Tony Roach was executed by the State of Texas for the murder of Ronnie Dawn Hewitt
According to court documents Tony Roach would break into the home of Ronnie Dawn Hewitt who would be sexually assaulted and murdered
Tony Roach would be arrested, convicted and sentenced to death
Tony Roach would be executed by lethal injection on September 5 2007
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When Was Tony Roach Executed
Tony Roach was executed on September 5 2007
Tony Roach Case
Tony Roach is scheduled to die Wednesday for the brutal 1998 killing of Amarillo resident Ronnie Dawn Hewitt. Roach strangled her with a belt, raped her after she died, then set fire to her apartment.
She was 37. Her friends called her Kitten. Dureama Mincher is one of those friends. “We were very close,” Mincher said.
Mincher said she and others close to Hewitt were devastated and shocked when they heard the news of her death, which occurred on June 8, 1998. “That was horrible. Kitten was a very little person, and she went through a lot. She didn’t deserve that,” Mincher said.
Roach, however, will get what he deserves, Mincher said. “Normally I’m against the death penalty, but that was just too much,” she said.
If certain circumstances work out, Mincher said, she plans to attend the execution by lethal injection in Huntsville to personally observe the end of a long ordeal. “It’s just a good thing that it’s coming to an end,” she said. “She deserves some justice.”
Laila Book said she knew Hewitt for about 20 years. She still keeps a photo of the victim in her living room, she said. “She was one of the best people I’ve ever met,” Book said. “When this happened she was happier than she’d ever been and was getting ready to get married.” Book said she and Roach exchanged three letters while he was in prison. “I finally broke down and wrote to him because I just had to know what went through someone’s mind to do what he did,” she said.
She said she never got a satisfactory answer. “I think he just snapped,” Book said. “It was horrible what he did, but I’ve forgiven him for what he’s done because you have to forgive.” Hewitt left a daughter, Nakita, who was 9 at the time of her mother’s death. She moved in with her grandparents in Amarillo, Mincher said.
Authorities captured Roach in Guymon, Okla., where he confessed the killing to police while being questioned about a bicycle theft.
Roach, 22 at the time, told Amarillo police he broke into Hewitt’s apartment at 1216 W. 11th Ave. through a window and waited about 15 minutes before the victim walked into the apartment.
Rebecca King, 47th District attorney at the time, read Roach’s confession in court. According to the confession: ** The victim pleaded for Roach not to hurt her. ** Roach told Hewitt he wouldn’t hurt her, but a struggle ensued and he strangled her with a multicolored belt. Roach said he knotted the belt to kill Hewitt and later raped her after she was dead. ** Roach said he removed two rings from the victim’s hand and started a fire in the apartment before he left.
Testimony showed Roach pawned the rings and other items at pawn shops in Amarillo and Guymon. Roach arrived in Amarillo by bus from South Carolina, where he stayed in constant trouble with the law, reports show.
Amarillo attorney C.J. McElroy served as a court-appointed attorney on Roach’s defense team during the trial. “It was almost like he wanted to be caught,” McElroy said. “There wasn’t anything at that point in time to connect him to the crime. It was his confession that allowed police to backtrack.”
She said the trial was difficult from a defense perspective because prosecutors had DNA evidence from a sexual assault, pawned items from the scene – and the confession. “Plus, his name didn’t help,” McElroy said.
A statement to police that he wanted to be executed made it hard to avoid any other outcome for the defense, she said. McElroy said Roach reacted differently than most people she defends. “Tony was really remorseful about what had happened,” she said. “I’m saddened by the fact that we’ll be executing somebody,” she said. “The Legislature finally in the last session gave us the option of life without parole, but we didn’t have that option when Tony’s trial was going on.”
Walt Weaver, another court-appointed attorney for Roach, called the execution “a tragedy.” “Would we rather spend a million bucks feeding children, or would we rather spend a million bucks executing Tony?” he said.