The man dubbed the 'Ice Pick Killer' was executed by lethal injection yesterday and uttered his last words as he struggled to take his final breaths.
Danny Bible, 66, had confessed to murdering four people, including his sister-in-law's young child, during a rape and murder spree which lasted a number of years. He was dubbed the Ice Pick Killer due to the fact that was his weapon of choice when he decided to murder a young woman in 1979.
Bible was executed on Wednesday, despite a last-minute plea from his lawyers, in which they claimed that his veins were too compromised for a lethal injection.
He was put to death in the state prison's chamber in Huntsville, after the Supreme Court rejected the appeal. After being strapped to a gurney, and despite concerns that they wouldn't be able to find a suitable vein, Bible was injected with a lethal cocktail of drugs.
The murderer shook throughout the experience - partly down to his Parkinson's disease - and the Houston Chronicle reports that he muttered "it hurts" as the drugs entered his system.
As he took his final gasping breaths, the paper also states that he said it "burned" before closing one eye, snoring and falling silent shortly after.
Bible stopped moving three minutes after the lethal injection was administered and he was pronounced dead at 18:32pm local time. His execution was the 12th in the US this year and the seventh in Texas alone. Since having the death penalty reinstated back in 1976, the state has executed more inmates than any other in the US.
While his last words were taken down by reporters, Bible made no final statement before the execution, which occurred in a typical time frame for a lethal injection.
The 66-year-old was convicted of the rape and murder of Inez Deaton, 20, who went to Bible's home to use his phone and was stabbed 11 times with an ice pick before having her body dumped near a Houston bayou. The crime had been unsolved for 20 years until Bible confessed to the murder and other sexual assaults that included the rape of an 11-year-old girl in Montana.
Court records show that Bible had been on a rape and murder spree for years and his crimes included the 1983 killing of his sister-in-law, Tracy Powers, her four-month-old son Justin and her roommate Pam Hudgins.
After a plea deal for those killings, Bible served eight years before being paroled. Once released, he raped a woman in Louisiana and was apprehended in Florida. It was shortly after this he admitted to the ice pick murder and was sentenced to death in 2003.
"Bible has killed at least four people, including an infant," Texas said in a court filing. "Unlike many offenders, he remained violent as he aged, committing his most recent rape in his late forties."
Ms Powers' brother Larry Lance told reporters after the execution: "Danny Paul Bible is as a vile and evil a person that has ever drawn breath.
"We are glad to have witnessed him draw his last breath. I know that he will burn in hell for eternity."
