Hitman set to die for plot that killed toddler and parents
07/24/2003
HUNTSVILLE, Texas - Convicted hitman Allen Wayne Janecka once said the way he dealt with life on death row was to take it one day at a time.
More than 22 years after he arrived on death row, this could be his last day.
Janecka, 53, faced lethal injection Thursday evening for fatally shooting Kevin Wanstrath, a 14-month-old Houston boy, in the child's crib more than 24 years ago in a murder-for-hire scheme that also claimed the lives of the toddler's parents and, in an earlier murder plot, the child's grandmother.
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He'd be the 20th Texas inmate executed this year and the second in as many days.
Janecka's scheduled trip to the death chamber comes more than 10 years after another man, Markham Duff-Smith, was executed for paying Janecka to strangle his adopted mother -- Kevin Wanstrath's grandmother -- and make it look like a suicide.
"I never thought in July 1979 that I would still be involved in the same case," Johnny Bonds, the Houston detective crediting with cracking the complicated case, said this week. "I'll be glad it's over with."
Duff-Smith inherited and then squandered a $90,000 inheritance from Gertrude Duff-Smith Zabolio, 57, who was strangled by Janecka in 1975 at her home in Houston's exclusive River Oaks neighborhood. Four years later, he again sought Janecka, who fancied himself a mafia hitman, to kill his adoptive sister, Diana Wanstrath, 36; her husband, John, 35; and their 14-month-old son, Kevin, so he could collect up to $500,000 of their inheritance.
"He obviously really doesn't care very much about human life," said Chuck Rosenthal, the Harris County district attorney who prosecuted Janecka. "He just had no regard for people other than himself."
The Harris County medical examiner's office originally ruled Zabolio's death was a suicide and the Wanstrath shootings July 5, 1979, were murder-suicide.
Bonds, however, worked hundreds of hours poring over bank and telephone records to show Duff-Smith used middlemen to pay Janecka for the Zabolio slaying and again for the Wanstrath killings. One discrepancy in the coroner's ruling of murder-suicide in the Wanstrath shootings was that no murder weapon was found at the scene.
Duff-Smith was indicted but never tried for the Wanstrath killings. Janecka, a twice-convicted burglar from Weimar, about 85 miles west of Houston, confessed to the slayings after investigators found the gun used in the killings at his girlfriend's home in Georgia.
Janecka's original conviction in 1981 was reversed by the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals, which ruled his indictment was improper. He was tried a second time in 1993, convicted and condemned again.
"I'm absolutely sure we've got the right guy," Rosenthal said. "He's kind of had his two bites at the apple."
One reason for trying Janecka for Kevin Wanstrath's death was that the .22-caliber hollow-point bullet fired through the boy's head while he was in his crib with stuffed toys was intact because of the young victim's still soft bones, Rosenthal said.
"This is the only case in my 35 years as a police officer, when I gave (the bullet) to our crime lab ... it came back 100 percent from one weapon," Bonds said. "We knew exactly what weapon we were looking for."
Janecka confessed to the slayings at least twice, and unemotionally described the killings in a documentary filmed by a European production crew, but avoided the subject in infrequent conversations with reporters on death row.
"I'm not going to answer either way," he said in 1990 interview when asked about the killings.
In late appeals, he challenged ballistics evidence in his case, contending the Houston police crime lab -- now subject of investigations for faulty testing of DNA evidence -- also could have botched his case. No DNA evidence, however, was involved in Janecka's case.
Duff-Smith always maintained his innocence in the slayings, which ranked as among the most highly publicized murder cases ever in Houston. But in a dramatic disclosure while strapped to the Texas death chamber gurney on June 28, 1993, Duff-Smith confessed to the two murder schemes.
Prosecutors contended Duff-Smith arranged the killings because he was broke and needed money to maintain his lavish lifestyle.
Two middlemen who helped Duff-Smith find Janecka received prison terms for their roles.
On Wednesday evening, convicted killer Cedric Ransom was executed for gunning down an Arlington optometrist and part-time gun dealer during a robbery in Tarrant County almost a dozen years ago.
Online at: http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dallas/tsw/stories/072403dntexexecute.bcf19a4f.html
