Man set for execution today in 1989 slaying of neighbor
Posted on 09/17/2002 3:45:19 AM PDT by MeekOneGOP
Man set for execution today in 1989 slaying of neighbor
Relatives remember kindness of Pleasant Grove woman, 80, attacked in her home
09/17/2002
Nina Rutherford Redd couldn't imagine the danger that lived two doors away from her.
In 1989, after a man moved into her neighborhood with his teenage girlfriend and infant son, Ms. Redd tried to help the struggling couple, giving them milk for their baby and access to her phone.
Several weeks later, the man broke into the 80-year-old woman's Pleasant Grove home and beat her and raped her and slashed her throat.
KIM RITZENTHALER / DMN "She was about the closest thing to a mother that I would ever have," said Marcie Bowling (left) of her slain aunt Nina Rutherford Redd, whose throat was slashed. |
That man, Jesse Joe Patrick, 44, is scheduled to be executed Tuesday evening for Ms. Redd's murder.
"I used to think that if they had found out who did it, I would feel better," said Marcie Bowling, 51, a niece who was raised by Ms. Redd. "And then I thought if they convicted him, I would feel better. Then I thought if they put him to death, I would feel better. But nothing is ever going to make me feel better. He took something that shouldn't have been taken from us."
Mr. Patrick, who declined to be interviewed, confessed to the murder but has since said he can't remember what happened.
Last week, he lost his battle for a DNA test of semen found at the crime scene. The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals ruled that a state district judge did not have the authority to order the testing, although Mr. Patrick's wife had agreed to pay for the test.
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The court found that Mr. Patrick did not meet the law's requirement that there be a "reasonable probability" that the test might exonerate him.
Keith Hampton, Mr. Patrick's attorney, said Monday that all of the motions that he had filed with the Court of Criminal Appeals had been denied. The latest argument was a dispute about whether Mr. Patrick is mentally retarded.
Mr. Hampton said he planned to file a motion Tuesday with the U.S. Supreme Court asking for a stay of execution and a review of Mr. Patrick's possible mental retardation.
If Mr. Patrick is executed Tuesday, he will be the 25th Texas inmate put to death this year.
Ms. Redd was an active woman who still worked occasionally as a seamstress and was involved in a businesswomen's association.
"Like anybody else, she just went to work and worked hard," said her sister, Helen McCrory.
Ms. Redd had worked at a Dallas cotton mill for 14 cents an hour during the Depression, Ms. McCrory said.
"She was about 30 or 31 before she got married," Ms. McCrory recalled. "She just loved to dance."
Ms. Redd stepped in to help care for her twin 11-month-old niece and nephew when her 26-year-old sister died in the early 1950s.
"She was about the closest thing to a mother that I would ever have," Mrs. Bowling, the victim's niece, said.
Mrs. Bowling said she tried to persuade Ms. Redd, who was widowed in the 1960s, to move from her longtime home.
Mr. Patrick and his girlfriend and child lived in a house near Ms. Redd's that they had rented from his aunt.
Mrs. Bowling said her husband had warned Ms. Redd to be careful about letting strangers into her house, but her response was, "Well, they need help."
She knew nothing of Mr. Patrick's violent past.
According to court records, Mr. Patrick had been sentenced to four years in prison for aggravated assault in the mid-1980s. He also had been accused of rape but had not been indicted by a grand jury.
In the hours before Ms. Redd's murder, Mr. Patrick had been drinking and had tried to rape his girlfriend, according to court records.
Mr. Patrick left his home, and when he returned he found his girlfriend and son gone, records show. He walked to Ms. Redd's home, crawled through the bathroom window and attacked the sleeping woman.
In his 1989 confession, Mr. Patrick wrote that he tried to have sex with Ms. Redd before he slashed her throat. He said he looked for money but didn't find any.
"I am sorry that this happened," he wrote in his confession. "I think that I need some serious help."
Ms. Redd's sister - and next-door neighbor - found her body July 8, 1989. The sister never returned to her own home, and relatives say she rarely talks about the murder.
Mr. Patrick fled the state, but he was captured about two weeks later in Jackson, Miss.
Investigators found the victim's blood on a sock and toilet paper in Mr. Patrick's home, and his palm print was found on her bathroom window.
A knife found at the scene of the crime was identified as his.
A Dallas County jury convicted Mr. Patrick in April 1990 of capital murder and sentenced him to death.
"I want to see him executed," Ms. McCrory said. "He's going to die a less-painful death than she did."
But Mrs. Bowling said she had decided not to attend the execution.
"I don't think it's going to bring any particular closure to see him die," she said. "Just knowing that he won't be able to do this to anyone else is enough."
E-mail teiserer@dallasnews.com
Execution by Lethal Injection "People think this is all painless and stuff like that. It ain't! Basically, they [the condemned] suffer a lot. They are sort of paralysed but they can hear. They drown in their own fluid and suffocate to death really. Yeah! We get problems. Sometimes the guy doesn't want to get onto the table. But, we have the largest guard in Texas here. He gets them on that table, no problem. They are strapped down in seconds. No problem. They go on that mean old table and get the goodnight juice whether they like it or not."
Assistant Warden-in-Charge of Executions, Neil Hodges, to the author, 1987
I just found this:Execution by Lethal Injection "People think this is all painless and stuff like that. It ain't! Basically, they [the condemned] suffer a lot. They are sort of paralysed but they can hear.....
That sounds like his opinion to me. I think if death by injection were really as he describes, the LIBS would have howled a long time ago.
I understand that they give them a sedative first that calms them and makes them very sleepy, and when they inject the deadly stuff it's pretty quick, and humane.
Parolee executed for 1989 Dallas slaying
09/18/2002
HUNTSVILLE, Texas - A convict with a history of assaults was executed Tuesday for raping and fatally beating and slashing an 80-year-old Dallas woman during an attack at her home more than 13 years ago.
Jessie Joe Patrick already was on parole when evidence showed he crawled through a window and killed Nina Rutherford Redd, who lived alone a few houses away from him.
Patrick, 44, was pronounced dead at 6:17 p.m. CDT, seven minutes after the lethal dose began.
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He declined to make a final statement, but smiled and nodded to his wife, brother and other relatives as they entered the chamber.
His wife, Hester Patrick, repeatedly said, "I love you."
As he gasped and sputtered when the drugs began taking effect, his wife began wailing, and at one point she cried out: "Bastards!"
Then in the moments after her husband lost consciousness and before being examined by a physician who pronounced him dead, Hester Patrick bitterly denounced the death penalty and criminal justice system.
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"I hope you all are satisfied now," she said. "You should be ashamed of yourselves."
Patrick's attorneys filed last-ditch appeals in the federal courts to try to block the punishment. The U.S. Supreme Court rejected his final appeals about an hour before he was executed, making him the 25th condemned killer to be put to death this year in Texas.
Earlier appeals also were unsuccessful to have DNA testing of some evidence in hopes of exonerating him. Prosecutors argued a state district judge who agreed to the tests had no authority to do so and evidence against Patrick was overwhelming.
"This was not his first go-round with the law," recalled Jerri Sims, the former Dallas County district attorney who prosecuted Patrick for capital murder for the July 8, 1989, slaying. "It was so brutal. And, of course, he had no remorse."
Patrick's Austin-based lawyer, Keith Hampton, also questioned Patrick's mental competence, saying the former landscaper was mentally retarded and putting him to death would be unconstitutional.
There was no IQ test for Patrick, however, to quantify Hampton's contention.
Sims said the possibility of mental retardation never surfaced at his trial.
Patrick, his girlfriend and their infant son, had moved recently into the neighborhood in the Pleasant Grove section of southeast Dallas, and Redd had allowed them to use her phone and gave them milk for the child.
On the night of the killing, court records show he had been drinking and had tried to rape his girlfriend.
Redd's 78-year-old sister, who lived next door, discovered the body.
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"Our prayers are for the Patrick family during this sad time of grief," Redd's family said in a statement released after the execution. "This is not a vendetta or a social event. We all hurt and hope the Patrick's can understand our grief for the past 13 years waiting for justice to be done..."
"Our family will always grieve for the way Nina die."
Police questioning neighbors began suspecting Patrick when his girlfriend said it appeared the distinctive wood-handled and square-tipped butcher knife found lying next to Redd's body appeared to be his.
Detectives found Patrick's palm print outside the victim's bathroom window sill. A sock in a trash can at Patrick's home was stained with blood that matched the victim. A dentist testified a bite mark on the slain woman's wrist matched Patrick's dental impression. Hairs at the slaying scene matched Patrick's hair.
Police arrested Patrick two weeks later at his sister's home in Jackson, Miss. When officers arrived, he was hiding under a bed.
Jurors deliberated about 50 minutes before convicting him of the slaying. It took the same jury less than 45 minutes to decide on the death sentence after three women testified Patrick either had assaulted or raped them in a drunken rage.
Patrick, a Los Angeles native, first went to prison in September 1985 for aggravated assault. He was released on probation after serving less than four months of a four-year term, but returned six months later as a parole violator. Less than six months later, in January 1987, was paroled to Dallas County.
Patrick declined to speak with reporters in the weeks preceding his execution date. On a Web site used by inmates to attract penpals, he offered assurances to potential correspondents that "I am not an animal, but rather a down-to-earth person."
Another lethal injection was set for Wednesday. Ron Shamburger, 30, was condemned for the 1994 fatal shooting of Texas A&M University student Lori Baker during a burglary at her College Station home. Shamburger was a fifth-year senior at A&M at the time.
Hot Damn!!! NEXT!!!
"Mentally retarded" and yet he passed his high school equivalency exam.
I knew that when the court opened up that can of worms all the lawyers'd start wiggling.
As for the new widow: There're plenty of other creeps out there. Maybe she can start a "pen-pal" relationship with a child molestor or rapist, and eventually remarry. I see this has become all the rage among the twisted female community.
Resendez-Ramirez got married last year, I believe.
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