HUNTSVILLE — Train-hopping serial killer Angel Maturino Resendiz, linked to at least 15 indiscriminate murders near railroad tracks around the country, was headed for the Texas death chamber today.
The Mexican drifter known as the "Railroad Killer" was set to be executed for the slaying of West University physician Claudia Benton 7 1/2 years ago. She was killed during a deadly spree in 1998 and 1999, which earned Resendiz a spot on the FBI's Most Wanted list as authorities searched for a murderer who slipped across the U.S. border and roamed the country by freight train.
Benton, 39, was stabbed with a kitchen knife, struck 19 times with a 2-foot-tall bronze statue and raped in her home eight days before Christmas in 1998 in the Houston enclave of West University Place, just down the street from a railroad track.
Her husband, George Benton, no longer lives in the state but planned to witness Resendiz's lethal injection today.
"The main reason I came to Texas for this is to make the statement that people have to understand what evil really is," he told The Associated Press on Tuesday. "And the death penalty, this sort of conclusion to heinous killers, is the appropriate solution."
The execution would be the 13th of the year in the nation's most active death penalty state.
Claudia Benton's death is among eight in Texas linked to Resendiz, 46. Two more were tied to him in both Illinois and Florida, and one each in Kentucky, California and Georgia.
Several last-day appeals were filed to try to block the punishment, delaying the scheduled 6 p.m. CDT execution time while the U.S. Supreme Court considered them. Resendiz's lead appeals lawyer, Jack Zimmermann, argued that Resendiz, who described himself as half-man and half-angel, told psychiatrists he couldn't be executed because he didn't believe he could die.
"We don't execute people who are insane, we don't execute people who don't realize they're going to be executed," Zimmermann said.
In addition, the Houston-based consul general of Mexico filed an appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court questioning the Mexican national's competency and challenging the constitutionality of the lethal injection process as cruel and unusual punishment. Capital punishment is not allowed in Mexico.
"I just think, particularly at this time, for the citizens of Mexico, they should be outraged and ashamed their government is championing the cause of this killer and spending their national resources on his appeals, hiring even a special attorney," George Benton said.
Late this afternoon, several people from the Mexican consul general's office in Houston were in Huntsville but did not see Resendiz.
"We do look after the rights of Mexican nationals," Consul General Carlos Gonzalez said. "We watch to make sure the law is applied fairly to a Mexican national."
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's death 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 from Mexico 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's first immigration violation occurred in 1976 in Brownsville when he was 16. In 1980, he was convicted of burglary in Dade County, Fla., where he called himself Jose Reyes. Paroled five years later, he subsequently was locked up in New Mexico for using an alias to get a passport, then served time again in New Mexico for burglary before he was paroled in 1993. He had other arrests in Louisiana, Missouri and California.
He initially was tied to more than one slaying through DNA matches from the Benton killing and the slayings 4 1/2 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 AP shortly after arriving on death row in 2000, Resendiz 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.
"I tried to figure this guy out — the type of killer who would choose people at random, lie in wait and watch their houses until it's dark and then kill them with something of convenience from their own house," George Benton said. "It's beyond my comprehension. I can't really consider the depths of that human behavior.
"Human beings don't treat each other like that."
