Killer, Before His Execution, Confesses to Other Slayings
An inmate was executed by lethal injection Wednesday for a 1993 slaying but not before making the surprise confession that he was a hired killer who had played a part in the murders of about a dozen other people.
Billy Frank Vickers, while strapped to a gurney in the Texas death chamber, told execution witnesses, “Down through the years there were several more that I had done or had a part of ... there must be a dozen or 14, I believe, all total.”
Prison spokeswoman Michelle Lyons said it was not known if Vickers was telling the truth.
Vickers, saying he would “like to clear some things up,” tried to exonerate two accomplices to his crime -- an inmate imprisoned for a separate killing and Texas millionaire Cullen Davis, who was tried in the murder of his wife and acquitted in a notorious 1970s case.
Vickers, 58, said he or someone else had committed the crimes for which they had been accused or convicted.
He said he had been paid to kill people, including the man for whose murder he was executed.
Vickers was condemned for shooting Phillip Winslow on March 12, 1993, while robbing him outside his Arthur City home in northeastern Texas.
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