Execution Report: Joseph Faulder

Joseph Stanley Faulder, 61, was executed by lethal injection on 17 June 1999 in Huntsville, Texas for the murder of a woman while robbing her in her home.

On Tuesday, 8 July 1975, Faulder, then 37, and his girlfriend, Linda McCann, burst into an unlocked door of Inez Phillips's home in the east Texas town of Gladewater. They opened a floor safe, but found it empty. Phillips, 75, fought back against McCann. Faulder then bound and gagged the elderly woman with tape and beat her on the back of the head with a blackjack. He then stabbed her in the chest with a kitchen knife. The perpetrators stole the victim's wedding ring and some household items.

Phillips' maid found her body the next morning. The knife was still embedded in her chest. The maid told police that Phillips routinely left the side door of the house unlocked so she could let herself in.

Investigators recovered a slug from a bullet from the floor. An autopsy showed that Phillips was killed by the blow to the back of her head and was already dead when she was stabbed.

It was widely known in Gladewater that Phillips, the widow of a banker, was wealthy and lived alone. Her neighbors did not recall seeing any suspicious people or vehicles on the day or days before her murder. Local police and the Gregg County sheriff's department investigated and interviewed people such as contractors, repairmen, couriers, or visitors to the house who might have known about the safe in the floor of the victim's utility room. They also compiled a list of names of people who were involved in thefts and burglaries in the area in 1975 and who had left the area following the murder. These names were submitted to the National Crime Information Center. Some friends of Mrs. Phillips offered a reward of $50,000 for information about her murder, but investigators never assembled any solid leads.

Finally, on 17 April 1977, nearly two years after the murder, authorities in Lincoln County, Colorado arrested Joseph Faulder on unrelated charges. They checked his name against the National Crime Information Center and found that it had been submitted by Gregg County officials in connection to Phillips's murder. Faulder had moved to Texas in 1975 from Canada, where he had served two short prison sentences between 1956 and 1961. One of his convictions was for auto theft. The nature of the other offense was not available for this report. While working at a service station in Longview in Gregg County in 1975, he was accused of stealing $336.

A member of the Gregg County sheriff's department interviewed Faulder in Colorado and then brought him back to Texas. He gave a confession. Linda McCann was taken into custody the following week.

As a citizen of Canada, Faulder had the right, under international law, to notify the Canadian consulate of his arrest. According to Gregg County District Attorney Odis Hill, Faulder, who was carrying a Colorado driver's license, insisted that his arrest not be reported to Canadian authorities.

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