A Houston jury deliberated 8 hours before deciding on the death sentence for Keith Bernard Clay, 28, in the murder of Melathethil Tom Varughese, who came to the United States from India a year earlier, in a $2,000 robbery. Clay robbed the store in Baytown on Jan. 4, 1994, shot at Varughese 10 times, hitting him 6, then beat him with a pistol, said prosecutor Marie Munier.

Sometime between 8 and 8:30 p.m. on Jan. 4, 1994, Clay and 2 friends entered the store so one of them could buy cigarettes. After his friends left the store, Clay attacked Varughese and shot him several times.

An autopsy on the Indian immigrant, who had been the United States less than a year, determined he had been shot six times with two different guns and suffered a fractured skull from blunt force trauma.

One of the guns used to shoot Varughese was a pistol kept in the story for security; the other, a 9-millimeter pistol, was later found in Clay's possession. When Varughese's body was found, his hands were bound by a string of Christmas lights. Nearly $2,000 had been taken from the store's cash register.

Clay was not arrested for nearly a year, but when he was taken into custody, he was suspected of playing a role in three other murders. While Clay did not stand trial for the other murders, he was indicted for Varughese's murder in March 1996.

He was found guilty of capital murder in April 1997, and sentenced to death later that month. In the sentencing phase, the jury also heard about the unrelated crime Clay allegedly was involved in just a week before the robbery -- the Christmas Eve 1993 murders of a Baytown man and his 2 young children. Clay's co-defendant in that case, Shannon Thomas, is already on death row for those murders.

At about 6:30 p.m. on Dec. 24, 1993, Jose Rios walked into his brother's Baytown home when no one answered his knock on the door.

He and his mother, wife and children were visiting the brother's family, bearing Christmas gifts. "I opened the door and saw the Christmas tree with gifts," Rios said. "I opened the door a little more and saw my brother lying on the floor with blood on him."

Rios found his brother, Robert Rios, shot to death on the floor, with a knife in his throat. He called 911, and his wife screamed from upstairs that the children, Maria Elda Isabell Rios, 10, and Victor Roberto Rios, 11, also were dead. Hours before, Thomas, 24, and Clay, 27, burst into the Rios home and bound Roberto Rios with duct tape before stabbing him and shooting him twice in the head.

Then the two men went upstairs to the children's bedroom, made them lie face-down on the floor and shot each of them once in the back of the head. Police speculated at the time that that the killings were drug-related. Rios was a drug dealer who mostly sold marijuana.

Thomas and Clay apparently had bought drugs from Rios and assumed he would have money in the house. The children probably were killed because they were potential witnesses, according to police. The children's mother was divorced from Rios and lived in Mexico at the time of the killing.

The triple murder was unsolved for two years before authorities received a tip after the pair had bragged to friends about the murders. When Thomas and Clay gave statements to police, each admitted having been at the scene but each denied that he was the shooter. Prosecutor Munier said that Thomas did the shooting, but that Clay may have held the children down.

In the convenience store robbery and murder, there was witness. Clay went in the store about 8:30 pm. looking more to kill than to rob, Munier said, adding that "it was a vicious, brutal murder, I think not so much for the money, but to prove that he was a killer to his friend."

The jury agreed with the prosecution that Clay constituted a future threat to society, and, rejecting the defense's call for a life sentence, returned with a verdict of death. Regarding any appellate issues, Roe Wilson, who handles capital murder appeals in the Harris County District Attorney's office, said "It's certainly not a good case to try to grasp on to any mental retardation, the evidence against him was real strong, there's no DNA, and the eyewitness identification is from a guy that knows him and was with him."

Clay said he was outside the Baytown store where Varughese worked and in a car when the clerk was gunned down Jan. 4, 1994. "I was just an innocent bystander," he said. "I didn't have any knowledge the store was going to be robbed."

UPDATE: "I've been praying for the victim's family, for my family," Clay said from death row. "With regard to me being down here, if there's one thing I could put my finger on, it would be decisions were made that bring about consequences, whether good or bad. What you do or say not only affects your life but others as well." Marie Munier, the Harris County district attorney who prosecuted Clay said, "I'm not happy to see someone put to death, but I know that the trial was a fair trial, he was represented by good counsel and it was a horrible crime. I think it's justice. It's not that it makes me happy at all, but it's just the price he will pay for his actions." Before the execution, Clay looked at 3 members of his victim's family, who were watching through a nearby window, and asked them for forgiveness. "I know you have suffered a great loss and I am truly, truly sorry. ...There is not a day that I have not prayed for you," he said. Clay then turned to his mother, watching through an adjacent window. He told her he loved her and said "The Lord is my shepherd. Let everyone know that I love them. This is not goodbye. I will see you later." His mother, Cynthia Smith, smiled and flashed 2 thumbs up to him.