Texas and Florida Execute Murderers

Two murderers, both who killed multiple victims, were put to death Thursday.

Michael Dorgan of Fox News reports that Richard Tabler mouthed the words “I’m sorry” to his victims’ relatives just before he was executed by lethal injection. Tabler was convicted and sentenced to death for the 2004 Thanksgiving Day murders of two men in Killeen, Texas. He lured the co-owner of a club (where he once worked) and the co-owner’s friend to a remote area on the pretense of buying stolen stereo equipment. Both were shot to death. Two days later, Tabler killed two teenaged girls (an 18-year-old and a 16-year-old) who worked at the club because he thought they would tell police that he murdered the two men. He admitted to killing the two teen girls to police after his arrest. While his attorneys argued that Tabler was mentally incompetent for execution, he had repeatedly asked the court to stop the appeals.

James Ford was executed for the 1997 murders of a young couple on a fishing trip. Ford had worked with the husband, Gregory Malonry, on a Florida sod farm. Curt Anderson of the Associated Press reports that, according to court documents, Ford attacked Malnory after the group arrived to go fishing, shooting him in the head with a .22-caliber rifle, beating him with an axe-like blunt instrument, and finally slitting his throat. Kimberly Malnory was beaten, raped, and then shot with the same rifle, authorities said. The couple’s 22-month-old daughter witnessed the murders while strapped in a child car seat in the victims’ pickup truck. Following his arrest, Ford lied to police, saying that he left the couple alive to go hunting. But the evidence of his guilt, which included a DNA match, was overwhelming. In several appeals, his defense attorneys argued unsuccessfully that he was abused as a child, had a drinking problem, suffered from diabetes, and had a low IQ, making him intellectually disabled. Ford’s execution by lethal injection was without incident.