Benjamin Boyle was executed by the State of Texas for the murder of Gail Smith
According to court documents Benjamin Boyle was working as a long distance truck driver when he picked up Gail Smith who was hitchhiking. The young woman would be sexually assaulted and murdered
Benjamin Boyle would be arrested, convicted and sentence to death
Benjamin Boyle would be executed by lethal injection on April 21 1997
Benjamin Boyle Photos
Benjamin Boyle Case
n Oklahoma trucker was executed Monday evening for raping and strangling a Fort Worth-area woman more than 11 years ago.
Benjamin Herbert Boyle, 53, was pronounced dead at 6:21 p.m., seven minutes after a lethal dose of drugs began flowing into his arms.
Asked by the warden if he had any final words, Boyle shook his head slightly. He kept his eyes closed and made no eye contact with his victim’s mother and sister, who stood a few feet away and watched through a window.
Boyle gasped a couple of times and sighed deeply before he stopped breathing
Boyle, sentenced to die for the 1985 slaying of Gail Lenore Smith, was the third condemned killer to be executed in Texas in eight days and the fifth this month.
Joyce Smith of Amarillo, the mother of Boyle’s victim, said the execution brought her some closure.
“It’s not the end, because you never stop grieving for a child, but it does have a final ring to it,” Smith said. “I want to know he won’t harm another woman’s daughter
The victim’s sister, Margaret, who lives in Fort Worth, said, “He took my best friend.”
Boyle’s arrest Oct. 17, 1985, came two days after Gail Lenore Smith’s body was found off a highway near Amarillo.
Smith, 20, was a cocktail waitress in Fort Worth who had hitched a ride with Boyle