Alvaro Calambro and Duc Huynh were sentenced to death by the State of Nevada for a double murder
According to court documents Duc Huynh was fired from his job at a U-Haul store. He would go back the next day with Alvaro Calambro and murdered Peggy Crawford and Keith Christopher during a robbery
Alvaro Calambro and Duc Huynh were arrested, convicted and sentenced to death
Duc Huynh would take his own life on Nevada death row
Alvaro Calambro would be executed by lethal injection on April 5 1999
Alvaro Calambro Photos
Alvaro Calmbro Case
ondemned double-murderer Alvaro Calambro was executed at Nevada State Prison shortly after 9 p.m. Monday after authorities rejected an 11th-hour request for a stay filed by his native Philippines.
Calambro, 25, a Filipino national, refused to file his own appeal to stop his death by injection for the January 1994 hammer-crowbar murders of two U-Haul employees in Reno.
Calambro was led through an old submarine door into the prison’s death chamber following a final meal of steak, rice, corn, apple pie and a Sprite soda.
The condemned inmate was strapped to a gurney with eight car seatbelts. His last words, according to Prisons Director Bob Bayer, were: “I regret it.”
Bayer then asked him if he was ready and Calambro assented with a nod. He looked away from witnesses as the intravenous injections began, and was declared dead two minutes later, at 9:06 p.m.
The injections included an overdose of a “downer” that put him to sleep. A second injection stopped his breathing, and the third stopped his heart.
“It was too easy,” whispered Betty Crawford, mother of murder victim Peggy Crawford, as she and other witnesses walked out of the death chamber viewing room.
George Christopher, brother of the second murder victim, Keith Christopher, said as he watched Calambro die he felt “a sigh of relief for my parents, for all they’ve been through.”
Christopher, who wore a T-shirt that depicted his dead brother, said he was glad to hear Calambro expressed remorse, adding, “At least he was man enough to stand up for himself and accept his punishment.”
“There’s no elation,” said Clarence Crawford, Peggy’s father. “The law worked in our case. This is justice.”
But “we will never be back like we were because we don’t have our daughter,” Crawford said.
Calambro and accomplice Duc Huynh were convicted of the murders during a $2,400 robbery in January 1994 at the U-Haul business.
Crawford had a tire iron driven through her skull, while Christopher’s head was crushed by repeated blows from a ball-peen hammer.
Huynh also got a death sentence, but hanged himself at Ely State Prison.
About two dozen death penalty opponents held a candlelight vigil outside the prison to protest the execution.
“We are joining in this vigil to express our unconditional opposition to the death penalty and our unconditional opposition to the execution of Alvaro Calambro,” said Nancy Hart, coordinator of Reno Amnesty International.
She said Calambro was “borderline retarded” and suffered from serious mental illness. “Although his condition does not excuse his crimes, it certainly justifies sparing his life.”
Philippine officials tried to stop the execution by arguing it would violate the Vienna Convention treaty because they weren’t immediately notified that Nevada authorities had arrested Calambro in 1994.
The petition was filed earlier Monday with the Nevada Board of Pardons, chaired by Gov. Kenny Guinn. He said all members of the board felt a hearing on the request was unwarranted.
Other board members include Attorney General Frankie Sue Del Papa and all seven justices of the Nevada Supreme Court.
Guinn, in office since January, said the execution “has been an ordeal that I will never forget. But I will also never forget the brutal, gruesome murders that took two innocent people and will forever leave behind sorrow and pain for the families whose lives were impacted by this horrible act.”
With Calambro’s execution, eight men have been executed in Nevada since the death penalty was reinstated in 1977. One woman and 83 men remain on Nevada’s death row
https://lasvegassun.com/news/1999/apr/05/nevada-executes-double-murderer/