U.S. News - bobby-lee-hines

Oct

2012

3:34am, EDT

Texas executes killer who stabbed neighbor 18 times with ice pick

By Reuters

AUSTIN, Texas - A man who repeatedly stabbed a neighbor with an ice pick and strangled her with stereo wire was executed Wednesday, Texas officials said.

Bobby Lee Hines, who was aged 19 at the time of the 1991 killing, was sharing a next-door apartment with a maintenance worker who had master keys to all the units in the Dallas-area building, according to the Texas Department of Criminal Justice.

Hours after neighbors heard screaming and other loud noises coming from the apartment of Michelle Wendy Haupt, 26, her body was found just inside the door of her unit, covered with about 18 puncture wounds, according to a summary of the case from the Texas attorney general's office.

Hines' fingerprint and bloody palm print were found in the apartment. Haupt's gold sand-dollar charm was found in Hines' pocket.

Hines was put to death by lethal injection at a state prison in Huntsville, Texas. He was pronounced dead at 6:28 p.m. local time, said Jason Clark, a spokesman for the criminal justice department.

Hines, 40, was the 11th person executed this year in Texas and the 33rd in the United States.

'It was wrong'
In his final statement, Hines asked Haupt's family for forgiveness, according to a copy of the statement provided by Clark.

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"To the victim's family, I am sure I know that I took somebody special from y'all," Hines said. "I know it wasn't right, it was wrong."

He also said that God has forgiven him and that being locked up for the rest of his life would have been more of a punishment.

"I wish there was some other way to show I'm sorry," he said.

Hines' execution was scheduled for earlier this year, but it was postponed so that DNA testing could be conducted on fingernail clippings collected from Haupt's body. The testing did not exclude Hines as a source of the DNA, according to the attorney general's office.

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