Gilberto Reyes was executed by the State of Texas for the murder of Yvette Barraz
According to court documents Gilberto Reyes would kidnap his ex girlfriend Yvette Barraz. Her body would be found beaten and brutally murdered nearly five hundred miles away.
Gilberto Reyes would be arrested, convicted and sentenced to death
Gilberto Reyes would be executed by lethal injection on June 21 2007
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When Was Gilberto Reyes Executed
Gilberto Reyes was executed on June 21 2007
Gilberto Reyes Case
With a big grin on his face, a West Texas man quietly went to his death for killing the ex-girlfriend he stalked before raping, strangling and using a claw hammer to beat her. Gilberto Reyes, 33, on Thursday became the 17th inmate executed this year in the nation’s most active capital punishment state and the second in as many days. Another execution is set for next week.
“I love y’all and I’m going to miss y’all,” he said in a brief final statement, smiling but never looking at the parents and other relatives of his victim watching through a window. They showed no reaction. Eight minutes later, Reyes was pronounced dead.
The U.S. Supreme Court refused in March to review Reyes’ case, and a federal lawsuit on his behalf challenging the constitutionality of the Texas lethal injection procedure was dismissed Monday by a federal judge in Houston. No additional appeals were filed to try to block the punishment.
Reyes, from Muleshoe, in Bailey County along the Texas-New Mexico state line northwest of Lubbock, was condemned for the slaying of Yvette Barraz. Her parents reported their 19-year-old daughter missing when she failed to return home from work at a Muleshoe restaurant in March 1998. “In this particular case, there’s no question of his guilt by any stretch of the imagination,” David Martinez, who was Reyes’ trial lawyer, said Thursday. “We kept hoping with his age and his boyish looks, I might be able to convince a jury to give him life, but I wasn’t able to.”
Reyes already was known to police in the town of about 4,500. A month earlier, apparently obsessed with Barraz, he chased her and shot at her with a rifle, wound up getting arrested and was free on bond. “He stood in the middle of the roadway and was shooting at her,” Martinez recalled. “When all was said and done, it was one of those deals where the jury just perceived him as saying: ‘If you’re not going to be my girl, you’re not going to be anyone else’s.’ “Apparently he had a lot of feelings toward that girlfriend. It might have been the only real girlfriend he ever had, and that’s why the emotions were so strong.”
Authorities investigating Barraz’s disappearance wanted to question Reyes but couldn’t find him, adding to suspicion he was involved. Two days after she was last seen, Barraz’s battered body was found stuffed under clothing in the hatchback area of her car some 450 miles to the south in Presidio, along the Rio Grande across from Mexico.
Blood evidence found outside the restaurant where Barraz worked led police to believe she was attacked there. Before dawn the next morning, border police questioned Reyes as he was walking across the International Bridge at Presidio. He was carrying as much as $100 in coins but authorities could determine no reason to detain him. He was allowed to continue into Mexico.
Reyes at some point returned to the United States and police, acting on a tip, arrested him in Portales, N.M., about three months after the slaying.
At his trial, witnesses told of Reyes and Barraz having a stormy relationship. A police officer testified Barraz had complained about Reyes stalking her two weeks before she disappeared. DNA evidence from Reyes was found on the victim’s clothing.
Reyes’ execution came 24 hours after another inmate, Lionell Rodriguez, 36, apologized profusely, sought forgiveness from his victim’s family and then was executed for killing a 22-year-old Houston woman, Tracy Gee, during a carjacking. Next week, Patrick Knight, 39, is set to die for the slayings of Walter and Mary Werner, a couple who lived next door to him outside Amarillo. Knight has gained notoriety for his request that people send him jokes so he can pick one and make it part of his last statement before he’s put to death Tuesday evening.
