Juan Rodriguez Chavez was convicted of the 1995 robbery and murder of 40-year-old Jose Morales during a murder spree in Dallas. On July 2, 1995, Jose was at a phone booth when Chavez approached him and exchanged words with him. Chavez then pulled a gun and shot Jose in the chest. Before fleeing, Chavez stole Jose's wallet from his pants pocket.

Chavez had previously been convicted of murder with a deadly weapon for which he received a 15-year sentence. He was released on mandatory parole after serving just over 7 years of that sentence.

During the months of March through July of 1995, Chavez killed 11 people for their money or just the "thrill of killing," authorities said. "Robbery was the motive in at least some of these," said Greg Davis, a Dallas County assistant district attorney. "But in others, it was just the thrill of killing."

All 11 people were killed between March and July, including five on a single day: July 2. Three of them were shot and ran over by his car, Jose Morales was shot while talking on a pay phone and the last victim of the day was shot in a robbery.

Two days later Chavez shot two men in the parking lot of a tire shop and, moments later, another man was killed outside a nearby apartment building. "As far as killings, we believe this is the most prolific suspect in recent times," said police spokesman Ed Spencer.

Police believe the killing spree began with the March shooting death of robbery victim Jose Castillo followed by the fatal shooting of Juan Hernandez on May 20.

Then on July 2, police found the bodies of security guard Susan Ferguson in north Dallas and Alfonso Contreras and Maria Guadalupe Delgadillo in south Dallas - all with gunshot wounds and injuries from being run over by a car.

On the same day, Jose Vasquez Morales was fatally shot as he talked on a pay telephone, and Jesus Briseno was killed with a shotgun during an apparent robbery.

Two days later, Antonio Rios and Manuel Duran were both shot in the head in a tire shop parking lot. Antonio Banda was fatally wounded moments later outside a nearby apartment. A July 23 carjacking left Juan Carlos Macias dead. Police say the same .38-caliber revolver has been linked to six of the slayings.

At the time of Chavez's arrest, a 15-year-old boy in the custody of juvenile authorities was reported to know Chavez and could provide information on at least one of the slayings.

But the prosecutor declined to discuss details. "I'm concerned about his safety and security right now," he said, "and don't want to go into it." A spokeswoman for the youth's attorney also declined to elaborate, saying she feared retaliation by unnamed people aiding Chavez from outside jail.

One victim was a devoted son, shot in the chest when he went out to lock his car while visiting his invalid mother over a holiday weekend. Another victim was described as a simple man who had come to Texas from Mexico to find work after a family dispute over the sale of a cow.

A third was said to be a quiet family man whose father was so grief-stricken by the loss that he died last week of a broken heart. Those are just three of the 11 killings charged to Juan Rodriguez Chavez, a man authorities here are calling a "thrill killer."

The slayings were scattered over Dallas, but most were in Hispanic neighborhoods on the west side near the area where Chavez lived. The picture that emerges from interviews and reports of police investigators is one of honest people who suffered the great misfortune of crossing paths with a ruthless robber or robbers.

John Lozano, 62, stepfather of one victim, showed the place on the sidewalk where his 53-year-old stepson was shot when he went out to lock his car for the night: "I heard all kind of shooting, and I ran out and said, `Tony, are you all right?' and he said, `I been shot.'" Lozano ran into his small frame house in the West Oak Cliff neighborhood to call 911, and when he returned his stepson, Antonio Banda, had died of a bullet to the heart. "They just went on down the street shooting," he said of his stepson's attackers.

Sean Olgin, 29, whose younger brother was a victim, said his brother was a quiet family man who worked at extra jobs to support his wife and 2-year-old daughter. His brother, Antonio Rios, 27, was one of two men shot at point-blank range while preparing to get into a pickup at the tire store where they worked.

Olgin said his father, who was 67, died Saturday of a heart attack which Olgin believes was brought on by the stress of his brother's slaying last July. "He was very close to my brother. My brother still depended on him, and my dad wouldn't ever deny anything for him."

The other man slain with Rios, Manuel Duran, 31, may have died because he balked at giving up his truck, said his friend and co-worker, Zack Cazares, 29. Cazares said he had given his Isuzu pickup to Duran in exchange for Duran's promise to make the remaining installment payments on it. He thinks Duran may not have wanted to give up the truck because it wasn't really his. "But no one knows if there was any words," Cazares said. "He was very good-hearted," Cazares said. "He didn't speak that much English. He came here because his brother sold a cow that belonged to the family. They blamed it on him, so he left the ranch and came here to Dallas to work. He worked very hard here, and he would go out of his way to satisfy people."

Duran and Rios were found dead on either side of the pickup, which was standing with its doors open and motor running, Cazares said. "Maybe they were going to steal the truck, and then it got too busy out on the street, and after the shooting and all, they decided to take off."

Cazares said he was perplexed by the release last week of two men originally arrested and charged in the crimes along with Chavez. "The police brought one of them, not Chavez but one of the others, here (to the scene of the killings) later, and he was showing them how it all happened," Cazares said. Dallas police have said only that the other two men originally arrested were released because they were cleared by a subsequent investigation, even though one of the two had confessed.

A spokesman told The Associated Press that a 15-year-old witness in protective custody may provide key evidence against Chavez.

All 11 slayings in which Chavez is charged occurred in a five month period. One victim was shot while washing his car at a coin-operated carwash. Another was shot in the head in a grocery store parking lot.

Another when he stumbled on Chavez and an accomplice robbing two people. Another was shot in the head while driving, after two men in a car had tried to force him at gunpoint to pull over. Others were simply found dead by the road. Chavez is accused of stealing almost $2,000 from his victims but may have taken only small amounts from some.

In several cases he and accomplices were trying to steal vehicles, and in two cases they succeeded, police said. Some victims were not robbed. Police said that Chavez was charged with nine capital murders, two simple murders and a robbery.

UPDATE: He became known in Dallas as "The Thrill Killer" for random attacks believed to have left at least a dozen people dead, including five on a single bloody night in the summer of 1995. Many victims over the five-month period were robbed or carjacked. Some were shot with a handgun, others with a shotgun. Some were mowed down by a stolen car or truck -- their heads deliberately run over after they already had been shot.

Today, five days shy of his 35th birthday, Juan Rodriguez Chavez, labeled an "equal opportunity assassin" by authorities, is set to die for one of those slayings -- the robbery and fatal shooting of a 39-year-old man gunned down while he was talking on a pay phone in northwest Dallas. "We called him the thrill killer," said Jason January, one of the Dallas County district attorneys who prosecuted Chavez. "It definitely fit. He was truly a living breathing killing machine, and the world's going to be safer once he's gone. He was one of the few people I dealt with in 15 years with the DA's office that clearly demonstrated he enjoyed killing."

Chavez was arrested a month after Jose Morales was shot at a pay phone near Dallas' Love Field about 1 a.m. on July 2, 1995. According to a witness, the gunman approached Morales, asked in Spanish if he was "on the line" and opened fire, shooting the victim in the chest. Then he grabbed Morales' wallet from his pants and shot him again before fleeing.

The wallet contained $2. By the time the sun came up that morning, seven other people had been shot, four of them fatally, including a female security guard at a construction site. "He pulled up, she leans in the window," January said, recalling testimony from a 15-year-old who accompanied Chavez on the spree. "He starts acting like he wants directions, then pulls a gun and asks her if she has children. She's crying by then and says yes and he shoots her anyway. Then he takes his car and runs over her head. This guy was unreal."

Considered a threat even while in custody, he wore to court an electronic stun belt that inadvertently activated during the first day of testimony. Jolted by the voltage, he stood up, saying: "It's shocking me," then slumped to the defense table.

He was uninjured but his attorneys asked for a mistrial, contending his constitutional presumption of innocence was violated. The request was denied, then became an issue in unsuccessful appeals.

Chavez was a middle child in a family of 19 born to a migrant farm worker couple who moved to Dallas three months after he was born in Fort Wayne, Ind., April 27, 1968. He dropped out of school in the ninth grade and at age 17 was convicted of murder for killing a neighbor and wounding another man during a burglary.

While serving a 15-year prison term, he racked up more than 40 disciplinary violations, including punching a corrections officer and scaling a pair of fences topped with razor wire so he could attack another inmate in a recreation area.

But by March 1994, he had accrued enough "good time" in prison to be paroled. He had served less than half of his sentence. "He should have never been let out of jail," January said. "He's a poster child for parole reform."

The killing spree began a year later with a fatal shooting during a robbery at a car wash. He was arrested in August 1995 when he reported to his parole officer. Chavez in recent weeks declined requests from reporters to speak from death row.

At his trial, he was described as jovial, grinning at spectators, many of them relatives of slaying victims, when State District Judge Harold Entz asked if there was any reason he shouldn't be sentenced. "I still say I'm not guilty," he said. Earlier that day, he warned court bailiffs he would antagonize relatives of his victims, many of them Hispanic, by smirking. "You ever seen a courtroom full of mad Mexicans?" he said. "You oughta see them when I walk in the courtroom smiling. "I'm not going to let them see me sweat."