Clifford Kimmel was executed by the State of Texas for three murders
According to court documents Clifford Kimmel and an accomplice would go to an apartment where they would tie up the three victims before stabbing them to death: Rachel White, Susan Halverstadt and Brett Roe
Clifford Kimmel would be arrested, convicted and sentenced to death
Clifford Kimmel would be executed by lethal injection on September 20 2007
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When Was Clifford Kimmel Executed
Clifford Kimmel was executed on September 20 2007
Clifford Kimmel Case
His appeals exhausted, convicted killer Clifford Kimmel was put to death Thursday for his part in a triple slaying eight years ago in San Antonio where two of his victims were injected with cleaning fluid before they were fatally stabbed. Kimmel, 32, pleaded guilty to capital murder just as he was about to go on trial. A Bexar County jury was left to decide between a life prison term and a death sentence. They chose death.
Kimmel had nothing to say when asked by a warden if he had a final statement. “No sir,” he replied.
Among the people watching his death were his wife and parents, and the mother and sisters of two of his victims. He looked only briefly at the victims’ relatives before closing his eyes as the drugs took effect. He was pronounced dead nine minutes later at 6:18 p.m. CDT.
Kimmel was condemned for the deaths of Rachel White and Susan Halverstadt, both 22-year-old topless dancers, and a friend of theirs, Brent Roe, 29. Derek Murphy, an accomplice with Kimmel in the early morning hours of April 9, 1999, received a life prison sentence for his role in the slayings.
Murphy and Kimmel were accused of using a syringe containing a bathroom cleanser to inject two of the victims and using a Bowie knife to fatally stab all three at White’s apartment.
The two men were arrested about six weeks later after detectives tracked purchases made with a credit card stolen from one of the victims. The bodies were found more than three days after the attacks when friends became concerned that none of them had been seen or heard from and asked an apartment complex worker to check on them. “They were just college girls who figured out they could make some money dancing because they were good looking,” Jim Wheat, a prosecutor at Murphy’s trial, recalled. “Murphy or Kimmel had a friend who knew these girls and had taken them to the apartment once and they saw they had a bunch of electronics. So they went back a few days later to steal them.”
Kimmel had been out of prison about six months, released on mandatory supervision after serving about 1 1/2 years of a six-year term for burglary.
At his trial, Kimmel’s lawyers argued unsuccessfully for a life sentence, saying Kimmel had a long-term drug problem and presenting witnesses who said Kimmel was repentant. He and Murphy got in the apartment under the guise of wanting to use the phone. “One of them said they injected (the victims) with cleaning fluid,” Wheat said. “They thought that would cause them to die. We really couldn’t prove it because there was no way to test the blood and find cleaning fluid.”
Then the victims were stabbed. White had numerous wounds to the neck and chest. Roe died of wounds to his neck, chest and abdomen. Halverstadt had two wounds to her neck. The pair left with White’s stereo, video cassette recorder and her purse, Roe’s wallet, a jewelry box, a bong, a silver letter opener and some music CDs. They sold much of the stolen property and used White’s credit card.
A defense psychiatrist testified Kimmel had been a heavy user of methamphetamines since he was 13 or 14. He dropped out of school in the 11th grade and had numerous arrests as a juvenile. As an adult, he was convicted of burglary and placed on probation, which he violated. In April 1997, he was sentenced to six years in prison, was released after 19 months but disappeared from a halfway house less than two months later after testing positive for cocaine and marijuana.
Murphy also is serving a second life term for an armed robbery he, Kimmel and two others were accused of committing three days before the triple slaying.
Kimmel’s lethal injection was the 25th of the year in the nation’s busiest capital punishment state. He had no 11th-hour appeals. The U.S. Supreme Court in April refused to review his case. This week, the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles voted unanimously against his commutation request.
Two more executions are set for next week in Texas. The first is Michael Wayne Richard, 49, set to die Tuesday for the 1986 rape-slaying of Marguerite Dixon during a burglary of her home in Hockley northwest of Houston. Two days later, a 28-year-old Dallas man, Carlton Turner, faces death for killing his parents in 1998.
