Caruthers Alexander was executed by the State of Texas for the murder of Lori Bruch
According to court documents Caruthers Alexander would hit Lori Bruch vehicle with his own. He would grab the nineteen year old who would be bound, sexually assaulted and murdered. Her body would be found the next day
Caruthers Alexander was arrested, convicted and sentenced to death
Caruthers Alexander was executed by lethal injection on January 29 2001
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When Was Caruthers Alexander Executed
Caruthers Alexander was executed on January 29 2001
Caruthers Alexander Case
Almost 20 years after the bound and naked body of a young woman was found in a rain-flooded gutter near a San Antonio elementary school, the man convicted of killing her was executed in the Texas death chamber today.
Two-time ex-convict Caruthers Alexander was executed for raping and strangling 19-year-old Lori Bruch.
With a tear running from his right eye, he declined to make a final statement. Then he coughed, sputtered and exhaled as the lethal drugs began taking effect. Five minutes after the dose began, he was pronounced dead at 6:18 p.m. CST.
Alexander, 52, is the third condemned killer to be executed this month in Texas, where a record 40 executions were carried out last year.
“Our family and friends, as well as who knows how many countless other lives she would have touched, have lost so much,” Bruch’s family said in a statement.
“Today marks the end of a very long and tragic chapter in our lives and we are relieved it is over. Today is finally the day for this victim. Justice for Lori. We loved her then, we love her now and we will love and miss her forever.”
Bruch, the mother of a 2-year-old, was driving home in the early morning hours of April 23, 1981, after getting off work at a Bexar County country-western club when her car was hit from behind by a van authorities said was driven by Alexander.
Lured from her car, authorities said the woman was grabbed by the driver of the van, driven away, tied with a rope, raped and strangled.
“It’s every woman’s worst nightmare to be driving on the street and be abducted and it’s every husband’s nightmare that your wife would be out and not come home,” said Lyndee Bordini, a former Bexar County assistant district attorney who prosecuted Alexander.
“It was a terrible, terrible crime, very brutal. It was a ligature strangulation and the ligature was on so tight you could see bruising from his knuckles imbedded on the back of her neck.”
Alexander was set to die last year but the execution was halted so more sophisticated DNA testing could be performed on evidence. The test results, received last month, confirmed Alexander’s guilt.
“There’s a lot of stuff in the conviction that was bunk,” Alexander said earlier this month from death row. “I’ll say that straight off the bat: Bunk! The test shouldn’t have come back positive. If anything, this last test should have come back inconclusive or not mine.”
Alexander was arrested two days after the killing. A priest driving past spotted a van with lettering painted on the side parked in the area where the woman’s body was found by children headed to school.
Police tracked down the van, determined Alexander had it the night of the murder, then found one of the victim’s earrings and her belt inside. In addition, paint scrapes on the van matched the paint of Bruch’s car and measurements of the damage on each vehicle matched.
“There’s nothing here to suggest the man did not commit this murder,” said Mark Luitjen, who also helped prosecute the case and is now a state district judge.
“I don’t hurt women,” Alexander said. “I’ve been known to bump heads with a knucklehead if he gets at odds with me, but I’ve never hurt a woman, not like that. That’s bunk.
Alexander already had two stints in prison behind him when he was arrested for the Bruch killing. In 1972, he was released after serving seven months of a two-year term for arson in Houston. In 1975, he was paroled after serving 10 months of a three-year sentence for involuntary manslaughter.
“This guy already killed before,” Luitjen said. “This is not a poor dilettante who just happens to be a victim of the system.”
Asked whether his past haunted him, Alexander, known to younger death row inmates as “Pops,” replied: “I’m an ex-con. They jumped on that. Ain’t no doubt about it.”
Alexander first arrived on death row in 1982 but his conviction was overturned on appeal in 1987. He said he rejected a life prison term in a plea bargain deal, was tried a second time and condemned again in May 1989.
“There’s nothing I can say to prevent this,” he said of his execution. “This is history, but I don’t want to die on a lie and have everybody believe that it’s the truth.
“I’ve got to take some blame for myself because I’m here in the system. I ain’t no angel. I did things to get locked up, but I never did anything for the death penalty. This is bunk.”
https://www.chron.com/news/houston-texas/article/Alexander-executed-for-woman-s-slaying-2006480.php