Texas Executes Man Convicted of Beheading Three Children Hours After Oklahoma Execution

MCALESTER, Okla. — John Allen Rubio, a Texas man convicted of fatally stabbing and beheading three young children inside a filthy, windowless Brownsville apartment in 2003, was executed Thursday evening, hours after Oklahoma put another condemned inmate to death.

Rubio, 46, was pronounced dead at 6:47 p.m. following a lethal injection at the state prison in Huntsville. The murders of a baby girl and two toddlers stunned Brownsville, a city on the U.S.-Mexico border. The apartment building where the killings occurred was later razed, and the property was converted into a park and community garden.

After a spiritual adviser briefly prayed over him, Rubio thanked his friends and family for their “love and understanding,” saying he was “not the same person I once was.” He also thanked prison employees for helping him find God and expressed his love for his common-law wife, Angela Camacho, who is serving a life sentence for her role in the killings.

“I want to say I’m sorry to my wife’s family,” he said. “I can’t change the past, but I can tell you my life is going to be over. But that’s not going to make you happy.”

“I’m going to be with my kids in a little bit,” he added. “I’m ready to go to heaven to be with my Lord and Savior.”

As the sedative pentobarbital took effect, Rubio drew three breaths and began making a sound resembling snoring. He stopped moving soon afterward, and a physician pronounced him dead 21 minutes after the injection began.

Earlier Thursday, James Pavatt, 73, was executed by lethal injection at an Oklahoma prison for fatally shooting his girlfriend’s estranged husband in 2001. The victim had arrived to pick up his two young children before Thanksgiving when he was killed.

Thursday’s executions brought the national total for the year to 36 and 37, as the United States heads toward more than 40 executions for a second straight year. Florida has been a major driver of that pace.

The death penalty has received renewed scrutiny since Tennessee’s unsuccessful attempt to execute Christa Pike in September. Last week, California Gov. Gavin Newsom said he would commute hundreds of death sentences before leaving office in January—an action experts describe as potentially the largest mass clemency effort in U.S. history.

Rubio and Camacho were accused of killing 3-year-old Julissa Quesada, 14-month-old John E. Rubio and 2-month-old Mary Jane Rubio, who was 2 months old, in the Brownsville apartment they shared. Camacho received a life sentence after pleading guilty.

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An appeals court overturned Rubio’s initial capital murder conviction, finding that statements from Camacho had been improperly admitted at trial. During a second trial, Rubio again pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity, but jurors convicted him and he was sentenced to death.

Court records show Rubio was not the biological father of the two older children, although he raised them as his own.

At different times, Rubio said the children were possessed and claimed he was the “chosen one” destined to save the world.

Defense specialists diagnosed Rubio with paranoid schizophrenia, but prosecution experts disputed that conclusion. Defense witnesses also said his development had been affected by a violent childhood, “toxic” parents, drug use and prostitution.

When asked whether he had any final statement before his execution, Pavatt shook his head. As a chaplain read from the Bible, Pavatt appeared to silently mouth words that could not be heard.

Pavatt was convicted of first-degree murder and conspiracy in the killing of Rob Andrew, a 39-year-old advertising executive. Pavatt attended the same church as the Andrew family and was having an affair with Andrew’s wife, Brenda Andrew. She was convicted in a separate trial and remains the only woman on Oklahoma’s death row.

Several weeks before the shooting, Rob Andrew told police that someone was trying to kill him after the brake lines on his car were severed. After her husband was killed, Brenda Andrew told investigators that masked intruders had shot her in the arm and fatally wounded him.

Pavatt and Brenda Andrew fled to Mexico with her two children after the shooting. They were arrested three months later while crossing back into the United States.

Also Thursday, former Oklahoma death row inmate Richard Glossip pleaded guilty to a reduced charge of being an accessory to a 1997 murder and is awaiting sentencing in December. Glossip, who came within days of execution three times, was released on bond in May after spending nearly 30 years in prison. He had been awaiting a retrial after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned his conviction.

Stengle reported from McAlester, Oklahoma.

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