m sorry for all the pain I have caused.'
Garcia Glenn White, 61, was executed via lethal injection on Tuesday for stabbing two 16-year-old girls to death in 1989
White was the fifth man to be executed in Texas this year.
Patrick McCann, White's attorney of 26 years, said he was 'devastated by this loss but at the same time it's more devastating for Glenn's family.'
White was permitted to have five loved ones in the room during the execution but asked them not to come, McCann said.
'I think he was trying to spare people the pain of watching him die,' McCann said.
White spoke to prison guards and his fellow inmates during his last words.
'To all my brothers and sisters incarcerated, y’all just keep pushing forward, keep loving one another,' he said. 'To the administration again and to the guards, thank you for treating us like human beings.'
He thanked his family and friends 'for all the love and comfort' before singing 'I Trust in God.'
White had six siblings and was once a football star. Injuries derailed his life, costing him his football career and later, a full time job.
By the time he discovered crack cocaine, he had three kids to support. The drug eventually took over his life.
The crime spree that would land him on death row began in 1989, though he'd only admit everything to police years later.
His first victim was Greta Williams, a 27-year-old woman who was beaten to death only a few months after she moved from Chicago to Houston.
That same year, White killed Bonita Edwards and her identical twin daughters, Annette and Bernette, in their Houston apartment.
Pictured: The Huntsville state penitentiary where White was executed
The knife killings occurred just a day after the twins' 16th birthday and a few weeks before Christmas.
Their bodies had many stab wounds and all of them were found partially clothed, raising investigators' suspicion that there was a sexual motive, according to court records.
Their murders went unsolved for six years.
White then killed Hai Pham, a father-of-seven working in a convenience store.
While being held for Pham's murder, one of White's close friends told police White admitted he killed the Edwards family.
White's confession was corroborated when semen found on Bernette was a 99.9999 percent match to his DNA, court records showed.
White told police he was smoking crack cocaine with Edwards when a fight broke out between the two of them.
'She reached for a knife, and I took the knife and stabbed her,' he said, according to court records. 'Some kids come out. I went into the bedroom after them. ... I stabbed one in the bedroom and one in the living room.'
Prosecutors only pursued charges in the Edwards case, and White was convicted of murdering Annette and Bernette.
'Two dead 16-year-old girls kind of speak for themselves in terms of the savageness of these crimes,' Harris County prosecutor Josh Reiss told USA Today.
The last man to be executed before White was Missouri inmate Marcellus Williams, 55
Williams was convicted of killing Felicia Gayle, a social worker and former newspaper reporter
The last man to be executed before White was Missouri inmate Marcellus Williams, 55, who was convicted in 1998 stabbing death of Felicia Gayle, a social worker and former newspaper reporter.
Williams' attorneys argued on Monday that the state Supreme Court should halt his execution over alleged procedural errors in jury selection and the prosecution's alleged mishandling of the murder weapon.
But the state's high court rejected those arguments, and Gov. Mike Parson denied Williams' clemency request, paving the way for his execution to proceed.
Williams, 55, has asserted his innocence and Tuesday marks the third time Williams has faced execution. He was less than a week away from execution in January 2015 when the state Supreme Court called it off, allowing time for his attorneys to pursue additional DNA testing.
He was just hours away from being executed in August 2017 when then-Gov. Eric Greitens, a Republican, granted a stay and appointed a panel of retired judges to examine the case. But that panel never reached a conclusion.
Williams was executed last Tuesday, even though prosecutors had expressed doubt about his guilty.
Since September 20, six men have been executed in Texas, Alabama, Oklahoma, Missouri and South Carolina.
