A death row inmate who was convicted of murdering teenage twins burst into a song before being put to death.
Garcia Glenn White, 61, was pronounced dead at 6:59PM on Tuesday (October 1) following a chemical injection at the state penitentiary in Huntsville.
White confessed to murdering five people over six years in the late 1980s and 1990s but he was only charged for the December 1989 killings of 16-year-old sisters Annette and Bernette Edwards.
The testimony revealed that the inmate went to the teenage girls’ home in Houston to smoke crack with their mother, Bonita, who he also fatally stabbed, according to The Guardian.
He then attacked Annette and Bernette after they came out of their locked bedroom to see what happened.
The deaths of the twin girls and their mother went unsolved for about six years until White admitted to the murders after he was arrested in connection with the July 1995 death of grocery store owner Hai Van Pham, who was fatally beaten during a robbery at his shop.
Law enforcement also shared that White confessed to fatally beating another woman, Greta Williams, in 1989.
White's legal team applied for several appeals in the hopes of overturning his death sentence over the years, but they were unsuccessful.
On Tuesday evening, the inmate shared his final words in the death chamber, expressing remorse for his crimes. “I would like to apologize for all the wrong I have done, and for the pain I’ve caused,” he said, cited by The New York Post.
He took responsibility for the deaths, regretted his actions, and then prayed for prison officials, cops, and “for my brothers and sisters behind these walls".
The prisoner then started singing verses from a hymn titled “I Trust in God,” saying in his loud voice: “I trust in God, my savior of the world, the one who never failed," while the lethal dose of the sedative pentobarbital began to take effect.
He also encouraged family and friends to “just keep pushing forward, keep loving one another,” and concluded by thanking prison officials “for treating us like human beings".
White was pronounced dead 17 minutes after the lethal injection was administrated.
White was the sixth man executed in the US in 10 days and the fifth inmate put to death in Texas so far this year.
“Garcia Glenn White committed five murders in three different transactions and two of his victims were teenage girls. This is the type of case that the death penalty was intended for,” Josh Reiss, chief of the post-conviction writs division with the Harris County District Attorney’s office in Houston, said, per The Guardian.
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