BOBBY RAY
HOPKINS IN THE NEWS 2004
Texas Ranger, assistant DA remember July 31, 1993
When Texas Ranger George Turner was heading home from Waco after turning
in monthly reports at Ranger Headquarters and having his birthday dinner
with his family, he was called to the scene of a double murder at 601-B S.First
St. in Grandview.
He arrived in Grandview with his wife and children and had to park several
blocks away because of the traffic congestion near the murder scene. He
moved through the scene and began his investigation into the deaths of Sandi
Marbut, 18, and her cousin, Jennifer Weston, 19. Jennifer had
recently moved to Grandview from her home in Indiana to try to launch a career
in country music.
A Department of Public Safety trooper drove Turner's family to Cleburne.
Turner, now a lieutenant in Company F, remembers that time in July 1993 as
hectic. He had worked countless hours at the Branch Davidian Compound at
Mt. Carmel and investigated the shooting death of a Mexia police officer
and the murders of the 2 cousins.
He and his wife were looking forward to an already-paid-for vacation in the
Caribbean starting the 1st of August. It was the 1st time in months he
could get off because of the Mt. Carmel siege and fire.
The trip really couldn't be delayed, because in mid-August an investigation
into the Branch Davidian incident was set to start, and heas on duty.
He had just left Waco when he got the call, and the trip took longer than
it normally would have, he said, because he didn't drive that fast with
his family in the car.
When Turner arrived, Grandview police and Johnson County sheriff's deputies
were already on the scene, and there were Grandview residents
everywhere.
"It was a fresh scene, and they had taped off and already started a log of
who was going in and out," Turner said. "The scene was chaos. It was a
very violent scene. After you studied and looked at all the blood, you could
tell, or it was a safe bet, not all the blood was from just the 2 victims.
"The actor in this thing had lost some blood."
The number of stab wounds to both young women revealed the shear violence
of the act. And during the acts, the attacker was injured by the victims
or injured himself, Turner said.
"It was late Saturday night, and there were so many young people and other
Grandview citizens at the scene I just started asking around, what I call
'working the crowd,' and the name 'Bobby' kept coming up," Turner said.
The information he received was that "Bobby" had been kicked out of the girls'
apartment for stealing money from Sandi Marbut's purse, he said.
Turner tracked 25-year-old Bobby Ray Hopkins to a Grandview neighborhood,
where Hopkins flagged Turner down and got into his car.
"Contrary to what he says on his Web site, he had cuts on his hands that
looked like shallow knife wounds to me, and that's how the ball got
rolling," Turner said.
Hopkins maintains on his Web site that his hands weren't cut, "but I have
photographs of them," Turner said.
"I bring him to the sheriff's office -- he voluntarily comes with me -- and
I see what I think is blood on his boots. So [with] that, with cuts on
his hands and a couple of other things, I got blood tests for DNA," Turner
said.
This would be one of the 1st times DNA would be used in a trial in Johnson
County.
"People were just beginning to use it as a tool," he said. "But I didn't
have enough to hold him. I was close, but I was far from being there. I cut
him loose but kept his boots."
Turner went home to sleep for a few hours early Sunday morning before going
back over to the scene.
The scene was still secured. He described it as a big scene, as one of the
women, Marbut, was found downstairs and Weston upstairs.
by this time, Grandview hired a forensics expert, Max Courtney.
Courtney testified during the trial he used Luminol, a chemical spray that
causes blood to glow in the dark, so he knew what happened once the killer
entered the apartment.
Investigators traced the bloody footprints from where the killer bent over
and stabbed Marbut as she was sleeping on the couch.
Courtney's testimony had Weston, who perhaps heard the screams, coming down
the stairs when she was attacked.
Courtney testified that Weston fought back while inching her way back up
the stairs, sometimes lying on her back and pulling herself up as she was
being stabbed.
As Weston lay on the floor, the killer walked into Marbut's bedroom, went
to the closet to see if there was anyone hiding there and then cleaned up
in the bathroom, using towels to stop his bleeding from wounds he received,
Courtney testified. The killer stepped over Weston and walked
down the stairs, stopped to look out the front window and then left the apartment.
Eventually Hopkins' boot print was found to be a perfect match with the bloodied
footprint in the carpet, investigators said.
"I worked on this case until we left for the vacation for several days, and
as soon as we got back I went back to work on the case," Turner said.
While he was on vacation a Hobbs, N.M., police Capt. Tony Knott interviewed
Hopkins and gained a confession. Knott had been Hopkins' youth
baseball coach when the suspect was a boy in Hobbs.
"That's the case. I have absolutely no doubt in my mind that Bobby Ray Hopkins
killed those 2 girls," Turner said.
On Hopkins' Web site, the convicted killer maintained that since Turner had
his boots and a couple of vials of his blood that were taken with his
permission by a jail nurse, "that I put the blood on the boots, went back
to Grandview and put his blood at the scene," Turner said.
Turner has investigated many murders during his career. When asked to put
this one on a scale of 1 to 10, with 10 being the worst, he answered
without hesitation: "9"
There was one case in Burleson County he investigated when a murderer killed
6 people -- 5 of them children, that was a 10, Turner said.
"Bobby Ray Hopkins had his day in court and all the appeals. He was tried
fairly," Turner said.
"There were only 3 people who knew the horror that went on in that apartment
-- Sandi Marbut, Jennifer Weston and Bobby Ray Hopkins," Turner
said.
Lisa Powell was an assistant district attorney for Johnson County in a 1993.
She was watching the TV news when she heard about the Grandview
double murder.
She called her boss, District Attorney Dale Hanna, and he told her to get
over to the scene.
"I stayed with the case from that day forward until Judge C.C. "Kit" Cooke
said, 'May God have mercy on your soul.'" Powell said.
She described the crime as one of the most brutal she has ever seen.
"I've seen dead people before. A man shot 15 times, a man who had been dead
several days and was bloated and a dead baby in a trash bag thrown
into a waste container. But I've never seen anything like this," Powell said.
Hopkins was arrested several days after the incident for revocation of probation
from a drug charge, delivery of a controlled substance. He had
been convicted in January 1992 and was placed on probation.
Powell said it was the early days of DNA, and since the relatively new science
would be introduced at the trial, she studied DNA testing and
procedures for 6 months.
She introduced several items into evidence, including bloody socks (prosecutors
said the socks were used on Hopkins' hands to avoid leaving
fingerprints) found at the scene, a piece of leather from Hopkins' boot,
a white shoe found in Marbut's bedroom and the blood-stained clothes the
girls were wearing when murdered.
Powell appealed to jurors' hearts during the trial's summation.
"Look at everything you've seen and heard and decide," she said.
She listed the key pieces of evidence: the DNA matches, Hopkins' boots and
the matching boot prints on the carpet and his recorded statements about
the crime.
"Bobby Hopkins killed those girls. He was mad and embarrassed because they
had accused him of stealing, and they kicked him out. He killed Sandi
Marbut for embarrassing him, and Jennifer Weston had to die because she had
seen what he had done," Powell told the jury.
"Two teenage girls butchered in their own home," Powell said with tears in
her eyes. "There is only one verdict in this case: guilty of capital
murder. Bobby Hopkins needs to pay for what he did."
Hopkins' attorney, Ben Hill Turner, begged the jury to have mercy on Hopkins
before they began punishment deliberations.
"Either Bobby is going to live the rest of his life in the penitentiary or
he is going to be taken to the penitentiary and put to death," Turner told
the jury. "Bobby's important to me. I'm asking you to let Bobby live the
rest of his life in prison. Let him be whatever kind of productive citizen
you can be in prison.
"You would feel and have no shame before your God if you were to let this
man live."
Powell told the jury to consider the difference between forgiveness and mercy.
"Bobby Hopkins has earned the death penalty. There is nothing about this
man that warrants a life sentence," she said. "Do it because he earned it.
Do it because Jennifer and Sandi didn't deserve what they got. Do it because
it's the right thing to do."
Hanna said: "Forgiveness is between Bobby and God. Justice is in this jury
box."
The jury retired at 4:45 p.m. to begin deliberations. They returned with
the death penalty verdict at 5:10 p.m. The next day Hopkins was sentenced
to die.
The trial lasted 10 days.
In her mind, there's still no question about Hopkins' guilt, Powell said.
She said she recently learned about Hopkins' Web site, and when she went
to the site she was angered and saddened.
"I can't believe people believe what's on the site, and I can't believe people
send him money," she said.
(source: Cleburne Times-Review)
*********************************************
Feb. 12, 2004, 8:34PM
Convicted killer in two knife slayings executed
Associated Press
HUNTSVILLE -- A former bull rider from New Mexico was executed tonight for
fatally slashing and stabbing two young women more than 10 years ago while
he was on probation for a drug conviction.
"Warden, at this time I have no statement, sir," Bobby Ray Hopkins said
when asked if he had a final statement.
As the lethal drugs began taking effect, he gasped and gurgled. Eight minutes
later at 8:19 p.m., he was pronounced dead.
Hopkins, 36, was the sixth Texas inmate put to death this year and the second
in as many nights. His execution was held up about two hours while last-minute
appeals were considered.
Hopkins insisted he wasn't responsible for the slayings of Sandi Marbut,
18, and her cousin, Jennifer Weston, 19, at their apartment in Grandview in
Johnson County, about 35 miles south of Fort Worth.
Marbut was cut about 40 times with a dull knife, its blade blunted to about
3 inches. Weston, a cousin from Indiana, had 66 wounds.
Their bodies were found July 31, 1993, by Marbut's father, who lived across
the street.
"Unless you've experienced it, you can't imagine it," Terry Marbut, who
planned to witness the execution, told The Associated Press. "It changes
your perspective on everything. It was extremely traumatic."
Hopkins' lawyers had filed motions for clemency, for a reprieve and asked
in appeals that DNA evidence used at Hopkins' trial be retested. They also
were questioning the legality of a confession he gave.
Hopkins, from Lea County, N.M., was on probation for dealing cocaine when
his name surfaced as authorities canvassed a crowd that gathered outside the
home where the killings occurred. Bystanders told officers Hopkins, who was
wanted for a probation violation, previously was at a party there and had
argued with Sandi Marbut over $40 missing from her purse.
A Texas Ranger tracked down Hopkins. A blood spot on his boot matched the
blood of the victims. A bootprint from the slaying scene matched Hopkins'
boot.
Hopkins was questioned eight times and held in isolation for 15 days, refusing
to confess. A detective he knew from Hobbs, N.M., came to talk with him and
during a four-hour interview Hopkins told how he went to the home, a struggle
ensued and he stabbed Marbut. He also said he was cut in the fight.
The confession became an issue in Hopkins' appeals because of questions
about whether he was properly informed of his rights and whether it should
have been allowed into evidence. The 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, while
saying it was troubled by the methods used to obtain the confession, last
year characterized the error as harmless because of overwhelming circumstantial
evidence against Hopkins.
His blood was found in numerous places in the apartment, including a light
switch, a wall, a sock, a bathroom rug and faucet, a shoe and a magazine,
a newspaper article in one of the victims' purse, the top of a stairway and
a drawer in a bedroom.
Hopkins accused authorities of taking vials of his blood and sprinkling
the contents throughout the crime scene.
Doug Allen, who was police chief in Grandview at the time, called the allegations
"fairy tales."
"Anyone who sat through the case down there has no doubt who the murderer
was," Allen said this week.
Hopkins refused to speak with reporters while on death row, but on an anti-death
penalty Web site he wrote of his innocence and "wrongful conviction."
Evidence showed Marbut was sleeping downstairs and was attacked first. The
commotion likely woke Weston, who came from a second floor and was confronted
by her killer.
On Wednesday, Edward Lagrone, 46, maintaining his innocence while strapped
to the Texas death chamber gurney, received lethal injection for the 1991
slaying of a 10-year-old girl he impregnated. Two elderly women, great-aunts
of the girl, also were killed in the shotgun rampage in Fort Worth.
On Tuesday, Cameron Willingham, 36, is set for lethal injection for the
deaths of his three children -- a 2-year-old and 1-year-old twins -- in what
authorities said was a fire he set at their home in Corsicana two days before
Christmas in 1991.
Bobby Ray Hopkins http://ccadp.org/bobbyrayhopkins.html.
Texas Department of Criminal Justice execution schedule http://www.tdcj.state.tx.us/stat/scheduledexecutions.htm
************************************************************************
Man Guilty in Killings Executed in Texas
MICHAEL GRACZYK
Associated Press
HUNTSVILLE, Texas - An inmate was executed Thursday night for the fatal
slashing and stabbing of two young women more than 10 years ago while he
was on probation for a drug conviction.
As the injected drugs took effect, Bobby Ray Hopkins gasped and gurgled.
He was pronounced dead eight minutes later.
Hopkins, 36, was the sixth Texas inmate put to death this year and the second
in as many nights. His execution was held up for about two hours while appeals
were considered.
Hopkins insisted he was not responsible for the July 1993 slayings of Sandi
Marbut, 18, and her cousin, Jennifer Weston, 19, at their apartment in Grandview,
about 35 miles south of Fort Worth.
Marbut was cut about 40 times with a dull knife, its blade blunted to about
3 inches. Weston, a cousin from Indiana, had 66 wounds. Their bodies were
found by Marbut's father, who viewed the execution.
"I'm glad it's over," Terry Marbut said. "I wouldn't have missed this. I
owed it to my daughter. I owed it to Jennifer."
Hopkins was on probation for dealing cocaine when his name surfaced as authorities
canvassed a crowd outside the home where the killings occurred. Bystanders
told officers that Hopkins previously was at a party there and had argued
with Sandi Marbut over $40 missing from her purse.
A Texas Ranger tracked down Hopkins. A blood spot on his boot matched the
blood of the victims. A bootprint from the slaying scene matched Hopkins'
boot. His blood was found throughout the apartment.
***********************************************************
Cousins' killer is put to death
By John Moritz
Star-Telegram Austin Bureau
HUNTSVILLE - After a two-hour delay while an appeal to the U.S. Supreme
Court was being pursued, Bobby Ray Hopkins, condemned for killing two teen-age
cousins in Grandview, was executed Thursday night without acknowledging the
relatives of his victims who were watching.
"Warden, at this time, I have no statement, sir," Hopkins said shortly before
the lethal drugs took effect.
As Hopkins drew his final breaths, the wife of the father of one of the
victims gently rested her head on her husband's shoulder.
They watched, along with relatives and a former Johnson County prosecutor,
through the reinforced window that separates witnesses from the death chamber.
Hopkins was pronounced dead at 8:19 p.m.
Hopkins was condemned for fatally stabbing cousins Sandi Marbut, 18, and
Jennifer Weston, 19, on July 31, 1993, in the Johnson County community of
Grandview.
Marbut and Weston were living in a duplex they had recently rented across
railroad tracks from the home of Marbut's father and then-stepmother, Terry
and Bonni Marbut.
The Marbuts discovered the bodies about 7 p.m. Tests showed that they had
died 12 to 14 hours earlier.
Sandi Marbut was lying on the floor near the living room couch where she
had been sleeping. She had been stabbed 40 times. Weston's body was near the
top of the stairs. She had been stabbed 66 times.
Investigators found blood and signs of a struggle from the bottom to the
top of the stairs. Police believe that Weston awoke, heard Marbut being attacked,
fought with Hopkins and was stabbed again as she fled up the stairs. Blood
was found throughout the house where Hopkins apparently searched for items
to steal, police said.
Investigators learned that about two weeks before the attacks, Hopkins was
accused by Sandi Marbut of stealing money from her purse.
Hopkins, a one-time bull rider and car mechanic, voluntarily contacted police
after word reached him that he was under suspicion. He gave police a confession,
but later recanted.
Hopkins, a New Mexico native on probation for a 1992 drug conviction, provided
blood samples. Authorities also took his boots, which had a small spot of
blood. Investigators matched his boot to a bloody print on the carpet near
where Marbut was stabbed and his blood to blood found in the house.
A Johnson County jury in late May 1994 took less than an hour to convict
Hopkins of capital murder. The panel deliberated about 30 minutes before condemning
him to death.
Late Thursday, Terry Marbut shrugged off the frustration caused by the two-hour
delay.
"I wouldn't have missed this. I owed it to my daughter, I owed to Jennifer,"
Marbut said. "We've been in this up to our ears from the get-go, and there's
no way I was not going to be present for this."
In their late appeals, Hopkins' attorneys argued that his confession was
improperly obtained, and they sought to have DNA gathered at the crime scene
retested.
Hopkins, who would have turned 37 on Feb. 23, spent his last day writing
letters and sleeping in his cell. He declined a final meal.
The execution was the sixth of 2004 and the 319th since use of the death
penalty was renewed in 1982.
Hopkins' death was watched by Terry Marbut and his wife, Karen; Louis Marbut,
Sandi Marbut's grandfather; Angi and Tom Penix, Sandi Marbut's aunt and uncle;
and Lisa Powell, a former Johnson County prosecutor. Several prison system
officials and four reporters were also there.
Weston's mother was expected to be in Huntsville, but she did not plan to
witness the execution.
Terry Marbut has remarried since his daughter's slaying.
He said that although he had hoped to hear some expression of remorse or
acknowledgement of guilt, he was satisfied that justice was served.
"We'd have liked to have it gone off on schedule," he said. "But after waiting
10 1/2 years, a couple of hours of extra waiting is not problem."
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
John Moritz, (512) 476-4294 jmoritz@star-telegram.com
**************************************************
Victims' relative wants answers before murderer is executed
By Martha Deller
Star-Telegram Staff Writer
GRANDVIEW -- For 10 ½ years, Terry Marbut has been living with the
chilling uncertainty of why his daughter and her cousin were murdered, stabbed
more than 100 times, in their Grandview duplex.
Two weeks ago, desperately seeking answers he believed only the killer
could provide, Marbut wrote Bobby Ray Hopkins, who is scheduled to die Thursday
for the July 31, 1993, murders of Sandi Marbut, 18, and Jennifer Weston,
19.
"Was it your intention to kill these girls? Did they make you mad?" Marbut
recalls writing. "Or did you go in to burglarize the house and did Sandi
sleeping there surprise you and you panicked?"
Hopkins replied with the same message that is publicized on his Web site,
saying he was wrongly convicted, that he was the victim of a conspiracy
cooked up by authorities.
"He didn't tell me anything he hadn't already put out," Marbut said.
On Tuesday, the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles rejected Hopkins' bid
to set aside his execution. Gov. Rick Perry may still grant a 30-day reprieve,
but Perry's spokeswoman said he won't make that decision until Hopkins has
exhausted other legal efforts.
Marbut will be at today's execution, sitting with family and Lisa Powell,
the prosecutor who is still haunted by the case. And while he is hopeful
that Hopkins still might provide details of the deadly night, he suspects
that the answers he wants will die with the man who holds them.
In 1993, the slayings seemed to touch everyone in the Johnson County town
of 1,400, about 35 miles south of Fort Worth, where the school district
and the lumber yard are the biggest employers. For months, gossip about
the murders topped Zebra football as the hot topic at Granny's Kountry Kitchen
and Neal's Convenience Store, the town's main hangouts.
"I grew up in this little town in this little neighborhood, and nothing
ever happened," said Marbut, who now lives in Whitney near Hillsboro. "You
can't expect anything will happen like this, so I let my guard down. I made
a mistake."
Marbut could see his daughter's duplex from across the railroad tracks
from his own home. If her door was open, he could see inside the living
room.
On that summer day in 1993, he watched the duplex all day, thinking the
teens were still sleeping after a late party or had gone to another party
in Arlington. About 7 p.m., he and his then-wife, Bonni, went to check on
the girls.
When Marbut found his daughter on the living room floor, he thought she
had fallen and hit her head. "I sat beside her, trying to wake her up," he
recounted the events calmly, almost like they happened to someone else. "When
I realized she was dead, I wondered what had happened to Jennifer. We found
her dead at the top of the stairs still in her pajamas."
Marbut ran back across the tracks, yelling for his parents to call 911.
Forensics experts determined the girls had been dead 12 to 14 hours. Sandi
had been stabbed 40 times, Jennifer 66 times.
When Marbut learned that Hopkins was the primary suspect, he second-guessed
his reaction two weeks earlier, when Sandi had asked him for a gun. She
had wanted to protect herself from Hopkins, whom she had accused of stealing
money from her purse in her apartment. Hopkins apparently had tagged along
with some other young people who hung out at the girls' apartment, Marbut
and police said.
"I told her, 'You don't need a gun. ... Someone will get hurt,'" Marbut
said. "'I'm right across the street. I'll deal with it.'"
"There are a thousand what-ifs," he said. "I know I can't keep feeling
guilty, but I do."
Police Chief Doug Allen was the first officer to respond to the emergency
call. He asked another officer to question the gathering crowd of young
people about anyone with whom the two girls had argued or fought recently.
The crowd identified three possible suspects, including Hopkins. Allen
sought help from Texas Ranger George Turner, who helped find Hopkins.
Hopkins, who was on probation from a 1992 drug arrest, provided several
vials of his blood. Turner also had him leave his boots, on which Turner noticed
a small spot of blood, Allen said. Hopkins was then released.
Fort Worth forensic consultant Max Courtney was brought in to gather physical
evidence, and his team found a bloody bootprint on the carpet near the spot
were Weston was stabbed.
"I told Courtney, `I know where that boot is. I took it off a suspect last
night.'" Allen said. "It was a $160 Doc Martens boot with a distinct pattern.
I've seen a lot them since but I hadn't seen any then."
Four days after being questioned, Hopkins was arrested as a result of physical
evidence.
Photos of the boot print on the carpet and the boot sole itself were introduced
at the trial. "They lined up perfectly," Allen said.
Hopkins, 36, has declined recent interview requests, but his sister, Elizabeth
Hopkins, and his niece, Ebony Davis, say the state is about to execute a
man for a crime he didn't commit.
They say they don't want to waste time talking about Hopkins' background
or what happened to their family.
"We're grieving as much as the victims' families," Davis said. "But we
don't want sympathy. We're just trying to get the word out that the man
is innocent."
Born in Hobbs, N.M., Hopkins was reared by his mother and stepfather, Dixie
and James Wrighter. James died in December 2002. Dixie works as a cook at
Granny's Kountry Kitchen, but has designated daughter Elizabeth and granddaughter
Ebony to speak for the family.
In a Star-Telegram interview while he was jailed during the 1993 murder
investigation, Hopkins said he was a mediocre student, started taking drugs
in high school, had a son he rarely saw from an 18-month marriage, and made
a living riding bulls and repairing cars.
Although there were other possible suspects in the girls' murders, officers
immediately went to the Wrighter home, according to Bobby Hopkins' four-page
account on his Web site provided by the Canadian Anti-Death Penalty Coalition.
Hopkins' Web site describes events similar to those recounted by Allen,
but with a different perspective.
After being arrested, he was repeatedly interviewed by officers who attempted
to get him to confess, and finally charged with capital murder, the Web
site said.
In recent interviews, Elizabeth Hopkins and Ebony Davis reiterated Hopkins'
contention that police used his blood and boots to plant the physical evidence
used to convict him.
"How many pints of blood were drawn from him and how many were accounted
for in court?" Davis asked. "Bobby turned himself in voluntarily and they
treated him unfairly from that day on."
Allen and Powell denied the evidence was planted.
Davis said authorities further betrayed her uncle by getting a childhood
friend to coerce him to give a statement.
If the efforts to stop his execution fail, Elizabeth Hopkins said, she'll
be there in the witness room to watch her brother die.
"He really doesn't want his loved ones to see them murder him," she said.
"But someone has got to be there for him. We're not going to let him lay
there by himself while the state murders him."
Lisa Powell had been a prosecutor for five years, had tried cases of rape,
child sexual assaults, and even a capital murder case. But she said nothing
prepared her for the Grandview murder scene she was called to in the summer
of 1993.
"That scene affected me like nothing has and probably nothing else ever
will," she said. "It was horrible."
Powell spent months preparing the case, learning to explain DNA -- genetic
material unique to each individual -- to a jury in what would be Johnson
County's first such case, said Kit Cooke, who presided at Hopkins' trial.
While Hopkins' videotaped confession was contested legally, Powell contends
that overwhelming DNA evidence -- blood from Hopkins and the two victims
found throughout the duplex -- convicted him. Appellate judges agreed. They
ruled that parts of the confession were invalid but said the error was "harmless"
and upheld the conviction.
"They found Bobby's blood not just in one place in that house," Powell
said. "You can trace his movements by the cast-off blood from where he swung
the blood. He can't really say, 'I'm not the one who did this.' I think
the video confession was extremely secondary to everything else we had."
Powell left the district attorney's office in December 1994 to start her
own law practice. She said she wanted more free time to start a family but
also was affected by the Hopkins' case.
"I felt so deeply for those families," she said. "I couldn't let go of
it."
She will sit with Marbut and his family at the execution.
"I'm not fooling myself that it's going to be easy, but I want to go,"
Powell said. "As strange as this may sound, hopefully it will be closure
for the families of the victims and for me, too."
Terry Marbut is hopeful as well.
Because Hopkins didn't use the self-addressed, stamped envelope Marbut
sent for his first reply, Marbut wonders if the condemned killer will write
again before he dies.
"That's grasping," he said, showing his frustration. "Honestly, I doubt
anything else will come out of it. But I thought it was odd he held onto my
envelope. I didn't ask him for an apology. I was just searching for answers
that nobody knows but him."
Martha Deller, (817) 390-7857
mdeller@star-telegram.com
*******************************************
Convicted killer in two knife slayings set to die Thursday
02/12/2004
By MICHAEL GRACZYK / Associated Press
Terry Marbut likes to talk about the special relationship he had with his
daughter Sandi.
"I kind of raised her like a tomboy — played baseball, rode motorcycles,
liked to hunt and fish," Marbut said this week. "We were very close."
When she moved out and was joined by Jennifer Weston, a cousin from Indiana,
it was at a home across the street and within sight of where she grew up
in Grandview in Johnson County.
"They were out of the house but right there under my nose," Marbut says.
It was there he discovered the butchered bodies of his daughter, 18, and
Weston, 19, the evening of July 31, 1993.
"Unless you've experienced it, you can't imagine it," Marbut says.
Sandi Marbut had been stabbed or slashed about 40 times with a dull buck
knife, its blade blunted to about 3 inches in length. Weston had 66 stab
wounds.
Bobby Ray Hopkins, 36, a former bull rider from New Mexico on probation
for dealing cocaine, was set to die Thursday for their slayings.
Hopkins would be the sixth Texas inmate put to death this year and the
second in as many nights.
On Wednesday, Edward Lagrone, 46, maintaining his innocence while strapped
to the Texas death chamber gurney, received lethal injection for the 1991
slaying of a 10-year-old girl he impregnated. Two elderly women, great-aunts
of the girl, also were killed in the shotgun rampage in Fort Worth.
"The first six months (after the slayings) was a living hell," Marbut says.
"I don't remember a whole lot other than the things going on involving the
case."
Hopkins' name surfaced as authorities canvassed a crowd that gathered outside
the home where the killings occurred. Bystanders told officers Hopkins,
who was wanted for a probation violation, had previously been at a party
there and had argued with Sandi Marbut over $40 missing from her purse.
"She said she'd had a problem with this guy and asked if she could have
a gun," said Terry Marbut, who rejected his daughter's request. "She was afraid
of this guy."
A Texas Ranger tracked down Hopkins. A blood spot on his boot matched the
blood of the victims. A bootprint from the slaying scene matched Hopkins'
boot.
"It was identical," says Doug Allen, who then was Grandview police chief.
"From that point on, there never was a doubt who our murderer was."
Hopkins was questioned eight times and held in isolation for 15 days, refusing
to confess. A detective he knew from Hobbs, N.M., came to talk with him.
During a four-hour session, Hopkins told how he went to the home, a struggle
ensued and he stabbed Marbut.
"I can't help think it was some kind of anger toward her that set him off,"
said David Vernon, a Johnson County assistant district attorney handling
prosecution responses to Hopkins' appeals.
The confession became an issue in Hopkins' appeals because of questions
about whether he was properly informed of his rights and whether it should
have been allowed into evidence. The 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, while
saying it was troubled by the methods used to obtain the confession, last
year characterized the error as harmless because of overwhelming circumstantial
evidence against Hopkins.
"There was tons of DNA evidence at his trial," Vernon said. "His blood
was just everywhere in that apartment."
Hopkins has refused to speak with reporters while on death row. On an anti-death
penalty Web site, he wrote of his "wrongful conviction" and of maintaining
his innocence.
His lawyers filed motions for clemency, for a reprieve and asked to have
DNA evidence retested.
"The scientific technology has improved and there's no downside for the
prosecution to allow us to test it," attorney Thomas Mills Jr. said Wednesday.
"We just want to make sure. We don't have evidence it's inaccurate. But Bobby
has always protested it couldn't have been his blood."
Hopkins vilifies Allen on the Web site, accusing him of refusing to investigate
others for the slayings
"They can tell fairy tales all they want," Allen responded. "Anyone who
sat through the case down there has no doubt who the murderer was."
Evidence showed Marbut was sleeping downstairs and was attacked first.
The commotion likely woke Weston, who came from a second floor and was confronted
by her killer.
"By the bloodstains, there was a hell of a battle there," Allen said.
Terry Marbut said he would be in Huntsville to see Hopkins die. Weston's
mother planned to come to Texas from her home in New Washington, Ind., he
said.
"I was involved in this thing from the beginning," Marbut said. "There's
no way I would miss this."
___
On the Net:
Bobby Ray Hopkins http://ccadp.org/bobbyrayhopkins.html
Texas Department of Criminal Justice execution schedule http://www.tdcj.state.tx.us/stat/scheduledexecutions.htm
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Hopkins Homepage
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This page was
last updated February 13, 2004
Canadian Coalition Against the Death Penalty
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