Alexander Martinez

Alexander Rey Martinez, 29, was executed by lethal injection on 7 June 2005 in Huntsville, Texas for the robbery and murder of a 45-year-old woman.

On 12 August 2001, Martinez, then 25, telephoned an escort agency and arranged for a woman to meet him at his Houston home. When Helen Oliveros arrived, she asked Martinez for the $300 he had agreed to pay. Martinez argued about the amount and whether he was going to pay. Oliveros then stated that she was going to leave, and began gathering her things. Martinez then put a knife to Oliveros' neck and had sex with her. Martinez then cut Oliveros' throat, and she died. Martinez then took $150 and some drugs from the victim. He hid the body in a closet for three days, then dumped it in a field.

On 23 August, Martinez attacked his stepmother, Maria Martinez, slashing her throat. She survived after spending nine days in the hospital. Alexander was arrested later that day after a relative he confided in notified the police. While in custody, Martinez confessed to killing Oliveros. Her body - nude and stuffed inside garbage bags - was found that day.

While awaiting trial, Martinez, who had extensive tatoos on his arms and torso, had two more added to his arms. They were tombstones bearing the names of his victims. Maria's tombstone read "To be continued." Oliveros' read "$300" and "R.I.P."

Martinez had numerous prior convictions and had been in and out of jail and prison since the age of 15. In August 1994, he was convicted of attempted murder for stabbing a worker at a pizza restaurant. He was sentenced to 7 years in prison. He served approximately one year before being paroled in August 1995. He was back behind bars a month later, on a felony theft conviction. He was paroled again on the attempted murder sentence in July 2001. He killed Oliveros 23 days later.

A jury convicted Martinez of capital murder in December 2002 and sentenced him to death. The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals affirmed the conviction and sentence in March 2004. In August 2004, Martinez waived his remaining appeals.

"Yeah, I believe in violence," Martinez said in an interview from death row at the Polunsky Unit in Livingston. "I was raised up with violence. I was hit, kicked, hollered at. It destroyed my family. Even in here, I'm subject to violence. Even the state will be violent when I'm killed." Martinez also admitted that he would probably kill again if he were freed. "Maybe not now, maybe not in ten years. But someday, maybe twenty years from now, somebody would set me off."

Martinez was adopted when he was 15 months old. He said that his adoptive mother, Velma Griffin, who raised him for the next 7½ years, sexually abused him and beat him "every night until [her] hands hurt and she had to stop."

While on death row, Martinez wrote Griffin a letter, in which he stated, "I have not decided what discipline I will give you, but it will be severe ... Wherever you go, I'll find you. I pray you go straight to Hell when you die, because when I meet you there, I will torture you for eternity, just as I am condemned forever."

Griffin denied Martinez' allegations. She repeatedly attempted to visit him on death row, but he refused to see her.

When Martinez waived his appeals last August, he received a March 2005 execution date. That date was put off, however, when his lawyer filed an appeal against his wishes. "You should have heard him," attorney Pat McCann said. "He was furious."

In the interview, Martinez admitted that he killed Oliveros. "I didn't have $300," he said. "She got real mad, and we got into a fight. I stabbed her."

"I don't like what I did," Martinez said. "I'm ashamed for what I did."

On the afternoon of his execution, while he was waiting in the holding cell next to the death chamber, Martinez prepared a handwritten statement. "I have caused so much pain to so many people," he wrote. "I especially want to apologize to my victim's family for the life I took ... I am ashamed for what I've done!"

In his last statement, Martinez thanked his family and friends and expressed his love for them. He added, "and thanks for the friends at the Polunsky Unit that helped me get through this that didn't agree with my decision and still gave me their friendship." The lethal injection was started, and Martinez was pronounced dead at 6:18 p.m.