Execution Report: Richard Tabler

Richard Lee Tabler, 46, was executed by lethal injection on 13 February 2025 in Huntsville, Texas for the murder of two men in their car.

Tabler worked at a topless bar in Killeen. He quit or was fired after getting into a conflict with the manager, Mohamed-Amine Rahmouni. During their argument, Rahmouni allegedly waved a ten-dollar bill in Tabler's face and said he could have his family "wiped out" for ten dollars.

Tabler borrowed a pickup truck, 9-millimeter firearm, and a camcorder. On Thanksgiving night, 25 November 2004, he called Rahmouni with an offer to sell him some cheap stereo equipment. He told him they would meet in the parking lot of a local business. Tabler, then 25, and his friend, Timothy Payne, drove to the parking lot in the borrowed pickup and waited. Rahmouni, 28, arrived with Haitham Zayed, 25 at about 2:00 a.m. on Friday. As soon as their car stopped, Tabler shot Zayed, who was driving, and then Rahmouni. He then exited the pickup and pulled both men out of their car. He saw that Rahmouni was still alive, so he shot him a second time. He had Payne videotape part of the shooting. He then took a wallet and black bag that he found inside the car.

At the time, Tabler was working with Officer Robert Clemons of the Killeen Police Department as a confidential informant in exchange for the department's nonprosecution of his theft of stereo equipment via fraudulent check. Timothy Steglich, the Bell County Sheriff's Department lead investigator in the killings, identified Tabler as a person of interest in the case. He contacted Clemons, asking him to set up a fake drug buy as a ruse to lure Tabler to the police station. Tabler arrived at the station around 9:15 p.m. About ten minutes later, the police informed Steglich that Tabler was getting anxious to go perform the drug buy before the buyer left. Steglich then instructed the police to arrest Tabler, even though he had not yet obtained an arrest warrant.

The police told Tabler he was under arrest for theft. He then spontaneously offered to give some information about some murders that his friend, "Tim," committed. Steglich subsequently arrived, with the arrest warrant, to interrogate him with Clemons. In his first two statements, Tabler said that he was present when Tim committed the murders, and he gave consent to search his rooms at two residences as well as the car he drove to the police department.

Dissatisfied with Tabler's story, Steglich and Clemons continued to question him. In his third written statement, given at 5:13 a.m., he confessed that he planned and executed Rahmouni's murder, intentionally murdered Zayed, and took a wallet and bag from Zayed's car.

The videotape was not recovered. It was reportedly destroyed after a friend of Tabler's watched it.

At his trial, Tabler recanted his confessions and pleaded not guilty.

At Tabler's punishment hearing, the state introduced evidence that Tabler confessed to murdering Tiffany Dotson, 18, and Amanda Benefield, 16, who were dancers at Rahmouni's bar, because he believed they were telling people that he had killed Rahmouni and Zayed. He admitted to luring them to a lake with the promise of drugs and then shooting them each multiple times with the same weapon used to murder Rahmouni and Zayed.

The defense presented evidence that Tabler was "not normal" and therefore undeserving of the death penalty. This included testimony from family and clinical experts about his difficult childhood, head injuries, learning difficulties, and personality disorders.

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