Elkie Taylor

Elkie Lee Taylor, 46, was executed by lethal injection on 6 November 2008 in Huntsville, Texas for the robbery and murder of two men in their homes.

On 2 April 1993, Taylor, then 31, and Darryl Birdow, also 31, broke into the Fort Worth home of Otis Flake. The invaders tied the mentally ill, 65-year-old victim up then strangled him with two wire coat hangers. They then stole a television and some other items.

Eleven days earlier, Ramon Carillo was murdered in his home, seven blocks away from Flake's home. He had also been strangled with a coat hanger.

A friend of Flake's later testified that she came to his home and found the front door open and the house in disarray. She then saw Taylor and Birdow coming from the back side of the house. Taylor had a white bag in his hand. The witness then went inside and found Flake's body.

Taylor was apprehended after a four-hour chase from Fort Worth to Waco driving the cab of a stolen 18-wheel truck. At one point, he tried to ram two police cars and run over two state troopers standing on the side of the road. The chase ended when a trooper stood in front of the truck and shot out its tires with a shotgun. Upon his arrest, Taylor confessed to tying and stealing from both of the victims, but he said that Birdow killed them.

Taylor's roommates testified that Taylor boasted to them that he and Birdow had killed two people by strangling them with coat hangers.

Taylor, who also used the name Ronnie Lee Watkins, had four previous burglary convictions in the last three years. He began serving an 8-year prison sentence in April 1992, but was paroled only 9 months later. (At the time, early release was common in Texas due to strict prison population caps imposed by U.S. District Judge William Wayne Justice.)

A jury convicted Taylor of capital murder in June 1994 and sentenced him to death. The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals affirmed the conviction and sentence in April 1996. All of his subsequent appeals in state and federal court were denied.

Darryl W. Birdow, who also had a criminal history, was convicted of capital murder and sentenced to life in prison. He remains in custody as of this writing.

Taylor declined to be interviewed while on death row.

"You ain't got to worry about nothing," Taylor said in his last statement to his friends and an aunt who attended his execution. "I hope to see all of y'all one day." Taylor then turned to face the relatives of the two victims, who watched from a different room. "It's bad to see a man get murdered for something he didn't do. But I am taking it like a man, like a warrior." The lethal injection was then started. He was pronounced dead at 6:30 p.m.