Execution of El Paso serial killer halted | RSS.com
Diego: In 1987, between Valentine’s Day and August of that year, nine women from Northeast El Paso went missing. Over the following months, the remains of six of the missing young women and girls were found in shallow graves in the Northeast desert where Painted Dunes Golf Course is now located. No sign of the three other women was ever found. It was the worst killing spree El Paso had ever seen until decades later when 23 people were murdered in the Walmart mass shooting on August 3rd, 2019.
For 32 years, David Leonard Wood has lived on death row after he was convicted by a jury in late 1992 of murdering 23-year-old Ivy Susanna Williams and at least one of the other five victims whose remains were discovered in the desert. On Thursday of last week, Wood was scheduled to be put to death by lethal injection at the state prison in Huntsville, Texas. But the state’s Court of Criminal Appeals on Tuesday stepped in to block the execution.
To help us understand Wood’s case and the implications for criminal justice in El Paso, we welcome El Paso Matters founder and CEO Bob Moore to the show. Bob, thanks for joining me.
Bob: Thanks for having me, Diego.
Diego: So, Bob, can you walk us through the latest update on Wood’s case and why Texas’ highest criminal court halted his execution last week?
Bob: And I think it’s worth noting it’s an unusual step for the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals, in particular, to step in at kind of the last moment like this. It’s obviously a very conservative court that has not historically been open to a lot of arguments around the death penalty.
This court also has rejected most of David Wood’s appeals over the years, too.
Last August, an execution date was set for March 13, 2025, for David Leonard Wood. Starting toward the end of last year and then really accelerating over the last few weeks, his defense attorneys have filed a number of appeals, both with the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals and with a couple of federal courts. Up until two days before the scheduled execution date, the appeals courts had not been particularly open to any of the arguments coming from Wood’s lawyers. As a matter of fact, a couple of hours before the Court of Criminal Appeals weighed in, a federal court had rejected another one of his appeals.
But then on Tuesday, March 11th, probably around 1 o’clock our time, I was checking the Court of Criminal Appeals website, and I noticed that they had entered a stay of execution, which I think surprised a lot of people. And it took about 15, 20 minutes for the document to come up on the website, which is always unnerving for a journalist. That’s like, “I want to see what the ruling is.”
And when the ruling came out, the Court of Criminal Appeals really did not outline why they stopped the execution. All they did was note the issues that the defense had raised in its latest appeal and basically said, no further action on this case until we have some time to think about it.
So, we don’t know how long the stay will remain in place. But my understanding of Texas law is that a new execution date can’t be set any sooner than 60 days after a final ruling from an appeals court. So, my guess is we’re probably looking at months, possibly years, before another execution date might be set.
Diego: And this wasn’t the first time that a court stepped in to block Wood’s execution. Is that right?
Bob: Yeah. So, you know, and I mentioned at the outset that this is a very conservative court that doesn’t tend to block executions, but it also happened in 2009. In that case, a day before Wood was scheduled to be executed, the Court of Criminal Appeals granted a stay so that the courts could review a claim that Wood was making that he had intellectual development disabilities that would preclude him from execution under some fairly recent Supreme Court rulings.
Those claims were then looked at over the years and eventually rejected in 2014 at every level. But at that point, Wood’s lawyers had also begun to make a number of requests for DNA testing of evidence. Obviously, back in 1987, DNA testing was in its infancy, really. And so Wood’s argument was, let’s test a lot of this evidence to make sure he’s the guy.
And, initially, in 2010, the trial judge did grant a request to test three bits of evidence that were found from three different victims, and they were all blood droplets. Two of the blood tests came back inconclusive. The third excluded Wood as a contributor of the sample.
His defense lawyers have long maintained that that’s exculpatory evidence, meaning evidence that points to his innocence. Prosecutors and courts have disagreed with that, saying it would not have changed a jury verdict. And so the Texas Attorney General’s Office, which has been handling these appeals for complicated reasons that we can get into, has resisted at every turn any further DNA tests, and the Court of Criminal Appeals and the federal courts have upheld those decisions.
The latest appeal really doesn’t necessarily ask for more DNA tests, but in claiming actual innocence, I think is trying to set the grounds for getting the courts to eventually be more amenable to maybe future requests for DNA testing.
Diego: Yeah. And so I guess going forward from here, what do you expect to happen with this case? And curious if you can talk about the attorney general’s involvement at all.
Bob: Yeah. So not having a roadmap of an opinion from the Court of Criminal Appeals is very difficult to kind of see what’s going to go on. My best guess is the court said, “Hey, there are some issues here that we probably should check out before allowing somebody to be executed.”
And so they may have oral arguments in that. I don’t know. So we’ll have to see. But as I said, I think we’re probably months or years, again, away from an execution date.
The attorney general is involved because in 1992, Jaime Esparza was elected the district attorney in Texas. He took office essentially a month and a half after the trial ended and Wood was sentenced to death. He had beaten the incumbent DA, a guy named Steve Simmons, in the Democratic primary earlier that year.
For a day or two in 1990, Jaime Esparza was appointed to represent David Leonard Wood as a defense lawyer. Wood, by the way, quickly said, “Hey, that guy used to work for the DA’s office. I don’t want him anywhere near me.” And so Esparza’s appointment was then rescinded.
But because he had represented Wood for less than 48 hours in 1990, his office disqualified itself from handling any of the appeals. Esparza left office in 2020, but the attorney general was appointed essentially the acting district attorney for this case and has remained so.
Wood’s lawyer, a guy named Gregory Wiercioch, sort of asked James Montoya, the current DA, if he would take the case back and make his own decisions about whether to allow DNA tests. To take the legalese out of it, James Montoya said, “nah, we’re good”, and he didn’t want anything to do with this case. So, it’s remained with the Attorney General’s office.
Wiercioch accused Montoya of cowardice essentially for not taking it back, but we can talk about this more, too. As you know, the DA’s office has a lot of challenges that they’re dealing with now, including the Walmart case. And for a variety of reasons, I think Montoya is not interested in taking on a case that the office hasn’t touched for 30 years. It would delay the Wood case for another five or 10 years, for sure, if they did that.
Diego: Yeah, and one thing I should have touched on before, despite Wood maintaining his innocence and lawyers making various arguments about that, Wood did have a criminal history prior to the conviction for these murders. Is that right?
Bob: Yeah, that’s an important point, too. He grew up in Northeast El Paso, dropped out of Parkland High School when he was 16 or 17. He never really got out of his freshman year of high school, which is kind of part of the argument around his intellectual development disability.
But, he did some kind of petty crimes to begin with and then was found guilty of a couple of sexual assault charges, got a five-year sentence out of that. In 1980, he served two years and was released, and then almost immediately was arrested again on rape charges.
Or, I’m sorry, those sexual assault charges were in 1978. In 1980, he got arrested on these two rape charges, got a 20-year sentence, and was released a little over six years into that sentence. He came back to El Paso in January of 1987.
And on February 14th, Valentine’s Day of 1987, the first young girl, Marjorie Knox, who lived in Chaparral, New Mexico, right next to Northeast El Paso, disappeared. So these disappearances at least coincide with Wood’s return to El Paso.
And one of the things that cops have always insisted on is that these things didn’t start until Wood was here, and they ended after he got arrested – which is not proof that he did it, but to investigators, it was kind of a strong indicator that they had gotten the right guy.
Diego: Yeah, and Bob, you’ve been a journalist in El Paso since the mid-1980s and followed the story intimately for decades. Can you talk about your personal experience with this really grisly story?
Bob: Yeah, and there’s a really important journalism lesson in all of this that I’ve carried with me ever since.
So, these disappearances started in February of 1987. By the summer, I think six or seven girls and young women had disappeared. Over a couple of days in June of 1987, two girls disappeared back to back, Desiree Wheatley and Karen Baker.
Desiree was 15, Karen Baker was 20. In July, their mothers, Marcia Wheatley at the time – she’s now known as Marcia Fulton – and Mary Baker, started going to the media and saying, “Hey, there’s something going on here. There are girls who are missing, and the police aren’t paying any attention.”
And I was not directly involved in the reporting, but I was supervising the reporters doing that. And when we would check with the police on, like, “Hey, these moms say their kids are in danger,” the police would tell us, “You know, they’re runaways. And yes, a couple of prostitutes have disappeared, but that happens. They go from city to city.”
So the media, including the El Paso Times, where I was working at the time, basically just went with the police story and didn’t report that a number of young girls were missing — or that girls and young women were missing from northeast El Paso.
That did not change.
There was, I think in July of 1987, Mary Baker and Marcia Wheatley went down to the Stanton Street Bridge and staged a protest to try to draw some attention.
I went back and looked at the El Paso Times coverage. The El Paso Times ran three paragraphs and a photograph about that. The Herald Post, the other paper at the time, wrote a little bit longer story. And my recollection is the TV stations — this was a Saturday, so they kind of covered it with some video on the Saturday newscast.
And that was it.
Nobody followed up on it or anything like, “Hey, is there something to what these moms are saying?”
That all changed in September when the first two bodies were found.
Karen Baker was one of the first two bodies that was found. And then in October, Desiree Wheatley’s body was found.
And, so, over the years, I have had the pleasure of getting to know Marcia, her mom. I’ve gotten to be really friendly with her over the years. She married a wonderful guy named Robert Fulton, who used to be the head of the El Paso Zoo.
And, so, I had conversations with her over the years about what had happened and, you know, kind of expressing my regrets that we didn’t listen to her. And she’s — I don’t think forgiving is the right word, but she was understanding.
And she would say, you were just listening to what the police told you.
And then I would ask her about, you know, her frustrations with the initial police investigation. And she acknowledged she was very frustrated and didn’t think they took it seriously enough.
But she also said “You know, to be fair to them, they’d never had to investigate a serial killing before, so I understand why they may have been very slow to do this.” Marcia is a person of great grace, so I think she has more understanding than I might have in those situations.
So, I’ve stayed in touch with her over the years. She has become one of only two certified wildlife rehabilitators in El Paso, and so she takes care of mammals, baby squirrels and raccoons, and things like that.
So, I’ve talked with her about that a lot over the years. And then when the execution date was set, I called her up and I said, “If it’s OK with you, I will volunteer to be a media witness to the execution, but I’m only going to do it if it’s okay with you.” And she said, “That’s fine. I’d love to have you there.”
And, so, we’ve kind of stayed in contact. And then in February, as the date got nearer, she and I sat down and she really walked me through in great detail what happened the day Desi disappeared. Also talked about who she was as a child.
She disappeared on the last day of school, which played a role in why the police didn’t respond as quickly as possible, because they were thinking, “Oh, kids are just goofy on the last day of school.”
And so she talked about the last time she saw Desi. Marcia was a night shift worker, and so the last time she saw Desi was that morning, June 2nd. She had taken her to a couple of stores to try to find some film for her camera.
And Desi had also asked her if she could wear a white T-shirt to school that day so she could get her friends to sign it. And, so, Marcia was driving them back home. Desi had her T-shirt on.
And they only lived a block or two from H.E. Charles School, where Desi was going to middle school. She was an eighth grader. And Desi – and kind of girls will do this with their mom – said, “You can just drop me off here, and I’ll just walk the rest of the way.” And, so, Marcia said, “OK.”
So, she kind of dropped her off about half a block from the school, and Desi started to walk away and turned around back to Marcia and said, “Love you, Mom.” And Marcia said she loved Desi. And that was the last time they saw each other.
She came home from work that night at two in the morning. And she was living with her parents – Marcia was. She’d recently divorced and was trying to get back on her feet. And her mother said, “Something’s wrong, Desi didn’t come home.”
And, so, that was kind of the beginning of the nightmare.
So, I stayed in touch with Marcia over the years. And she told me this really powerful story, which we published at El Paso Matters.
But a couple of days after I interviewed her, she got really sick and eventually developed pneumonia. And I wasn’t sure whether she was going to be able to continue with her plans to go to the execution, which was really important for her.
Because when they found Desi’s body in October, and the medical examiner finally released it, they were able to bury her at Restlawn Cemetery in early November of 1987.
And she made a pledge to Desi at her grave that she would make sure that whoever did this got caught.
And Marcia, just to be clear, was a major reason that David was eventually arrested. She put a lot of pressure on the police to solve this case.
She believed that she would be able to fulfill that promise by witnessing Wood’s execution.
It became really uncertain for a while whether she was going to be able to go. She was in the hospital for a little bit.
And then, I think about a week before the execution, she finally got out of the hospital, was able to come home. She got off of oxygen. And so by Monday of that week, we were pretty clear that she was going to be able to go.
And then on Tuesday, she got a call from the Texas Department of Criminal Justice letting her know that the stay had been issued.
And she was very, very mad.
And she tells me that she doesn’t want to be angry because she doesn’t see that as a helpful emotion. It just hurts her.
And so she has come to terms with it, but she thinks that the criminal justice system views this as a game. That’s a term she’s used over and over again with me.
But she says she remains committed to fulfilling that promise. And I think she’s 72 years old now. Wood is almost 68. The one thing she says she won’t let happen is she’s not going to die before he does.
And, so, she wants to be able to continue to do that.
Diego: It’s obviously a lot of emotion with all the years of following this.
The murders and disappearances in the late 1980s were the worst killing spree El Paso had seen for decades, until a man murdered 23 people at a Walmart here on August 3rd, 2019. So I wonder, Bob, what implications, if any, do you think Wood’s case has on the prosecution of the alleged Walmart shooter, for whom the state of Texas is still pursuing the death penalty?
Bob: You know, it’s a very important and timely question in some ways.
I mentioned earlier that James Montoya is the new DA in El Paso. The three previous DAs who’ve handled this case have all said they want to pursue the death penalty.
You covered the DA’s election, so you talked to Montoya a lot about this, and your coverage really documented an evolving position that he had throughout the campaign.
I think initially he was like, “Yes, we want to pursue the death penalty. That decision should be made by a jury.” I think by the end of the campaign, he was telling you there are some things we need to look at.
And, so, I think sometime soon, probably within days, no more than a couple weeks, he’s probably going to have to make a decision on whether he’s going to pursue the death penalty.
And I think the Wood case could be instructive in some ways.
Wood has been on death row, as you mentioned, for more than 32 years.
There actually are a couple of people who’ve been on death row a little bit longer.
Wood would have served longer on death row than any other executed inmate if the sentence had been carried out.
And there’s another person on death row from El Paso, a guy named Tony Ford, who was sent to death row about a year afterward. He’s still there too.
So, El Paso has this history of people being on death row for a long time.
Prosecuting death penalty cases and keeping people on death row is a very expensive process. So, that’s one thing I think the DA is going to have to weigh.
In some ways, the Walmart case is a little bit more clear-cut in terms of evidence than the Wood case was.
But in other ways, because of what happened when Yvonne Rosales was the district attorney and some of the disastrous decisions that she and her people made, especially around the Walmart case, going after one of the families of one of the victims who would not participate in this scheme they wanted to pull off to sort of target the judge in the case and get him recused.
That has created a real mess and has allowed the defense to make allegations of prosecutorial misconduct.
If Patrick Crusius is found guilty and sentenced to death, those prosecutorial misconduct claims will probably tie up the appeals courts for years and years and years.
So that’s one thing that – the lesson of the David Wood case, I think, is going to be weighing in Montoya’s decision.
And to be clear, I don’t know what decision he’s going to make.
He also has to decide – it’s a political decision, too. What do El Paso voters want?
And the Walmart case, obviously, in your coverage, was a big issue in the DA’s race.
Bill Hicks, the appointed incumbent that he ran against, who replaced Yvonne Rosales, was very adamant that he wanted to pursue the death penalty.
And as I mentioned, Montoya was adamant initially, but then he never said he wasn’t going to do it, but he began to introduce these questions.
So it’s going to be an interesting decision.
The other thing that Montoya will have to weigh — one of the things that you have to prove in Texas in order to get a death sentence is that the defendant represents a future danger. Not just that he did horrible things in the past, but that he would be a danger in the future.
As I think most people know, Patrick Crusius also faced federal charges – hate crimes and weapons charges. The federal government decided not to pursue the death penalty. He quickly pleaded guilty and was sentenced to 90 consecutive life terms.
And the judge’s recommendation, which is not binding on the Bureau of Prisons, but they’ll have to take it into account, was that he be sent to the Supermax prison in Florence, Colorado, which is the nation’s most secure prison.
I can already hear the defense team making these arguments in the penalty phase of a state trial: “Our client is going to be locked up in a hole, essentially, for the rest of his life. He does not represent a danger to anybody.” That will present a challenge before jurors.
And, so, this is definitely an emotional case. It means a lot to El Pasoans.
You know, the median age of people in El Paso, I think, is 34, which means that half of our population wasn’t born in 1987 when David Wood committed these – or was convicted of these crimes. So a lot of people have no memory of the emotions around that.
But, at the time, for those of us who were there, and especially girls and young women of that era, that was a deeply emotional case – much like the Walmart case is now – that reshaped people’s views of the world they lived in.
All of a sudden, girls had to worry about going to the Circle K at night and whether they would disappear. So, that was a deeply emotional case, just as this is.
There was no question in the 1990s when the case finally went to trial that the state was going to seek the death penalty.
It’s also interesting to note that David Wood’s trial had to be moved out of El Paso. It was held in Dallas because of pretrial publicity, which added to the delay and the expense of the trial.
In the Walmart case, both the defense and prosecution have said that they want the trial to be held in El Paso, but that may prove not to be possible. Once they start talking to potential jurors, they may say, “Oh, Patrick Crusius can’t get a fair trial in El Paso, so we have to move it somewhere else.”
That will then add years of delay to the case.
So, all of these factors are something that James Montoya is going to have to take into account in deciding whether to pursue the death penalty. And the Wood case, I think, offers some illustrations for him.
Diego: Yeah, you’ve done powerful reporting on this, Bob. And listeners can continue to read our coverage of David Leonard Wood’s case, as well as updates on the case against the Walmart mass shooter, at ElPasoMatters.org.
Bob, thanks for joining me.
Bob: Thanks for having me.
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