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Posted on 06/25/2002 10:07:55 PM PDT by Illbay
By MIKE TOLSON
Copyright 2002 Houston Chronicle
HUNTSVILLE -- Almost 10 years after he killed his adoptive parents, two sisters and brother-in-law in a gruesome scheme to claim his inheritance, Robert Coulson was put to death by injection Tuesday night, still insisting he was wrongfully convicted.
"I'm innocent," Coulson said in a brief final statement from the gurney. "I had absolutely nothing to do with my family's murder. I want to thank the people who supported me. I hope they will continue the fight. That's all."
As the flow of lethal drugs was about to begin, Coulson noticed former Houston Police Department homicide investigator Dale Atchetee among the witnesses and offered a postscript.
"You know you planted that evidence, Dale Atchetee. You know it, and I know it," he said.
Coulson then fell silent as the first of the drugs hit him. He was pronounced dead at 6:23 p.m., nine minutes after the process began. He was the 17th Texas inmate executed this year.
Coulson's final words referred to an envelope that Atchetee discovered at the house during the first night of the investigation. Prosecutors said the envelope, which contained writing on the back by Coulson's father concerning a proposed business deal, was out on a desk in the family's home office, indicating that Coulson was expected to be coming over on the night of the crime.
Crime scene photographs later showed that the envelope had not been out on the desk that night. Prosecutors admitted the error during a 1998 hearing. The mistake was inadvertent, they said, but Coulson's appeals attorney argued otherwise.
Federal and state appeals courts said the issue was not significant enough to justify overturning the conviction.
"Today brings us no joy, only resolution," Linda Payne, Coulson's cousin and the niece of his mother, said in a prepared statement on behalf of the family of the victims. "Robert Coulson committed a horrible crime; he received a fair trial and was found guilty by a jury of his peers. He must now accept responsibility for his actions."
Coulson and his roommate, Jared Althaus, were arrested Nov. 17, 1992, four days after the bodies of Otis and Mary Coulson, daughters Sarah and Robin, and Robin's husband, Rick Wentworth, were discovered in the charred wreckage of the family's Spring Branch home. Robin was five months pregnant at the time.
Each member of the family had been bound with plastic ties and gagged with duct tape. Plastic trash compactor bags were placed over their heads before they were splashed with gasoline. The ensuing blaze burned the bodies beyond recognition.
Althaus confessed immediately. He said Coulson had hatched the scheme because he was jobless and in debt. With everyone out of the way, he stood to claim an estate valued at about $600,000.
For his role in implicating Coulson, Althaus received a 10-year sentence.
[Texas] Man who killed 5 in family to be executed on Tuesday
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Bye bye, scum. You got exactly what you deserved.
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