Rogelio Cannady executed

HUNTSVILLE — The State of Texas executed convicted murderer and former La Feria resident Rogelio Cannady on Wednesday night, 20 years after he killed two teenage runaways.

Cannady, 37, was put to death after the U.S. Supreme Court refused to grant him a last-minute reprieve for killing his cellmate while serving two life sentences for the murders of the teenagers.

Just before his death, he spoke from the gurney to the witnesses.

“I was in there now thinking about how we grew up,” Cannady said to his brother, Victor Villapando, and childhood friend,
Gary Ojeda. “You know how we grew up in the same house.

“We need to start loving each other like we used to.”

Cannady did not address the brothers of one of his victims, who were present to witness the execution. He instead spent about three minutes talking to his own friends and family.

“I thought it was going to be harder than this,” Cannady said, laughing. “I am ready to go.

“I am going to sleep now. I can feel it, it’s affecting me.”

Cannady was pronounced dead at 6:19 p.m.

In June 1990, Cannady and four other La Feria teenagers took part in the murders of Ricardo Garcia, 16, of Freer, and Ana Robles, 13, of Brownsville. Cannady’s role in the murders included stabbing Garcia 13 times, raping Robles and holding the girl down while another teenager strangled her, according to court records.

Garcia’s two brothers, Roel Garcia and Leandro Garcia, were present. But there were no witnesses for Robles or Leovigildo Bonal, the cellmate for whose murder Cannady was executed.

Cannady did not receive the death penalty until the 1993 slaying of Bonal, his 55-year-old cellmate at a Bee County prison.

Cannady claimed to have killed Bonal to avoid being sexually assaulted, according to court records. He claimed that Bonal had made several sexual advances towards him.

A state law that went into effect in 1993 requires a capital murder charge for anyone serving a life sentence for murder,
who is then charged with another murder. Cannady was the first inmate to be charged under that law.

For his last meal, Cannady ate seven beef-and-cheese enchiladas, pico de gallo, two cheeseburgers, fries and two pieces of fried chicken. Cannady was the 10th prisoner executed in Texas this year. There were 327 prisoners on death row as Wednesday dawned.

Cannady spent more than half of his life in prison.

On June 29, 1990, the night of the La Feria murders, Cannady and his friends were celebrating his release from Cameron County jail on robbery and assault charges, according to court records. He would soon earn a 20-year sentence for that crime.

Two former sheriff’s deputies, who investigated the Garcia and Robles murders, said that Cannady had a reputation for getting into trouble. A 2008 news release from the Attorney General’s Office stated that Cannady’s arrest record began when he was 10 years old.

Just as there are two different stories about Cannady’s character, there are at least two different stories of what happened the night of the murders. There was the original confessions signed by Cannady and Solis in 1990. And then there was the chronology provided by the defense team that counseled Cannady for 12 years.

One story was violent and ruthless, while the other was filled with deception and accusations against investigators.

Solis’ confession detailed how Cannady, known to his friends as Roy, stabbed Garcia. It stated that Solis and Cannady eventually threw Garcia in an irrigation canal behind Adams Gardens, a small community between La Feria and Harlingen.

“When Roy was stabbing Rick with the knife, Roy was smiling …” Solis’ confession stated. “He was enjoying the killing.”

Danny Kuhlke, 18, Johnny Ray Lopez Garza, 17, and Luis Acosta, 16, met Cannady and Solis at the canal after Garcia was dead, Solis’ confession stated. Then, the five teenagers returned to Garza’s mobile home. There, Cannady took Robles into a bedroom and shower, where he raped her, prosecutors said.

Eventually, Solis and Cannady choked Robles to death with a red bandana and threw her into another canal behind Adams Gardens, according to the confession.

Autopsies showed that Robles had been raped and strangled while Garcia had 13 stab wounds.

“I remember that the coroner’s report said they kicked (Robles) twice when she fell out of the car,” said S.R. Garcia, the lead investigator on the case for the Cameron County Sheriff’s Department.

Garcia, now the police chief at San Benito Independent School District, was present at the confessions of Solis and Garza, according to court records.

“We proved our case, but now they’re trying to come up with all kinds of stories,” Garcia said. “What do you expect from a man going down?”

Affidavits filed with Cannady’s latest appeal to the Fifth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans earlier this week support the contention that the confessions of Cannady, Solis and Garza were coerced.

Solis wrote a letter dated April 28, 2010, to one of Cannady’s lawyers denouncing the 1990 confession. That letter stated that he and Cannady were not present at the time of the murders.

Several of the affidavits filed with Cannady’s latest appeal refer to an allegation that there is an audio recording between two investigators with the District Attorney’s Office talking about how they coerced the confessions.

However, no recording or transcript has ever been produced.

Tina Church, an investigator for Cannady’s lawyers since 1998, said that Cannady’s execution was a bigger mistake than the 2004 execution of Cameron Todd Willingham, a convicted arson killer whom she also represented.

By killing Cannady, “all they will do is create a new set of victims,” said Church, the founder of an anti-death penalty group called The Other Victim’s Advocacy.

Herbert Hancock, the prosecutor in Cannady’s capital murder case, said, “I don’t embrace sending somebody to death row,
but it is absolutely necessary some time, especially this time.”

----
CANNADY TIMELINE
* June 26, 1990: Ana Robles, 13, Rick Garcia, 16, and Luis Acosta, 16, run away from the Esperanza Home for Boys. They stay at the home of 19-year-old Elizabeth Ordonez in Adams Gardens, La Feria.

* June 29, 1990: A group of teenagers — including Rogelio Cannady, 18, Danny Kuhlke, 18, Francisco Solis, 18, John Ray Garza, 17, with Robles, Garcia and Acosta — have a party at Garza’s grandmother’s mobile home in Adams Gardens.

* June 30, 1990: The bodies of Robles and Garcia are found in an irrigation canal behind Adams Gardens. Police find that
Robles had been raped and strangled while Garcia had been stabbed 13 times.

* July 18, 1990: Cameron County sheriff’s deputies arrest Cannady, Kuhlke, Solis, Garza and Acosta in connection with the murders.

* Jan. 21, 1991: Cannady and Solis plead guilty to murder, avoiding the death penalty. State District Judge Darrell Hester tells them both that they will be old men when they get out of prison.

* February 1991: Kuhlke and Garza are convicted of crimes in connection with the June 29 murders. “We’re very upset about (the murders) … it’s upsetting the whole community … Kuhlke and Garza were on the Honor Roll,” said William Green, the La Feria Independent School District superintendent in 1990.

* September 1993: A Texas Penal Code amendment goes into effect, requiring a capital murder charge for any person who while “serving a sentence of life imprisonment … murders another.”

* October 1993: Cannady, serving his sentence at the Texas Department of Criminal Justice McConnell Unit in Beeville, kills his cellmate, 55-year-old Leovigildo Bonal, with a belt and a padlock. Cannady claims it was in self-defense, saying Bonal had attempted to sodomize him. Bonal had been serving a 15-year sentence for murder.

* June 2, 1994: A Bee County grand jury indicts Cannady on a capital murder charge, based on the 1993 state law.

* Dec. 3, 1997: A jury finds Cannady guilty of capital murder. Cannady’s defense had argued that because the first murders occurred prior to the 1993 law, Cannady should not be charged under it.

* Nov. 18, 2008: The day before he is scheduled to be executed, a state district judge withdraws the death warrant. The execution is stayed until further order of the court.

* May 19, 2010: Cannady is executed by lethal injection.