‘Railroad Killer’ Guilty, Seeks Execution

A Mexican drifter who confessed to killing nine people as he crisscrossed the United States on trains said he wants the death sentence after a jury Thursday rejected his plea of insanity and found him guilty of murdering a Houston physician.

“I’ve decided that injection is better than spending life in jail,” so-called railroad killer Angel Maturino Resendiz said outside the presence of the jury. “Can I tell you my reason? I’m 41, plus 40 years is 81, and I might not make it all the way.”

The jury later began hearing testimony on whether Maturino Resendiz should receive death by injection or life in prison with no possibility of parole for 40 years.

The drifter from Mexico has admitted killing nine people as he made his way around the United States hopping freight trains. He made the FBI’s 10 most wanted list just before he surrendered to the Texas Rangers on July 13 in El Paso in a deal negotiated by his family.

State District Judge Bill Harmon questioned the bespectacled Maturino Resendiz closely to make sure he understood the gravity of his decision. Maturino Resendiz, who speaks fluent English, assured him that he did.

“Yeah, but I’ve just made my mind up. . . . I told my attorney [before the trial] that if I lose the psychological part I was not going to fight this,” he said.

Harmon accepted Maturino Resendiz’s decision but told him he could change his mind at any time and that, despite his request, the jury could decide on a life sentence, which would put him behind bars for a minimum of 40 years before he could be eligible for parole.

The 12-person jury deliberated 10 hours over two days before reaching its verdict that Maturino Resendiz was guilty of the December 1998 murder of Claudia Benton, 39, in her Houston home.

She was raped, beaten and stabbed to death. A police video showed her head was wrapped with a plastic bag and her body left sprawled on the floor, a bloody butcher knife nearby.

Maturino Resendiz’s attorneys admitted when the trial opened last week that he had murdered nine people during a two-year rampage across Texas, Kentucky and Illinois. But, they said, he was not sane enough to be convicted of the crimes.

He was on trial only for the Benton murder but had been the prime suspect in the eight other killings to which he confessed. All were brutal beatings, stabbings and shootings, most of which took place in the victims’ homes and were sometimes followed by a sexual assault on the dead or dying victim.

A defense psychiatrist testified that Maturino Resendiz, who has a long criminal history and had served time in the U.S. for burglaries and violent assaults, is a paranoid schizophrenic who believed God directed him to kill evil people.

But psychiatrists called by the prosecution said Maturino Resendiz is only mentally disturbed, not insane. They said he knew murder was wrong.

Defense attorney Allen Tanner complied with Maturino Resendiz’s wishes by offering no counter-argument or questioning any of several witnesses that began the prosecution’s punishment case by describing the murders he committed.