Billy Vickers was executed by the State of Texas for the murder of Phillip Kinslow
According to court documents Billy Vickers and two accomplices would attempt to rob Phillip Kinslow. A gun fight would ensue with Phillip Kinslow being fatally shot
Billy Vickers would be arrested, convicted and sentenced to death
Billy Vickers would be executed by lethal injection on January 28 2004
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Billy Vickers FAQ
When Was Billy Vickers Executed
Billy Vickers was executed on January 28 2004
Billy Vickers Case
Condemned inmate Billy Frank Vickers, expressing remorse and taking credit for more than a dozen other killings, was executed this evening for the slaying of a North Texas grocery store owner during a botched robbery almost 11 years ago. Vickers, 58, acknowledged fatally shooting Phillip Kinslow, 50, near his home outside Arthur City, about 100 miles northeast of Dallas on March 12, 1993. In December, Vickers insisted he wasn’t responsible for Kinslow’s death.
“It was nothing personal, I was just trying to make a living,” Vickers said. “I wish to say to my family, I’m sorry for all the grief I’ve put you through,” he said after he was strapped to the death chamber gurney. Vickers then said there were “several more that I had done or that I had been a part of, and I’m sorry but I am not sure how many. There must be a dozen or 14, I believe, all total.”
He died at 6:21 p.m., six minutes after lethal dose began. It was his second visit to the death house in about seven weeks. On Dec. 9, he spent about 10 hours in a small holding cell just outside the death chamber while the courts considered an appeal challenging the constitutionality of the lethal drug combination used in executions. When the appeal was not resolved by midnight, six hours after he was scheduled to die, the execution warrant expired and Vickers was returned to death row. It marked the first time since Texas resumed carrying out capital punishment in 1982 that a condemned inmate’s death warrant expired without a reprieve or without his death.
According to testimony at his trial, Vickers, who had a lengthy criminal record, was the mastermind of a plot to rob Kinslow, who was known to carry the day’s receipts home from his rural grocery store. What Vickers and a pair of accomplices didn’t know was that Kinslow also carried a gun. Instead of fleeing with cash, Vickers was shot three times and Kinslow was fatally shot in the chest. “He was limping down the road when we found him,” McCoy said of Vickers, who was hobbling on makeshift crutches about two miles from the shooting scene.
“Kind of at first, he denied it,” the sheriff said. “He finally broke down a week or so later, said he was there.” A bullet in Vickers’ knee came from Kinslow’s .38-caliber pistol. His shoe print was found at Kinslow’s gate. A hat found nearby had hairs that matched his hair. And .22-caliber hollow-point shells found at his home matched the bullets fired at Kinslow.
Vickers first went to prison in 1967 with a 2 1/2-year term for burglary. Then he picked up at least two more burglary convictions, plus multiple arson convictions and a federal gun possession conviction.
Tommy Perkins, 51, also with Vickers at the Kinslow shooting scene, received life in prison. Jason Martin, 34, the getaway driver waiting nearby when the gunfire erupted, got 25 years.
http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/ssistory.mpl/metropolitan/2374219
