Pedro Muniz was executed by the State of Texas for the murder of Janis Bickham
According to court documents Pedro Muniz would kidnap nineteen year old Janis Bickham who would later be sexually assaulted and murdered. At the time of the murder Muniz was out on bail for another sexual assault case
Pedro Muniz was arrested, convicted and sentenced to death
Pedro Muniz would be executed by lethal injection on May 19 1998
Pedro Muniz Photos
Pedro Muniz Case
A man who raped and murdered a central Texas college student more than 21 years ago is scheduled for the second execution in Texas in as many days. Pedro Cruz Muniz is set to receive a lethal injection after 6 p.m. CDT today for the Dec. 20, 1976, slaying of 19-year-old Janis Bickham, a freshman at Southwestern University in Georgetown, just north of Austin.
In a written confession, Muniz said he grabbed Bickham as she walked across a Georgetown bridge, forced her down a river bank and into an abandoned tin shed. He said he raped and beat the woman until she was unconscious, then hid her body beneath a brush pile.
An autopsy showed that Bickham, who was from Van Vleck in Matagorda County, died from a fractured skull caused by blows to the head with a large rock. District Attorney Ken Anderson, who prosecuted Muniz, called it a ‘cold, calculated crime, the kind that is behind the reason we have the death penalty.’ Muniz, who was 20 years old at the time, had been charged with raping a Georgetown woman and was out on bond when Bickham was killed.
Muniz, now 41, was first convicted of Bickham’s murder in 1977, but the verdict was overturned by the U.S. Supreme Court because he was not warned that the results of a psychiatric exam could be used against him. Muniz would become the 152nd death row inmate put to death in Texas since executions were resumed in 1982, the eighth this year and the second in as many days. Robert Anthony Carter received a lethal injection Monday for the shooting death of a woman during a service station robbery in Houston
https://www.upi.com/Archives/1998/05/19/Execution-set-for-students-killer/8302895550400/
