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Texas Executes Robert Ladd for the 1996 Murder of Vicki Ann Garner in Tyler

Ladd, 57, who had already served time for killing a Dallas woman and her two children in 1978, apologized to Garner's family before he died in Huntsville.

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A long red-brick prison wall and a corner guard tower along an empty street at winter dusk, under bare trees and a single streetlight. Not the actual prison.

Robert Charles Ladd spoke to the family of the woman he killed in the minutes before the drugs began. "I hope you can find peace in your heart and happiness," he told them from the gurney in Huntsville on Thursday, January 29, 2015. "A revenge death won't get you anything." Then he turned to his sister. "I love you," he said. "Let's ride."

The State of Texas began the lethal injection at 6:35 p.m. Moments later Ladd called out that it hurt, that it was stinging his arm. Then he went quiet, and at 7:02 p.m. he was pronounced dead. He was 57, the second man executed in Texas that year and the second since Greg Abbott became governor. Outside the prison, 15 to 20 protesters shouted that the death penalty was not the answer.

He died for the murder of Vicki Ann Garner, 38, of Tyler. On September 25, 1996, according to the state's death-row record, Ladd robbed her and beat her to death with a hammer, after her legs and wrist had been bound with a cord, and then set her body on fire. He carried off electronics, kitchen appliances, jewelry and food. The Tyler Morning Telegraph, which reported that he had also sexually assaulted her, said the two had met at the Andrews Center, a mental health treatment center in Tyler where both were employed.

Ladd had killed before. In 1978, in Dallas, he killed a woman and her two children. The prison system's record shows a life sentence for murder from Dallas County, received in March 1980, and his release under mandatory supervision to Tyler on October 13, 1992, four years before Garner died; the Telegraph described it as parole after 13 years of a 40-year term. A Smith County jury's death sentence brought him to death row on August 29, 1997, where he spent more than 17 years.

Garner's sisters, Teresa Wooten and Kathy Pirtle, were there to watch. Afterward they said his death gave them no joy. "His death was not a cause for celebration. We know Mr. Ladd had family who loved him," Wooten said. "Instead, tonight we celebrate the life of Vicki Ann Garner and that justice has finally been served." They held no anger toward him, she said. Pirtle said it gave no closure and made up for nothing. "We can remember Vicki now without the specter hanging over our heads."

What this story covers. The execution times, Ladd's last words, the protest, the meeting at the Andrews Center, the sexual-assault account, the 40-year figure and the sisters' statements come from Kenneth Dean's report in the Tyler Morning Telegraph of January 30, 2015. The description of the crime, the date and county of the offense, the 1980 Dallas County life sentence, the 1992 release and the date he reached death row come from the Texas Department of Criminal Justice death-row record. Where the newspaper and the prison record differ on the earlier sentence, both are given. The names of the woman and children killed in Dallas in 1978 are not given because no source opened for this story names them. The image is an illustration of a Texas prison wall at dusk, not the Huntsville Unit.

Sources