Texas, Arizona Execute Men for Slayings in ‘80s

Texas and Arizona each executed killers by lethal injection Wednesday.

Robert “Bonzai Bob” Vickers, one of Arizona’s most notorious killers, was put to death at the state prison complex southeast of Phoenix. Vickers had murdered one cellmate and carved his nickname in the man’s back; he later set another inmate on fire.

Vickers spent 20 years on Arizona’s death row, longer than any of the 117 others currently there, and was the 17th person to be executed since Arizona resumed capital punishment in 1992. He is the fifth state inmate to be put to death this year.

He was executed for the 1982 killing of fellow inmate Wilmar “Buster” Holsinger.

Vickers, who was first sent to prison at age 19 for grand theft, had spent two trouble-filled decades on death row.

In Texas, Clydell Coleman, 62, was the oldest man put to death since the state resumed executions in 1982, six years after the U.S. Supreme Court lifted a national ban on capital punishment.

His was the second execution in as many days in Texas and the state’s 12th this year--a total that leads the nation.

Coleman was pronounced dead eight minutes after he was injected with a deadly solution. He made no final statement. He was sentenced to die for the Feb. 24, 1989, murder and robbery of 87-year-old Leetisha Joe.

Coleman and accomplice Yolanda Phillips broke into Joe’s Waco, Texas, home, where Coleman covered her with a blanket, hit her on the head with a hammer and strangled her with her own stocking.

The pair stole several household items, which Phillips later confessed were to be sold for drugs.