Robert Woodard was sentenced to death by the State of Texas for a double murder
According to court documents Robert Woodward would rob a store and when the owners were not getting the money fast enough Woodward would shoot and kill the pair: Thankachan and Achamma Mathai
Robert Woodward would be arrested, convicted and sentenced to death
Robert Woodard Photos
Robert Woodard Now
| Name | Woodard, Robert Lee | |
| TDCJ Number | 999388 | |
| Date of Birth | 06/17/1980 | |
| Date Received | 06/20/2001 | |
| Age (when Received) | 21 | |
| Education Level (Highest Grade Completed) | 11 | |
| Date of Offense | 02/12/2000 | |
| Age (at the time of Offense) | 19 | |
| County | Harris | |
| Race | Black | |
| Gender | Male | |
| Hair Color | Black | |
| Height (in Feet and Inches) | 5′ 10″ | |
| Weight (in Pounds) | 202 | |
| Eye Color | Brown | |
| Native County | Cook | |
| Native State | Illinois |
Robert Woodard Case
Robert Lee Woodard, 20, was convicted of capital murder in state District Judge Caprice Cosper’s court in the Feb. 12, 2000, killings of Thankachan and Achamma Mathai in their Conoco store in the 10600 block of Wilcrest.
The Mathais were among several local convenience store operators killed within about seven months, alarming the city and especially its Indian and Pakistani communities.
Prosecutor Vanessa Velasquez said Woodard deliberately shot the couple, who had bought the store a month earlier, when they could not open the cash register fast enough. Woodard then grabbed strips of scratch-off lottery tickets before fleeing.
“So he executes them over what? Stupid scratch-off tickets, about $50 to $60 worth of scratch-off tickets. Is that all their lives were worth?” Velasquez asked the jury during closing arguments Wednesday.
Achamma Mathai, who worked at Park Plaza Hospital, had gone to the store to deliver dinner to her husband that busy Saturday night. Woodard — described as a frequent customer at the store — pointed a gun at them and demanded money from the cash register, according to testimony.
He ordered one customer buying cigarettes to leave, saying, “I have no beef with you, sister.”
After robbing and shooting the couple, Woodard robbed another customer of his car and escaped. He stripped the car and sold the stereo speakers and television monitors from it, witnesses testified.
Defense attorneys Robert Loper and Loretta Muldrow asked the jury for a life sentence. They told jurors of Woodard’s upbringing by an unstable mother who exposed him to gang life and never told him who his father was.
“He’s not an Eagle Scout, but he’s certainly not Hannibal Lecter,” Loper said.
Muldrow told the jury, “I don’t know how many of you were carried in the womb of a gang member while she is in jail.”
Prosecutor Luci Davidson said Woodard never showed remorse for the killings, even when confronted with the Mathais’ “very devastated family,” which is still trying to sell the convenience store where the deaths occurred.
After the death sentence was announced, the Mathais’ daughter, Aji Varghese, spoke tearfully from the witness stand as she looked directly at Woodard.
“Why did you shoot Papa in the chest? Why come back to place a bullet in my frightened mommy’s head? That is just pure evil,” she said.
Woodard, dressed in a gray suit with his hand resting across his mouth, listened with no visible reaction as Varghese spoke.
She asked Woodard to tell others not to mimic his actions and to “try to repent to God
https://www.chron.com/news/houston-texas/article/couple-s-killer-gets-death-sentence-2004796.php
