'Railroad' Serial Killer Set To Die Tonight

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[b]'Railroad' Serial Killer Set To Die Tonight[/b]

[b]Attorneys Try To Stop Execution[/b]

POSTED: 8:13 am EDT June 27, 2006
UPDATED: 11:24 am EDT June 27, 2006


HOUSTON -- Attorneys for train-hopping serial killer Angel Maturino Resendiz were on a mission in the courts Tuesday to try to keep the man nicknamed the "Railroad Killer" from an evening trip to the Texas death chamber.

"It's hard to be optimistic when your client is scheduled to be executed," lead appeals lawyer Jack Zimmermann said. "In a neutral playing field, if this wasn't the railway killer, I think the courts would be more inclined to rule in our favor. I think they're concerned with public pressure."

Resendiz, who has been linked to 15 slayings across the nation, faced lethal injection for the stabbing and bludgeoning of Claudia Benton, 39. Benton was killed eight days before Christmas in 1998 in her home near Houston's world-renowned Texas Medical Center where she worked as a physician and researcher.

She is among eight slayings linked to Resendiz, 46, in Texas, Two more were tied to him in both Illinois and Florida, and one each in Kentucky, California and Georgia.


His spree in 1998 and into the summer of 1999 swept terror across Texas and then the nation, as authorities searched for an indiscriminate serial killer. The Border Patrol had picked up the Mexico native for illegal entry in early June 1999 near El Paso and released him back into Mexico, saying they were unaware Resendiz - who used numerous aliases - was on the FBI's Most Wanted list. He committed four slayings after his release.

His lethal injection Tuesday evening would be the 13th of the year in the nation's most active death penalty state. It is scheduled for after 6 p.m. CDT.

Several appeals were pending in the federal courts, including petitions before the U.S. Supreme Court asking justices to review his case and delay the punishment. The appeal blamed a previous court-appointed lawyer for missing filing deadlines that are blocking new appeals now.

In addition, the Houston-based consul general of Mexico filed an appeal to the Supreme Court questioning the Mexican national's competency and challenging the constitutionality of the lethal injection process. Zimmermann also had an appeal arguing Resendiz, who described himself as half-man and half-angel, couldn't be executed because he didn't believe he ever could die.

"The average reader is going to say: What difference does it m ake if the guy's a bad guy," Zimmermann said. "The difference is we're a nation of laws and we don't to that in the United States. We don't execute people who are insane, we don't execute people who don't realize they're going to be executed and it's going to happen soon and why."

Resendiz's mental state was the focus of a three-day court hearing last week in Houston where a judge decided Resendiz was competent to be put to death.

"I'll sleep for three days and my body will disappear only to reappear in another location," Resendiz told a psychiatrist who examined him before the hearing. "But it will be my same body, only well-rested and renovated.

"My mind will be like new."

"We all know this guy has played the system like a fiddle, " Houston crime victims advocate Andy Kahan said, calling Resendiz a "master manipulator."

"His delusions of grandeur are finally are going to end."

Resendiz's killings began in San Antonio in 1986. Benton, 39, was among 13 people killed over a 16-month period that ended in June 1999 with a double slaying in Illinois.

A month later, Resendiz walked across the international bridge at El Paso from Mexico and surrendered to a Texas Ranger as part of a deal arranged by his sister in New Mexico.

The sister, Manuela Karkiewicz, was among six people Resendiz selected to watch him die

In the weeks before his surrender, Resendiz was placed on the FBI's Most Wanted list, gained his "Railroad Killer" nickname as authorities hunting for him determined the serial killer used freight trains to move quickly and efficiently around the country. Many of his crimes were near railroad tracks.

He initially was tied to more than one slaying through DNA matches from the Benton killing and the slayings of Weimar church pastor Norman "Skip" Sirnic, and his wife, Karen.

Benton, who was stabbed with a knife and beaten 19 times with a bronze statue, lived down the street from a railroad track in the Houston enclave of West University. Sirnic and his wife, both killed with a sledgehammer as they slept, lived directly across the street from a railroad track that runs through the heart of their small town about 100 miles west of Houston. The women in both slayings were raped.

Besides his sister, Resendiz also designated as execution witnesses his mother, two brothers and Nancy Beall Resendiz, a Cleveland, Ohio, woman who says she is his wife. Prison officials have her listed as a friend. A Harris County Jail chaplain also will be allowed in as his designated spiritual adviser.

Resendiz declined a final meal for Tuesday. He initially decided to donate his body to science but on Monday filed a new request with the Texas Department of Criminal Justice giving his mother custody of his remains, agency spokeswoman Michelle Lyons said.

[url="http://www.nbc6.net/nationalnews/9430927/detail.html"]http://www.nbc6.net/nationalnews/9430927/detail.html[/url]

[Guest schotzee]

Oh that was awful.I remember when that was happening.