Texas to execute Garcia White, 61-year-old Houston man who confessed to five murders – Houston Public Media

AP Photo/Pat Sullivan

The state on Tuesday will execute Garcia White, 61, a Houston man who confessed to killing five people over six years.

White confessed to stabbing and killing Bonita Edwards and her twin daughters about six years after their bodies were discovered in their home by an apartment manager.

According to court documents, White claimed he and another man, Terrence Moore, went to the home to do drugs and have sex with Bonita. There were no signs of a break-in and White stabbed the woman after an argument ensued. He then stabbed Bonita’s two daughters, Annette and Bernette, to death.

But investigators determined that Moore had been killed four months before the deaths of Bonita Edwards and her daughters, and White confessed to the murders years later, according to court documents.

He was convicted of capital murder and first sentenced to death by the state in 1996, according to court documents. But evidence emerged that year linking the man to the murders of Hai Pham in 1995 and that of Greta Williams in 1989.

He filed five stay requests throughout the trials. In 2015, he was granted a temporary stay of execution.

Lawyers representing White appealed to the Supreme Court on September 27, arguing that the man was mentally disabled and therefore ineligible for the death penalty.

Evidence of his disability became available after the state district court signed an execution order, but the Court of Criminal Appeals “rejected this request without hearing the evidence,” the attorneys wrote in the ‘call.

In response, the state argued that White’s stay of execution should be promptly denied.

“White’s last-minute attempt to raise new, baseless allegations that could and should have been raised long ago is clearly a dilatory effort to delay his sentencing,” state officials wrote in a letter to the Supreme Court.

The State argued that White failed to present substantial evidence of his intellectual disability.

“White presents no reason to further delay his execution date,” according to the state. “The Edwards family – and the victims of the other murders of White, Greta Williams and Hai Pham – deserve justice for their decades-old crimes. »

“White’s motion is unworthy of this Court’s attention, and he fails to demonstrate a likelihood of success on the underlying claims,” according to the state.

White will be executed by lethal injection at the Huntsville unit on Tuesday if a reprieve is not granted.