Garcia Glenn White showed remorse before being executed by lethal injection in Texas on Tuesday, 35 years after he brutally murdered two identical 16-year-old twin sisters.
White, 61, was executed at a Texas state penitentiary in Huntsville, marking the sixth execution of a death row inmate in just under two weeks.
White confessed to murdering five people over a six-year span in the late 1980s and 1990s. However, prosecutors only charged him with the deaths of teenage victims Annette and Bernette Edwards.
He was pronounced dead at 6:56 p.m. USA today reported.
“I apologize and pray that you can find peace, comfort and closure in your heart for the wrong I have done and the pain I have caused you and anyone else I have caused pain to,” White told some of his victims. ‘ family members as they tied him to the execution table. “I’m sorry for all the pain I’ve caused.”
Garcia Glenn White, 61, was executed by lethal injection Tuesday for stabbing two 16-year-old girls to death in 1989.
White was the fifth man executed in Texas this year.
Patrick McCann, White’s attorney for 26 years, said he was “devastated by this loss, but at the same time it is more devastating for Glenn’s family.”
White was allowed to have five loved ones in the room during the execution, but asked them not to come, McCann said.
“I think he was trying to spare people the pain of watching him die,” McCann said.
White spoke to prison guards and fellow inmates during his final words.
“To all my incarcerated brothers and sisters: keep going, keep loving each other,” he said. “To the administration again and the guards, thank you for treating us like human beings.”
He thanked his family and friends “for all the love and comfort” before singing “I Trust in God.”
White had six brothers and was once a football star. The injuries derailed his life, costing him his football career and, later, a full-time job.
When he discovered crack, he had three children to support. The drug eventually took over his life.
The wave of crimes that would land him on death row began in 1989, although he would only admit everything to the police years later.
His first victim was Greta Williams, a 27-year-old woman who was beaten to death just months after moving from Chicago to Houston.
That same year, White killed Bonita Edwards and her identical twin daughters, Annette and Bernette, in their Houston apartment.
Pictured: Huntsville State Penitentiary where White was executed.
The knife murders occurred just one day after the twins’ 16th birthday and a few weeks before Christmas.
Their bodies had multiple stab wounds and all were found partially clothed, leading investigators to suspect a sexual motive, according to court records.
Their murders remained unsolved for six years.
White then killed Hai Pham, a father of seven who worked at a convenience store.
While detained for Pham’s murder, one of White’s close friends told police that White admitted to killing the Edwards family.
White’s confession was corroborated when semen found on Bernette was a 99.9999 percent match to his DNA, court records showed.
White told police he was smoking crack cocaine with Edwards when a fight broke out between the two.
“She took a knife, I took the knife and stabbed her,” he said, according to court records. ‘Some children go out. I entered the bedroom after them. …I stabbed one in the bedroom and another in the living room.’
Prosecutors only filed charges in the Edwards case and White was convicted of the murders of Annette and Bernette.
“Two dead 16-year-old girls speak volumes about the cruelty of these crimes,” Harris County Prosecutor Josh Reiss told USA Today.
The last man executed before White was 55-year-old Missouri inmate Marcellus Williams.
Williams was convicted of killing Felicia Gayle, a social worker and former newspaper reporter.
The last man executed before White was Missouri inmate Marcellus Williams, 55, convicted in 1998 of stabbing to death Felicia Gayle, a social worker and former newspaper reporter.
Williams’ attorneys argued Monday that the state Supreme Court should halt his execution over alleged procedural errors in jury selection and the prosecution’s alleged mishandling of the murder weapon.
But the state’s high court rejected those arguments, and Gov. Mike Parson rejected Williams’ clemency request, clearing the way for his execution to proceed.
Williams, 55, has maintained his innocence and Tuesday marks the third time Williams has faced execution. He was less than a week away from his execution in January 2015 when the state Supreme Court canceled it, giving his attorneys time to conduct additional DNA testing.
He was just hours away from being executed in August 2017, when then-Gov. Eric Greitens, a Republican, granted a stay and appointed a panel of retired judges to review the case. But that panel never reached a conclusion.
Williams was executed last Tuesday, even though prosecutors had expressed doubts about his guilt.
Since September 20, six men have been executed in Texas, Alabama, Oklahoma, Missouri and South Carolina.
