Man executed for killing girlfriend

Huntsville, Texas: Donnie Lee Roberts, convicted in his girlfriend’s 2003 slaying in Texas, was executed on Wednesday for fatally shooting the woman and taking items from her home to sell or trade to support his drug habit.

Roberts, 41, became the 12th inmate to be put to death this year in the nation’s most active capital punishment state. He was pronounced dead at 6.30pm CDT. His lethal injection came after the US Supreme Court refused to review his case earlier this week, and no additional appeals were filed to try to block the execution.

Roberts was condemned for the fatal shooting of Vicki Bowen, 44, at her East Texas home. At the time of his arrest for the October 2003 killing, Roberts had violated his probation for a robbery conviction in Louisiana by fleeing to Texas after dropping out of a drug treatment programme.

Authorities said he apparently met Bowen, a dental assistant, at a bar and moved in with her at her home on Lake Livingston, about 75 miles north-east of Houston. Their relationship soured because Roberts wasn’t working and was abusing drugs and alcohol, investigators said, and he shot Bowen after she refused his demand for money.

Roberts was arrested at a suspected crack house in Livingston when a truck missing from Bowen’s home was spotted there the same day Bowen’s body was discovered.

“He was cooperative and confessed several times,” District Attorney Lee Hon said. “He was saying he wanted the death penalty.”

Roberts told authorities he made several trips from the house where Bowen was shot, collecting property that he took into town to sell and trade for crack.

He also surprised detectives by confessing to the shotgun death of a man that happened a decade earlier in Natchitoches Parish, Louisiana authorities initially believed the victim, Al Crow, had died of asphyxiation in a fire at the camper trailer where he was living but reopened the case following Roberts’ disclosure, found shotgun pellets and determined it was a homicide.

Roberts was charged with murder but not tried for Crow’s death.

Stephen Taylor, one of Roberts’ lawyers at his Texas capital murder trial, said the confessions complicated his trial defence.

“It’s almost like somebody saying he was a serial killer, that he’s killed before and he killed again,” Taylor said. “It’s one thing to say you have the right to remain silent. Use it!

“It’s always sad for someone to lose his life, especially for something so stupid.”

Bowen didn’t show up for work on October 16, 2003, and a co-worker who went to check on her found her body wrapped in a blanket and lying in a pool of blood. A medical examiner determined Bowen was killed with two gunshots to her head.

Roberts took the witness stand and tried to blame Bowen for the gunfire, saying he was acting in self-defence by grabbing a .22-calibre rifle after seeing her reach down inside a couch to locate a pistol that was kept there.

— AP