Richard Drinkard was executed by the State of Texas for a triple murder
According to court documents Richard Drinkard met one of the victims the night before. He would return to the home and break in then would murder Lou Ann Anthony, 44; her sister, LaDean Hendrix, 47; and Hendrix’s boyfriend, Jerry Mullens, 43, with a claw hammer before robbing the home
Richard Drinkard would be arrested, convicted and sentenced to death
Richard Drinkard would be executed by lethal injection on May 19 1997
Richard Drinkard Photos
Richard Drinkard Case
A carpenter convicted of using a 16-ounce claw hammer to batter three people to death more than 11 years ago in Houston was executed by lethal injection Monday.
One of the victims was from Oklahoma.
Richard Drinkard, 39, was pronounced dead at 6:17 p.m., six minutes after a lethal dose of drugs began flowing into his arms. As the drugs took effect, he gasped twice and stopped breathing.
Drinkard was the fourth condemned killer put to death in Texas this month and the first of four death-row inmates scheduled for execution this week.
He was executed for the Nov. 15, 1985, bludgeoning death of Lou Ann Anthony, 44; her sister, LaDean Hendrix, 47, of Caddo, OK, and Hendrix’s boyfriend, Jerry Mullens, 43.
The U.S. Supreme Court in February refused without comment to hear his appeal, joining other federal and state appeals courts in rejecting his case. No other late appeals were filed.
At his August 1986 trial, Drinkard became the first convicted killer in Texas to merit a death sentence under the new law that made multiple murders a capital offense.
At his trial, defense attorneys argued the carpenter from Mobile, Ala., was drunk at the time of the killings and didn’t know right from wrong.
Drinkard had a record in Alabama, where he received three years in prison for burglary in 1974. He escaped the following year, was arrested for attempted robbery in Mobile in 1976 and was sentenced to five years.
Evidence showed Drinkard and his brother had been at Anthony’s Houston town house the night before the slayings
The brother, Mike Watson, testified that after drinking at least a case of beer and two pints of Scotch and smoking marijuana, Drinkard made a pass at Anthony, who demanded he leave.
Drinkard returned alone to the home a few hours later, broke in by prying open a window and dismantling a lock, and began attacking the victims, stabbing them and beating them with the hammer.
“It was just unbelievably bloody,” Roe Wilson, a Harris County assistant district attorney, said.
The next day, Watson saw news reports of the triple murder and called police to say he had been at the home the night before with his brother. Drinkard told police he was elsewhere.
But detectives found in Drinkard’s truck a piece of glass from a broken light fixture from the murder scene. In Oyster Creek, in southwest Houston where Drinkard often fished, they found a hammer and other items from Anthony’s home