On Aug. 18, 1986, Beavers abducted Douglas Odle
and his wife, Jenny, at gunpoint from their southwest Houston
apartment.
He forced Odle, 24, to drive to various ATMs and
the restaurant where he worked to withdraw money. He then drove the
couple to a remote area in Galveston County, made Odle kneel and
shot him in the head. Beavers then drove Jenny Odle to another
location, where he shot her and left her for dead. She lost her left
eye and suffered brain damage, but survived to testify against
Beavers.
By Richard Woodbury - Time.com
Monday, Apr. 18, 1994
Old-timers in Huntsville, Texas, like to tell tales of public
hangings and lynchings at the turn of the century and to reminisce
about how, on execution nights at The Walls state prison, the lights
would often flicker and dim across town, a signal that the electric
chair on the hill was doing its work yet again. Whether these
stories are apocryphal or not, the sentiment in favor of the death
penalty remains overwhelming in Huntsville, even though many
townspeople are uncomfortable with their community's distinction as
the execution capital of the U.S. Last year the state of Texas put
17 murderers to death here -- nearly half the number executed
nationwide and the most since Texas resumed executions in 1982.
The quickening pace and mounting numbers have reduced what often
used to be , a spectacle into an almost humdrum event. Today few
people in town other than Jack King, the local mortician, even know
that an execution has occurred until they read about it the next day,
buried on an inside page of the Huntsville Item.
When a chubby killer named Richard Beavers got
his lethal injection of sodium thiopental last week, the only
noteworthy aspect of the event was its timing: late on the night of
Easter Sunday. That might have provoked an outcry a few years ago,
but a vigil for Beavers outside the penitentiary's tall brick walls
drew only four candle-carrying participants. At the local Dairy
Queen one block away, oblivious teenagers slurped sodas as the hour
approached. "People don't give executions a second thought anymore,"
said manager Irene Cassidy. "They've become the norm."
Of course, lethal injection, in use here since
1982, is an antiseptic procedure. It lacks the drama of
electrocuting someone. One of the region's biggest tourist draws is
Old Sparky, the original death chair, which sits behind glass at the
Texas Prison Museum four blocks from the Big House. Visitors from
around the world come to gawk and marvel at the gleaming oak
contraption where 361 killers met their fate from 1924 to 1964.
In the death house, Beavers, who had waived his
appeals and insisted that he wanted to die for the 1986 abduction
and shooting of a Houston restaurant manager and the wounding of his
wife, devoured a final meal of French toast, sausage, eggs, French
fries and six brownies. Then he was led into the baby- blue death
chamber and spread-eagled on a gray gurney. He was tied down with
white leather straps and ace bandages.
As a dozen state officials and reporters watched,
Wayne Scott, the prison system's deputy operations chief, appeared
in a doorway and intoned, "Warden, you may proceed." A microphone
was lowered and the condemned man offered a brief prayer as his last
statement. Then the executioner, hidden behind a one-way mirror,
released the deadly chemicals through two plastic tubes into the
convict's forearms. In 30 seconds, Beavers grunted, coughed and lost
consciousness. Six minutes later, Dr. Darryl Wells, a local
emergency-room physician, stepped forward to pronounce him dead. As
the witnesses were whisked off, morticians loaded the body into a
black Astro van and carted it away into the night for cremation.
