Execution Report: Charles Rector

Charles Henry Rector, 44, was executed by lethal injection on 26 March 1999 in Huntsville, Texas for the robbery, abduction, rape, and murder of a 22-year-old woman.

On Saturday, 17 October 1981, Carolyn Davis, 22, and her live-in fiancee, Mark Arnold, met at a grocery store in Austin after Davis got off work to do some shopping. They made plans to have dinner later at their apartment and left in their separate vehicles. Davis, who had the groceries in her car, went straight home, while Arnold had another stop to make first. He followed her until about 8:45 p.m., when she turned to go into the apartments.

Arnold arrived at the apartment at around 9:15. He saw that it had been ransacked. One bag of groceries was inside, while the other bags were still in Davis's car. He could not find her, so he called the police.

Neighbors reported to the officers that a few minutes after 9:00 p.m., they heard a woman's scream and what sounded like a door slamming. A resident reported having seen three young black men in the hall near Davis's apartment just before the scream was heard. One of them was wearing overalls. One asked, "Where is it?" and another responded, "It's 204," which was Arnold and Davis's apartment.

Arnold reported that at least two guns appeared to be missing, along with other items including a gym bag. He stated that a Schrade knife found in the bedroom did not belong to him or Davis.

By 11:00 p.m., all of the investigators had left except for a fingerprint technician. Davis's stepfather was in the apartment with him. Suddenly, two men appeared in the open doorway as if they intended to enter. When they saw the two men inside, they turned and ran, got into a car, and sped away. The fingerprint technician alerted the police dispatcher via radio. Davis's stepfather also ran outside.

At 11:15 p.m., a resident who was doing her washing in the laundry room saw a black man run in. He asked her, "Did you see two other black dudes around here?" He ran back out before receiving her answer, which was that she had not seen them.

Austin police officer William Matthews arrived in his squad car at 11:30 p.m. He saw the fingerprint technician and Davis's stepfather standing outside and pointing east. He proceeded in that direction and came upon a green 1969 Buick Skylark stopped diagonally in the street with the trunk open. A young black man was standing behind it. When the man saw Officer Matthews, he jumped in the car and sped off, without closing the trunk. He ran a stop sign and flashing red light. Matthews pulled the car over, and the car stopped. Matthews saw, inside the open trunk, two rifles, a gym bag, and articles of women's clothing. There was also a rifle in the passenger area. The driver and lone occupant of the car was wearing a tight pair of designer blue jeans and no shirt. There was also a .22-caliber revolver in the car. It contained two live rounds, two spent casings, and had two empty chambers. There was a pair of overalls and a sheath for a Schrade knife on the front seat.

The driver, Charles Rector, then 27, claimed that the jeans were his and he bought everything else from two men he met at a convenience store. He could not, or would not, answer which convenience store, or where it was. Upon his arrest, he was searched. He was carrying women's jewelry in his pocket, including a watch, three gold chains, a gold ring, and a 1978 high school graduation ring inscribed with "CKD." The jeans he was wearing were size 6 Calvin Klein. He was not wearing underwear. An expert witness subsequently testified that the crotch of the jeans tested positive for the presence of semen.

Arnold stated that when he last saw Davis, she was wearing the jeans, gold chains, high school ring, and a blue blouse found in Rector's trunk. He testified that the rifles, gym bag, watch, and a jar of pennies found in Rector's car were taken from their apartment.

Rector gave no information about where Davis was. Her body was found the next morning floating face down in the Town Lake reservoir of the Colorado River in downtown Austin. She was naked and bruised, and she had been raped and shot once in the head with a .22-caliber weapon. The medical examiner ruled that the cause of death was drowning. He estimated the time of death as "around 11 p.m.," plus or minus about two hours.

Two other men were arrested and charged in the case: Howard Simon and Michael Miller, both 21. Both of them lived at the same halfway house as Rector, and all three had violated curfew on the night of Davis's murder. After further evidence tied Simon and Rector to another robbery in Austin and one in Killeen, Simon gave police a lengthy confession.

Simon stated that he, Rector, and Miller had been riding around Austin, looking for a store to rob, when they spotted Davis driving a new-looking car, and decided to follow her. After stopping at her apartment, she exited her car with a sack of groceries. She saw the men walking toward her, got back in her car, and began backing out, but they pretended to be going toward someone else's apartment, so she stepped back out again and walked to her door. Just as she unlocked the door, Simon said, Rector came up and pulled his pistol on her. She screamed, and they forced her inside. They then ransacked the apartment, put Davis in their car, and drove away.

After making a stop at the halfway house so Simon could change shirts, they began driving to Town Lake. In his confession, Simon stated, "The girl asked me, 'He isn't going to kill me, is he?' I told her no. She asked me this two or three times, and I kept telling her no; they weren't going to hurt her." After Rector raped her, however, he "looked to me and kind of mumbled, 'We got to kill her, man.'" Simon said he told Rector not to kill her. She turned to look at him, then Rector shot her in the head. He then held her head underwater to make sure she was dead.

Simon stated that he went back to the halfway house after leaving the lake, so his confession did not account for why Rector returned to Davis's apartment. Investigators theorized he returned to retrieve his knife.

The witness who was in the laundry room identified Rector as the man who ran in, spoke to her, and ran back out.

Rector had a prior conviction for murder for the 1974 shooting death of a man in what appeared to be a drug deal. He was sentenced to 14 years in prison. About 3 weeks before Davis was killed, he was paroled to a halfway house. He was out on a weekend pass at the time of the murder. The disclosure in news stories that all three suspects in Davis's murder were paroled felons caused a public furor. At the time, Texas was under strict prison population caps from U.S. District Judge William Wayne Justice and was using halfway houses as one way to comply with his mandates.

The public outrage over Davis's killing intensified in December, when Simon escaped from the Travis County jail. He was subsequently shot to death during a department store robbery in Louisiana.

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