Killer of woman, 85, executed

AP

HUNTSVILLE, Texas - An Oklahoma man convicted of shooting an 85-year-old woman to death during a burglary in far northeast Texas in 1993 was executed Tuesday night.

From the death chamber gurney, Willie Pondexter said he didn't murder anyone, but expressed remorse and apologized for his involvement in the crime.

"I am not mad. I'm a little upset and disappointed in the courts. I feel I've been let down," he said. Pondexter said that was all right. "I just played the hand that life dealt me," he said.

Pondexter said he hoped that people who read about him would "look at my life and learn from it."

He looked toward the district attorney who prosecuted him and a distant cousin of his victim and said, "I know I'm wrong asking you to forgive me." Before he could say anything else, the lethal drugs took effect. At 6:18 p.m., nine minutes after the lethal drugs began, he was pronounced dead.

Pondexter, 34, was one of two men condemned for the murder of Martha Lennox at her home in Clarksville.

Pondexter was the ninth Texas inmate executed this year and the first of two scheduled to die on consecutive nights in Huntsville. Pondexter was a high school dropout from Idabel, Okla., with an extensive criminal record that began as a juvenile. At the time of the slaying he was a 19-year-old unmarried father of two.

The U.S. Supreme Court refused to stop the execution in a ruling that came less than 30 minutes before he was scheduled to die.

Pondexter said he was in Lennox's elegant Victorian home near the courthouse square the night of Oct. 28, 1993, and acknowledged shooting her but said he didn't fire the fatal shot.

"I wasn't the guy who killed her," he told The Associated Press recently from death row. "For the part I played in it, I apologize."

Lennox was shot twice - once in the jaw and once in the head. A medical examiner testified either shot could have been fatal.

Pondexter said a companion, James Leon Henderson, 35, shot Lennox first and then gave the gun to him to fire the second shot.

"At 19, I was like, a follower," he said. "If I didn't go along, you're a punk. At 19, that's my thought process."

Lennox's family was worth millions and a foundation in the family name continues its work although neither she, nor her two older brothers, ever married and now have died. Pondexter, Henderson and three others involved in the burglary and slaying fled with less than $20 from her purse and the woman's Cadillac.

They were arrested hours later in Dallas after trying to rob a man walking along a street.

Pondexter and Henderson received the death penalty. The three others received prison terms.

"I didn't know Texas had the death penalty," Pondexter said. "I didn't read the papers. They didn't tell us that in school."

Jack Herrington, the Red River County district attorney at the time who prosecuted Pondexter, said the slaying of one of the Clarksville's prominent residents "shook the whole community."

"She was the sweetest lady, lived in the big house all by herself," he said.

Her home was given to the local historical society and is used for social functions. The house had attracted the interest of the burglars who watched it during the day and determined Lennox was living there alone, Herrington said.

Lennox's great-great grandfather was a signer of the Texas Declaration of Independence and she had donated a forest preserve north of town to the Nature Conservancy of Texas. The family foundation had assets topping $16 million as of a year ago and continues to make charitable donations.

"As tragic as the death of Martha Lennox was, her legacy does live on through the charitable giving that benefits primarily Red River County," Sam Hocker, a distant relative of the slain woman, said after watching Pondexter die.

"This has been a long process," Herrington said. "It wasn't a pleasant thing to do but I think justice has been served. I think there is, I guess, some relief because of this.

It's not something anybody enjoys, certainly, attending an execution. But I felt like since I requested the death penalty that I should be here."

Pondexter's record in Oklahoma included assault, battery and trespassing. As a juvenile, he was considered a delinquent. As an adult, he was arrested in Clarksville for unlawfully carrying a weapon. He was arrested again in Oklahoma for assault and battery, received 12 years probation and violated the terms of the probation.

Less than three weeks before the Lennox shooting, records showed he robbed and stabbed an Oklahoma woman. She testified against him at his murder trial. When he was arrested, Henderson was on probation for an auto theft conviction in Oklahoma and was carrying the murder weapon.

In 1997, some three years after arriving on death row, Pondexter nearly escaped with another condemned inmate by cutting through a recreation yard fence with a hacksaw blade.

Another condemned inmate, Kenneth Wayne Morris, was set to die Wednesday for the slaying of a Houston man, James Adams, who was gunned down during a burglary of his home in 1991. Two more executions are set for next week.