Tyrone Fuller was executed by the State of Texas for the murder of Andrea Duke
According to court documents Tyrone Fuller and two accomplices forced their way into the home of Andrea Duke. The woman would be sexually assaulted and stabbed more than thirty times. Her home would be robbed before the men fled
Tyrone Fuller would be arrested, convicted and sentenced to death
Tyrone Fuller would be executed by lethal injection on July 7 1999
Tyrone Fuller Photos
Tyrone Fuller Case
One of the first people convicted of capital murder in Texas with the use of DNA evidence has been executed at Huntsville for the slaying of a southeast Texas woman. Tyrone Leroy Fuller was declared dead at 6:20 p.m. CDT today after receiving a lethal injection for the Jan. 20, 1988, sexual assault, robbery and stabbing death of 26-year-old Andrea Lea Duke in her Paris, Texas, apartment. In a final statement, 36-year-old Fuller told his family: ‘I love you. Please do not mourn my death or life. I want you to live.’
After receiving the injection, Fuller’s voice faded as he sang the words to the gospel song, ‘This Little Light of Mine.’ Fuller confessed he had planned to burglarize Duke’s apartment. He asked two men to help him and said they were all unaware anyone was home when they broke in. Fuller claimed that his accomplices, John McGrew and Kenneth Harmon, raped and killed Duke without his involvement. Duke, who was stabbed repeatedly with a pocketknife, managed to crawl from her apartment for help, but died on a next door neighbor’s front porch.
Prosecutors presented evidence that a bloody sock print found in the apartment matched Fuller’s footprint, and that genetic testing on seminal fluid discovered on the victim’s body ruled out McGrew, Harmon and Duke’s boyfriend as the source. Fuller’s was one of the first cases in Texas in which DNA evidence was used to convict a defendant of capital murder.
His fingerprints were also found in and on Duke’s car, and his prints and handwriting were found on receipts of her stolen credit cards. Several witnesses testified Fuller used the cards during the weeks following the crime. Fuller’s execution was the 16th in Texas this year and the 180th since the state restored the death penalty in 1982.
