David Leonard Wood has been under a sentence of death in Texas since 1993 for the deaths of six girls and young women who disappeared from El Paso in the spring and summer of 1987. Their bodies were found in the desert outside the city between September 1987 and March 1988. A Dallas jury, hearing the case after it was moved from El Paso because of publicity, convicted him of capital murder in 1992. The Associated Press reported that he was the first defendant prosecuted under the Texas provision that makes it a capital crime to murder more than one person during the same scheme or course of conduct.
Wood has never admitted any of the killings. He has called the two jailhouse informants who testified against him liars, has said he was a convenient scapegoat with a record that made him an easy suspect, and has fought for DNA testing of the evidence for more than fifteen years. Two execution dates, in 2009 and 2025, were stopped within days of being carried out. In July 2025 the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals sent his case back to the trial level to develop eight claims of innocence and unfair trial, and on September 4, 2026, a visiting judge granted his request for new DNA testing.
Wood was born on June 20, 1957, according to the Texas Department of Criminal Justice. San Angelo LIVE! describes him as a native of San Angelo, in Tom Green County, who moved to El Paso as a child. He attended Parkland High School in El Paso in the 1970s and left school in the ninth grade, KVIA reported in 2009, and he was turned away by the Army because of an IQ score of 68.
The State of Texas, in a brief filed with the U.S. Supreme Court during his intellectual-disability appeal, summarized the record of his childhood as it was presented in court. He was described as hyperactive, took Ritalin and had poor grades. He ran away in the fourth grade, was placed in foster homes twice, and a fourth-grade teacher described him as having learning and conduct problems. As a young adult he worked as a mechanic and a car painter, did yard and maintenance work, and later held jobs as a painter, a sewing machine operator and a furniture store worker. In prison he worked in the bus barn. An El Paso district court later heard from his sister, a childhood friend and a former teacher about his early years.
By 1987 Wood had served two prison terms. The State's brief lists three convictions in all: two for offenses against young girls, committed in 1976 and 1980, with sentences of five and twenty years; and sexual assault, for a 1987 offense against an adult woman, with a fifty-year sentence.
He was released on parole in early 1987. KVIA dated the parole to January 1987; Associated Press reporting printed in 2009 said he had been paroled about a month before the disappearances began.
Between May 13 and August 27, 1987, three young women and three teenage girls disappeared from the El Paso area, according to the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals. Detective John Guerrero of the El Paso police, who later served on the task force that investigated their deaths, told KVIA in 2009 that many of them had dropped out of school. They were "rebellious kids," he said, but not bad kids.
Ivy Susana Williams was 23, according to most reports (KFOX14 has given her age as 24). The Texas Department of Criminal Justice lists May 30, 1987 as the date of the offense for which Wood is held, and her death is the one most news reports name as the basis of the conviction.
Desiree Wheatley was 15. She was a junior high school student in northeast El Paso, and she disappeared that summer. Police said students saw her accept a ride from Wood, KVIA reported. She was one of three missing students from her school, and the only one of the three who was ever found. After the 1992 sentencing her mother said that what mattered to her was knowing Wood could never kill again, and in 2009, when she planned to attend his execution, she told the Associated Press: "This is not revenge. This is justice."
Karen Baker was 20 and lived in El Paso, the Associated Press reported in 1988.
Angelica Frausto was 17.
Rosa Maria Casio was 24 in most later reports; the Associated Press gave her age as 23 in 1988 and 2009 and described her as being from Addison, a Dallas suburb.
Dawn Marie Smith was 14. A bloodstain on clothing she had worn became, decades later, the center of the DNA dispute in Wood's case.
Five of them, according to the State and the federal courts, were seen on the day they disappeared accepting a ride from a man on a red Harley-Davidson motorcycle or in a beige pickup truck. Wood owned both.
Three other girls and young women went missing in El Paso in 1987 and have never been found: Marjorie Knox, 14; Melissa Alaniz, whose age is given as 12 or 14 in different reports; and Cheryl Vasquez-Dismukes, 19. KFOX14 reported in 2024 that detectives believed Wood was involved in their disappearances. He has never been charged in any of them, and no one else has been charged.
On September 4, 1987, utility workers came across a body in the desert on the northeast edge of the city, the Associated Press reported. A second was found the same day. They were identified as Rosa Maria Casio and Karen Baker.
On October 20, 1987, police dogs found Desiree Wheatley and Dawn Smith. At that point, the AP reported, police began to suspect that one person was responsible, and they formed a task force. Angelica Frausto was found on November 3. Ivy Williams was found on March 14, 1988.
The police unit that worked the case became known as the Desert Deaths task force. When Wood was tried in 1992, news coverage labeled him the "Desert Killer," a name prosecutors also used.
Nearly a year after the first two bodies were found, no one had been charged. In September 1988 the Associated Press reported that the six-man task force led by Sergeant Ramiro Gomez had interviewed more than 400 witnesses, in places as far away as Utah, Florida and Mexico. More than 50 people had been considered suspects at one time or another, and that list had been cut to fewer than 10. The department would not name them. Captain Greg Drollinger, who oversaw the department's criminal investigations division, said investigators believed they were missing one piece of information. "There is a bit of information out there we need," he said, "and if we get it, that could mean the end of this case."
By then Wood was already in custody on another case.
In July 1987, a woman later testified, Wood picked her up outside a convenience store, said he would take her home, and instead drove her into the desert, where he kidnapped and sexually assaulted her and then left her there. She survived. Wood was convicted of that crime, and the State lists a fifty-year sentence for it.
At the capital murder trial in 1992 she testified about the attack as an extraneous offense, a crime outside the charges that prosecutors offered to show a pattern. The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals called her testimony crucial to the guilt phase, found the similarities to the murders striking, and held that its value as evidence outweighed its prejudice. The Fifth Circuit later noted that Wood did not deny the assault. His current lawyers argue that she accused him only after police pressured her to do so. That claim is part of the habeas application the trial court was ordered to develop in 2025.
The case that went to trial rested on four kinds of evidence: the accounts of people who saw the victims getting into vehicles like Wood's, the testimony of the woman who survived, fiber evidence, and two men who had shared cells with Wood.
The fiber evidence came from a vacuum cleaner bag. Wood and his girlfriend had left it behind in an apartment they had moved out of. A forensic chemist testified that orange fibers found on the clothing of one victim matched fibers in the bag, and Associated Press reporting in 2009 identified that victim as Desiree Wheatley. Wood's girlfriend testified that he owned a burnt orange blanket and some shovels and kept them in his pickup.
The two cellmates were Randy Wells and James Carl Sweeney Jr. Wells testified that Wood had described the killings to him. Sweeney testified that Wood showed him newspaper clippings about the El Paso murders and admitted that he was the one who had committed them.
The informants came forward late. A 1990 memo from an El Paso prosecutor to the district attorney, Steve Simmons, which Wood's lawyers later found and the Marshall Project described in 2025, said there was not enough evidence to connect Wood to the bodies and named cellmates as possible witnesses. In the memo's words, "Seldom does a serial killer keep all the details a secret." Wells was facing a murder charge at the time; after testifying he pleaded guilty only to forgery. Sweeney sued for a $25,000 reward and settled for $13,000, though he said he had not testified for money alone. At trial he said that informants usually get killed, which the State has since offered as the reason the two did not come forward sooner. Sweeney died in 2000 and Wells in early 2025. Neither recanted under oath.
Because of the publicity in El Paso, the trial was moved to Dallas, and the Texas Department of Criminal Justice still lists Dallas as the county of conviction. The case was never tried in El Paso, KFOX14 noted in 2025. Wood was represented by Dolph Quijano Jr. and Norbert Garney.
The indictment charged capital murder under section 19.03(a)(7)(B) of the Texas Penal Code, which covers the murder of more than one person during different criminal transactions committed under the same scheme or course of conduct. Wood's lawyers filed several motions to quash or dismiss it, arguing it was defective, and he raised the point again on appeal. The state and federal courts rejected that claim.
Quijano later described Wood as an extremely difficult client. At one point during the prosecution's case, after an outburst, Wood was removed from the courtroom. He has long described himself as a scapegoat. The defense put on evidence about his intellectual functioning, including testimony that his IQ was below 70 and an expert from San Francisco, Quijano told KVIA in 2009. "We put all the evidence before the jury," he said.
The jury convicted Wood of capital murder in late November 1992. The Fifth Circuit gives the date of the conviction as November 30, 1992; San Angelo LIVE! gives November 10 for the verdict and November 30 for the death sentence. He was received on death row on January 14, 1993. Karen LaRose, one of the prosecutors, told the Associated Press in 2009: "I have no doubt. I feel very comfortable with the jury's verdict."
The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals affirmed the conviction and death sentence on December 13, 1995, in an unpublished opinion. Wood filed his first state habeas application on December 19, 1997. It raised three claims: that the indictment was defective, that his lawyers were ineffective for not objecting to it, and that the testimony of the woman who survived the July 1987 attack should not have been admitted. The court denied relief on September 19, 2001.
His appointed federal lawyer filed a habeas petition in federal court on May 6, 2002, and an amended petition on October 2, 2002, with the three claims already heard in state court and several dozen that had not been. Between those two filings, on June 20, 2002, the U.S. Supreme Court decided Atkins v. Virginia, which barred the execution of people with intellectual disability. The amended petition did not raise an Atkins claim. The district court denied the claims on April 4, 2006, refused to pause the case so that Wood could return to state court, and entered a final judgment on June 2, 2006.
On October 5, 2007, a Fifth Circuit panel of Judges Patrick Higginbotham, Fortunato Benavides and James Dennis refused him a certificate of appealability. The indictment, the court said, properly charged capital murder under the serial provision, so his lawyers could not have been ineffective for failing to attack it. On the testimony of the woman who survived, the court held that the State had made a strong showing that Wood committed that crime and that it was rationally connected to the murders. The Supreme Court declined to hear the case on April 14, 2008.
After his federal habeas lawyer withdrew, Wood's execution was set for August 20, 2009. New lawyers working without pay took up the case. Two days before the execution date, they filed a new state application claiming that he was intellectually disabled and could not be executed under Atkins. The Attorney General's Office said the claim was without merit and could have been raised years earlier. "A person afflicted with mental retardation could never have carried out a crime of this magnitude," it argued. On August 19, 2009, a day before the execution, the Court of Criminal Appeals stayed it and sent the claim back to the trial court for a hearing.
That week Wood spoke to reporters from death row. He told the Associated Press that the two cellmates who testified against him were "two jailhouse-snitching rats." In an interview with the former KVIA anchor Gary Warner he said that if he were executed, certain El Paso police officers "got away with this." Detective Guerrero, retired by then, told KVIA that he knew Wood had killed the girls.
Judge Peter Peca handled Wood's post-conviction case until January 2011, when it was transferred to Judge Bert Richardson. Richardson held the hearing on intellectual disability on October 11 to 14 and December 6 to 7, 2011.
The record held six IQ scores, none taken before Wood was 18, according to the State's later summary. They ranged from 64 to 111. The prison system recorded a score of 111 in 1977, when he was 19. Two psychologists tested him in 1980 and reported full-scale scores of 64 and 71, each estimating that his potential was around 80; one noted that his motivation during the test was less than optimal. Prison entries from 1980 and 1988 recorded scores of 101 and 67, with no test type listed. In 2011 a psychologist retained for the hearing gave him a full-scale score of 75, with a range of 71 to 80, and found signs that he was not giving full effort. The courts treated that 2011 score as the only valid one. The defense called no expert at the hearing. It called his sister, a childhood friend and a teacher.
Richardson found on October 1, 2013, that Wood was not intellectually disabled and recommended that relief be denied. (Wood's lawyers later gave the date of that ruling as October 4, 2013.) The Court of Criminal Appeals adopted the findings and denied relief in November 2014. On May 12, 2016, the Fifth Circuit refused to let him bring the claim in a new federal petition, holding that he could have added it to his first federal case after the law changed in the mid-2000s and so could not show that it had been unavailable to him.
After the Supreme Court decided Moore v. Texas, a case about how Texas courts assess intellectual disability, on March 28, 2017, the Court of Criminal Appeals reconsidered Wood's claim in light of it and, on December 12, 2018, denied relief again. The Supreme Court declined to review that decision on October 7, 2019.
Wood's first motion for DNA testing under Chapter 64 of the Texas Code of Criminal Procedure was granted in November 2010. In 2011 three items were tested using Y-STR methods, which look at the male Y chromosome. One was a sample from Angelica Frausto. Another was a bloodstain on Dawn Smith's clothing. That stain yielded male DNA, a partial profile from which Wood was excluded. The other two results were inconclusive. In August 2011 the trial court found that the results did not show a reasonable probability that Wood would have been acquitted, and Wood withdrew his appeal from that ruling.
More motions followed. A 2011 motion listed 69 items, mostly clothing and other objects. A 2015 motion asked the court to test hair, saliva and blood samples that police took in 1987 from S.M., a man questioned about the murders whom Wood's lawyers call an alternative suspect; Wood said the samples had been sent to the state crime lab and never tested. A 2016 motion asked the court to remedy the loss or destruction of evidence. A 2017 filing laid out a spreadsheet of 142 entries, of which Wood's lawyers said 86 met the legal standard for testing and 15 had been lost or destroyed by the State.
Judge Richardson repeatedly complained about the pace. In December 2011 he said, "I'm opposed to dragging this thing out any longer than it should have been." In February 2016 he called the delays inexcusable and said the testing had been "piecemealed." In March 2017 he said, "I don't think you get to come back to the table over and over and drag this out forever."
Richardson had meanwhile been elected to the Court of Criminal Appeals itself. According to Wood's lawyers, he announced his candidacy on July 20, 2013, ruled against Wood on intellectual disability that October, and later cited the case on his campaign website. He won the seat in November 2014, joined the court in January 2015, and continued to preside over Wood's DNA proceedings at the trial level. Wood moved to disqualify him on April 18, 2017. Presiding Judge Stephen Ables denied the motion, and the U.S. Supreme Court later declined to hear Wood's argument that Richardson had used the case to advance his career.
On March 3, 2022, Richardson denied every pending request for testing, together with the motions on lost evidence, on his own removal and on the 1987 samples, without written findings. Wood appealed on April 1, 2022.
On May 22, 2024, the Court of Criminal Appeals affirmed in a published opinion by Presiding Judge Sharon Keller, joined by every other participating judge; Richardson did not take part. The court held that a judge who denies testing does not have to make findings, that Richardson's dual role did not require his removal, and that Chapter 64 offers no remedy for evidence that no longer exists. On the main question, it held that Wood had not shown that his requests were not made to unreasonably delay his execution. It pointed to at least four motions over five years, the last seeking tests of more than 100 items, all filed years after the law took effect in 2001 and the testing methods became available around 2003. Wood's argument that he could not be delaying an execution because no date was set was, the court wrote, "a hollow contention." That failure alone, it said, was enough to uphold the denial.
On August 20, 2024, a court order set Wood's execution for March 13, 2025, at the state prison in Huntsville. He was 67. Fox television stations in Texas reported that no inmate had spent longer on the state's death row.
His lawyers, Gregory Wiercioch, who had represented him for about 16 years, and Jeremy Schepers, went to several courts at once. In federal court they argued that he had been unfairly denied DNA testing under Texas law; on February 19, 2025, Judge Robert Pittman refused a preliminary injunction, writing that a stay "at this late juncture would clearly inhibit the State's vested interest" in carrying out the sentence, and an appeal was turned down on March 7. On February 21 they filed a new habeas application with the Court of Criminal Appeals, raising eight claims, among them actual innocence, false testimony, suppressed evidence, destroyed evidence and ineffective counsel. Wiercioch also met with the general counsel to Governor Greg Abbott, and he asked the El Paso district attorney, James Montoya, to take the case back so that more evidence could be tested. Montoya declined. His office had not handled the case for more than 30 years, he said, and the courts had already ruled; he told the Marshall Project that it would be "ill-advised" to get involved. The case had long been in the hands of the Attorney General's Office.
The new application centered on a former prisoner named George Hall. Hall told the Marshall Project in February 2025 that El Paso police approached him in 1990 to help build the case against Wood and suggested that cooperation could bring him deals or reward money. He said detectives showed him and two other inmates case files and crime scene photographs and told them Wood was their suspect. He said he refused. The two others, he said, were Wells and Sweeney, who went on to testify that Wood had confessed. "I didn't want to get out by lying," he told the Marshall Project. Hall said he was later threatened in prison as a suspected snitch, and he believed, though he could not prove, that a protest letter sent to the parole board kept him in prison longer. He called Wood's lawyers after the 2025 execution date was set. In 1991, Wiercioch found, Hall had written to a prosecutor that Wells and Sweeney "fabricated their stories together."
Some of what Hall says, including that the two men talked about lying, cannot be checked, the Marshall Project noted. The State has argued that Wells and Sweeney came forward before they knew of any reward. Wood's lawyers say the informants never explained how the victims died, which police themselves could not establish. "These men fabricated their story at the trial," Wiercioch said. "That's the most unreliable evidence there is in the criminal justice system," he told KVIA of jailhouse informant testimony.
The application also argued that prosecutors never gave the trial defense El Paso police memos showing that Wood was under surveillance when two of the victims disappeared, memos that do not mention a beige truck; that his pickup had been in a crash in July 1987 and sat in a salvage yard in August; and that his trial lawyer had not been given all the evidence he was entitled to.
The detectives who built the case rejected all of it. John Guerrero, who had served on the task force, told KFOX14 that the idea of Wood's innocence was "ludicrous." He told KVIA that witnesses had picked Wood out of photo lineups, that moving prisoners for interviews required approvals that leave a paper trail, and that he had never interviewed Wells or Sweeney himself. "There was no doubt in my mind, or any of us that worked those cases, that he is the killer," he said. The claims, he said, were "grasping at straws to save his life." He told the Marshall Project that the suggestion that case files were shared with informants was "preposterous," and pointed to the other witnesses, the woman who said Wood nearly killed her, and the fiber evidence.
On March 11, 2025, less than two days before the execution, the Court of Criminal Appeals stayed it in an unsigned order that listed Wood's claims but gave no reasons. Judges Mary Lou Keel and Gina Parker dissented. Judge Richardson did not take part. It was the second time the court had stopped Wood's execution within days of the date, and the Texas Tribune reported that his was the only Texas death sentence halted that year up to that point. The same day, the Marshall Project reported, the Fifth Circuit directed a federal judge in Dallas to consider a new petition from Wood alleging false testimony.
On July 30, 2025, the Court of Criminal Appeals issued a short unsigned order sending the case back to the trial court to develop the eight claims Wood had raised in February. It did not say which claims, if any, it thought might be proved, and it did not order a new trial. Two dissenting opinions were filed. Presiding Judge David Schenck, in an opinion concurring in part and dissenting in part, wrote that "the order provides no guidance for what exactly should be developed," and said the court should have focused on DNA testing. Wiercioch and Schepers said they were grateful the court had recognized how serious the claims were and were "grateful to have the opportunity to keep fighting to prove Mr. Wood's innocence." The El Paso district attorney's office did not comment.
A retired judge, Dick Alcalá, was assigned to hear the claims. On September 15, 2025, he met by video with Wood's lawyers and the Attorney General's Office. The State said it had 120 days to answer Wood's filings and asked for 60 more because of other cases, which would have moved its deadline to January 26, 2026. Wiercioch accepted the 120 days but opposed the extension. The judge ended the session without setting a hearing, waiting on the filings and on any further word from the Court of Criminal Appeals about how the case should proceed. In January 2026 the Texas Tribune listed Wood among the death row prisoners whose cases were awaiting new hearings after more than three decades.
On September 4, 2026, at a hearing in Wood's case, Judge Alcalá granted the defense motion for new DNA testing. He did so even though the Court of Criminal Appeals had rejected a similar request in 2024, KVIA reported. He told the defense and the prosecution to identify which material should be tested, and the Texas Department of Public Safety is to do the work. About 90 items are believed to hold possible biological material, KFOX14 reported. Wood was 69.
The order does not decide the other claims sent back in 2025, and it does not affect the conviction itself. No results have been made public.
Wood remains under sentence of death. The Texas Department of Criminal Justice holds him on death row as number 999051, received January 14, 1993, with Dallas as the county of conviction. No execution date is set. His conviction stands, his claims of innocence and unfair trial are before Judge Alcalá on remand from the Court of Criminal Appeals, and the testing ordered on September 4, 2026, is the latest ruling in the case. He continues to deny that he killed anyone.
The mother of Desiree Wheatley planned to watch his execution in 2009. It did not take place, and neither did the one set for 2025.
Guilt. A jury convicted Wood in 1992 and every appeal until 2025 upheld the conviction. He has always denied the killings. No DNA evidence has linked him to them; in the one result that produced a profile, male DNA in a bloodstain on Dawn Smith's clothing, he was excluded. The trial court found in 2011 that the result did not show a reasonable probability of a different verdict.
The informants. Randy Wells and James Sweeney testified that Wood confessed. Wells later had a murder charge resolved with a forgery plea, and Sweeney received $13,000 in a reward settlement. George Hall says the two read police files and built their stories from them; the detectives deny that any files were shown. Neither recanted under oath.
The surveillance memos and the truck. Wood's lawyers say police memos placed him under watch when two victims disappeared and that his pickup was in a salvage yard in August 1987. These claims have not been tested in court.
The woman who survived. Her account was central to the 1992 trial. Wood's lawyers say police pressured her. The claim has not been decided.
The three missing girls and women. Detectives believed Wood was involved in the disappearances of Marjorie Knox, Melissa Alaniz and Cheryl Vasquez-Dismukes. He has never been charged, and none of them has been found.
The alternative suspect. Wood's lawyers have pointed to a man, S.M., questioned in 1987, whose samples they say were never tested. He was never charged, and the trial court refused in 2022 to order those samples tested.
Ages and details. Reports differ on several victims' ages (Rosa Maria Casio 23 or 24; Ivy Williams 23 or 24; Melissa Alaniz 12 or 14) and on the verdict date (November 10 or November 30, 1992).
June 20, 1957: David Leonard Wood born (TDCJ); grows up in San Angelo and El Paso.
1976: Offense against a young girl; five-year sentence.
1980: Second offense against a young girl; twenty-year sentence.
Early 1987: Paroled (January, per KVIA).
May 13 to August 27, 1987: Six girls and young women disappear from the El Paso area.
July 1987: Kidnapping and sexual assault of an adult woman, who survives; Wood is later convicted and, per the State, sentenced to 50 years.
September 4, 1987: Rosa Maria Casio and Karen Baker found.
October 20, 1987: Desiree Wheatley and Dawn Smith found; task force formed.
November 3, 1987: Angelica Frausto found.
March 14, 1988: Ivy Williams found.
September 1988: No one yet charged; task force has interviewed more than 400 witnesses.
1990: Prosecutor's memo says the evidence does not yet link Wood to the bodies; George Hall says police approached him that year.
1992: Trial in Dallas after a change of venue; jury convicts Wood of capital murder (November 30, per the Fifth Circuit) and he is sentenced to death.
January 14, 1993: Received on death row.
December 13, 1995: Conviction affirmed on direct appeal.
September 19, 2001: First state habeas application denied.
April 4, 2006: Federal habeas petition denied.
October 5, 2007: Fifth Circuit denies a certificate of appealability.
April 14, 2008: U.S. Supreme Court declines review.
August 19, 2009: Execution set for August 20 stayed for an intellectual-disability claim.
November 2010: First DNA testing motion granted; testing in 2011 excludes Wood from a male profile on Dawn Smith's clothing.
October and December 2011: Intellectual-disability hearing before Judge Bert Richardson.
October 1, 2013: Trial court finds Wood not intellectually disabled.
November 2014: Court of Criminal Appeals denies the claim.
May 12, 2016: Fifth Circuit refuses a successive federal petition.
December 12, 2018: Court of Criminal Appeals denies the claim again after Moore v. Texas.
October 7, 2019: U.S. Supreme Court declines review.
March 3, 2022: Trial court denies further DNA testing.
May 22, 2024: Court of Criminal Appeals affirms the denial.
August 20, 2024: Execution set for March 13, 2025.
February 21, 2025: New habeas application with eight claims, including George Hall's account.
March 11, 2025: Court of Criminal Appeals stays the execution.
July 30, 2025: Case sent back to the trial court to develop the eight claims; retired Judge Dick Alcalá later assigned to hear them.
September 15, 2025: First remand conference; no hearing set.
September 4, 2026: Judge Alcalá grants new DNA testing.