Wood was born in 1957 and lived in El Paso, Texas. He had convictions for rape from the 1970s and was on parole in 1987.
Between May and August 1987 six women and girls aged from thirteen to twenty-four disappeared from El Paso. Their bodies were found in shallow graves in the desert north east of the city in the autumn of that year. The press called the case the Desert Killings. He was arrested on October 22, 1987 and convicted on January 14, 1993, and sentenced to death. The El Paso press called him the Desert Killer, after where the bodies were buried.
The six were Ivy Susanna Williams, twenty-three; Desiree Wheatley, fifteen; Karen Baker, twenty; Angelica Frausto, seventeen; Rosa Maria Casio, twenty-four; and Dawn Marie Smith, fourteen.
The case against him was circumstantial: witness accounts placing him with some of the women, testimony from fellow inmates, and hair evidence. There was no confession and, at trial, no DNA.
It has been litigated ever since. An execution date in 2009 was stayed to allow DNA testing, and the results were argued by both sides, the state saying they did not exonerate him and the defence saying the material tested was not the material that mattered and that other items had been lost or never examined. His lawyers have also challenged the inmate testimony and the hair comparison, that discipline having been broadly discredited in the years since. Further execution dates have been set and stayed.
He has maintained his innocence throughout and remains on Texas death row.
An execution set for March 13, 2025 was stayed two days beforehand by the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals, without stated reasons, on an appeal raising eight claims including destroyed evidence and false testimony. On July 30, 2025 the court remanded the case to the trial court in El Paso to develop those claims. It was the second time the court had stopped his execution within days of the date, the first being in 2009. He remains on death row, where he has been since January 1993. The range of six to nine reflects three further disappearances from the same months that were never charged.