Death row murderer blew kisses at women and yelled ‘woof woof’ before being put to death with lethal injection
A CONVICTED killer blew kisses at women and barked "woof woof"; just moments before he was executed for the murder of a prison officer.
Travis Runnels, 46, looked through a window while he was belted to a death chamber gurney at a state penitentiary in Texas on Wednesday and blew kisses to three female friends and two of his attorneys who were watching just feet away.
After telling the warden he did not have a final statement, Runnels blurted out "woof, woof" just before taking four quick breaths and snoring four times before all movement stopped.
He was pronounced dead, 22 minutes after being injected with a lethal dose of the powerful sedative pentobarbital.
He didn't ever look at the sister and brother-in-law of his victim, who watched through a window in an adjacent witness room.
Runnels was convicted of slashing the throat of state prison shoe factory supervisor Stanley Wiley, 38, on January 29, 2003.
The 46-year-old had been serving a 70-year sentence for an aggravated robbery conviction from Dallas when he killed Wiley with a knife used to trim shoes.
At the factory, Runnels approached Wiley from behind, pulled his head back and used enough force for the knife to go through his trachea and cut Wiley’s spinal cord.
“It was cowardly,” prosecutor Randall Sims told jurors at Runnels’ trial.
The execution was delayed about an hour until the U.S. Supreme Court turned down an appeal by Runnels’ attorneys, who said a prosecution witness at his 2005 trial provided false testimony and that no defense was presented because his lawyers advised him to plead guilty and called no witnesses.
Janet Gilger-VanderZanden, one of his more recent attorneys, said Runnels changed during his 14 years on death row.
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“There is true and authentic remorse for the death of Mr. Wiley. There are no excuses, rather there is a commitment to finding some kind of light in what was once a world of only darkness,” Gilger-VanderZanden said.
Lower courts and the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles had also turned down Runnels’ attorneys’ requests to stop his execution.
The Texas Attorney General’s Office pointed to assaults by Runnels on other guards after Wiley’s death, including throwing feces and a light bulb at them, as evidence that he was a future danger and merited a death sentence.