Denard Manns was executed by the State of Texas for the murder of Michelle Robson
According to court documents Michelle Robson was found dead in her bathtub, she had been shot five times and was sexually assaulted. Using DNA police were able to link Denard Manns to the murder
Denard Manns would be arrested, convicted and sentenced to death
Denard Manns would be executed on November 13 2008 by lethal injection
Denard Manns Photos
Denard Manns FAQ
When Was Denard Manns Executed
Denard Manns was executed on November 13 2008
Denard Manns Case
New York ex-con Denard Manns’ move to Texas ended in the state’s death chamber. Manns, 42, who came to Texas after his parole from a second armed robbery prison term in New York, was executed Thursday night for the robbery, rape and fatal shooting of an Army medic at her apartment near Fort Hood almost exactly 10 years ago.
In a brief statement from the death house gurney, he criticized his lawyers for what he said was an unjust trial and an appeals lawyer for what he contended were phony appeals claims. But he thanked another appeals attorney for taking on his case when the lawyer no longer was supposed to be involved. “I’m ready for the transition,” he said.
Ten minutes later, he was pronounced dead, making him the 17th convicted killer executed this year in the nation’s most active death penalty state and the second in as many days. Another three lethal injections are scheduled for next week in Texas.
Manns had no last-day appeals in the courts and the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles on Wednesday had refused to commute his sentence to life in prison.
He’d moved in with a cousin and half brother in Killeen in Central Texas following his 1998 parole from New York. In his native New York City he had piled up a string of offenses and was known as a subway robber, preying on commuters traveling alone. But he insisted he wasn’t responsible for the Nov. 18, 1998, slaying of 26-year-old Michelle Robson, who was stationed at Fort Hood and lived with her husband off the base and a few doors down from the former hair stylist and mural painter from Harlem.
Asked last week if he knew who committed the murder, Manns told The Associated Press from a tiny visiting cage outside death row: “That’s not for me to discuss. Police get paid to ask those questions and find out. I would never tell them.”
DNA and fingerprint evidence implicated Manns, who also was found with some of the slain woman’s property, said Murff Bledsoe, the Bell County prosecutor who handled the case.
Investigators believed Robson, from Newton, Iowa, at least recognized her killer because there was no indication of a break-in at the apartment. Her husband, Clay Wellenstein, had gone home for a Thanksgiving visit to his family in upstate New York when he learned of his wife’s slaying. “I would like to know: Why?” Wellenstein, who had been married to Robson for less than a year, said this week. “And there’s never going to be an answer to it.”
No relatives of Robson attended the execution. Wellenstein said Manns “should be strung out to hang and suffer.”
Manns said DNA evidence tying him to the crime was wrong. “I know for a fact they weren’t going to give me a fair break anyway,” he told the AP.
Robson was found dead in a bathtub, shot five times with a .22-caliber pistol. Manns’ cousin, Eric Williams, owned such a pistol, found a bullet on the floor in his room and turned the gun over to police after learning of his neighbor’s death with a similar weapon. Tests showed at least one of the bullets recovered from the woman had been fired from the gun. Tests also showed Manns’ fingerprint on the weapon. Other evidence showed Manns left a jacket belonging to Robson at the home of a friend the day her body was discovered and that he had a ring of Robson’s.
Manns said he got the jacket from a friend and the jewelry belonging to the victim from a drug addict. He said he took the gun from some friends who were trying to shoot it, accounting for his prints.
Manns was arrested the following month and tried in 2002. After his conviction, Manns refused to appear in court at the punishment phase of his trial. “He said he didn’t want to,” Frank Holbrook, one of his trial attorneys, recalled. “He was taking a nap. “He was a very unusual person.”
Jurors who decided he should die learned he’d been indicted in 1992 for 15 counts of robbery in New York City. He pleaded guilty to two counts. He also had convictions for disorderly conduct, criminal mischief, larceny, controlled substance possession and unauthorized use of a motor vehicle.
Manns was paroled in early 1998 after serving nearly six years of a five- to 10-year term for armed robbery — his second prison term for armed robbery, then came to Texas.
Three more executions are scheduled for consecutive nights next week in Texas, starting Tuesday with Eric Cathey, 37, condemned for the abduction and fatal shooting of a Houston woman whose boyfriend was reputed to a drug dealer.
