On Monday, December 4, 2000, a school in Fort Worth called Willie Perkins to say that his wife, Gertie, had not come to pick up their grandson. That was not like her. Willie called his children, and they went looking. When they could not find her, they called the police. Officers at the Perkins home found a small bloodstain at the edge of the carpet. The cord was missing from the bedroom telephone.
By that evening the police had arrested Willie's son, Reginald, then 45. When Reginald asked to speak to his father, Willie said, "I sure hope you've got good news for me." His son answered, "I'm afraid not; she's dead." He then directed his father and the officers to a parking garage. Gertie Perkins's car was there. Her body was in the trunk.
Reginald W. Perkins was convicted of her murder in 2002 and executed in 2009. By then Fort Worth police said DNA had tied him to two other stranglings in the city in 1991, and he had long been a suspect in stranglings in Cleveland, Ohio, in 1980 and 1981. He was never tried for any of them. He denied all of them to the end, along with the murder of his stepmother.
Reginald Perkins was born on April 29, 1955, according to his Texas Department of Criminal Justice record, which lists his native county as Woodruff County, Arkansas. He completed seven years of school. The prison system recorded his prior occupations as truck driver, plumber and laborer.
What is known of his childhood comes from his own account and from his family's testimony in his appeals, and the two versions differ. The Fifth Circuit summarized the record: in a written statement to his trial lawyers, Perkins said his mother whipped her children with extension cords, mop handles, broom sticks, a belt, or "whatever she got her hands on." At 13 he moved to Texas with his father, who also whipped him with a belt or extension cord. Perkins described these whippings as discipline. "I was young, and they only wanted me to make something out of my life," he wrote. Family members interviewed in Cleveland before trial called his mother "very strict" but not abusive, and "the best of the best."
Years later, in the state habeas proceedings, his sister gave a far worse account: that their mother had tried to end the pregnancy, that the children watched weekly violent fights between their mother and her common-law husband, both of whom drank heavily, and that the children were neglected. The state court found those affidavits not credible and inconsistent with what the family had told the defense investigator earlier. His lawyers also argued that he had been raised by a family of minimal education in rural Arkansas and attended segregated schools.
By the end of the 1970s he was living in Cleveland. No criminal record for him from that decade has been reported; his recorded criminal history begins in 1980.
In 1980 Perkins was living in Cleveland with Ramola Washington. Washington had earlier shared an apartment with her twin sister, Paula Nelson. According to Washington's later testimony, summarized by the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals, she gave Perkins the keys to Paula's apartment and asked him to return them to her sister. Five days later Perkins told Washington that something had happened to Paula. The two went to the apartment together, and Washington found her sister strangled.
The Texas Attorney General's office gave the date as October 23, 1980, and said Paula had been strangled with a soft object, such as a scarf. The Fifth Circuit described her as pregnant. A summary published by the advocacy site ProDeathPenalty.com said she was found in bed with her small son. A compilation of the case by the Clark County, Indiana, prosecutor's office lists her age as 21.
Perkins was not charged. The Associated Press reported that authorities suspected him but could not gather enough evidence. Some time later, while Perkins was in jail on other charges, he and Ramola Washington married. Washington testified in Texas in 2002 that during a phone call from the jail after the wedding, Perkins told her he had killed Paula. That testimony later became a point of appeal. Perkins was never tried for Paula Nelson's death.
On December 19, 1980, Perkins raped a 12-year-old girl who lived across the street from him in Cleveland. That is the account of the Texas Attorney General's office, based on the girl's own testimony at his Texas trial more than 20 years later. She testified that he hit her and threatened to kill her if she told anyone. She did not go to the police, but her mother learned what had happened and barred Perkins from their apartment. The Fifth Circuit's summary puts the threat this way: Perkins warned the girl that if she told anybody, he would kill whoever she told.
On January 23, 1981, the girl came home and found her mother's body in a chair near the basement stairs. She had been strangled with the cord of a hair dryer. Perkins had fresh scratches on his face afterward. The Attorney General's office said he persuaded several women to lie and say they had scratched him. He was arrested as a suspect in the killing but was never tried.
The sources do not agree on the mother's name, and this bio does not resolve it. The Attorney General's 2009 summary calls her Jeri. The ProDeathPenalty.com summary names her Terry Thomas. The Texas Execution Information Center and the Associated Press name a different woman, Jenny Morman, 43, as the mother who was strangled in her Cleveland apartment in 1981, and describe a further killing three weeks later: the strangling of Jerry Thomas, whom the AP identified as the father of the girl Perkins was convicted of trying to rape. The AP account published by KSWO on the night of the execution said Perkins was suspected in the strangling of two Cleveland women and a man. The court opinions themselves name no victim in these Ohio cases and refer to two Ohio women in all: the girl's mother and Paula Nelson.
What every source agrees on is that Perkins was not convicted of any killing in Ohio. The Associated Press, citing his Texas prosecutors, called him the prime suspect in the strangulations of three Cleveland women in the early 1980s.
The sexual assaults led to convictions. According to the Texas Attorney General's office, Perkins was convicted in 1982 of rape of a minor, attempted rape of a minor and gross sexual imposition. The victims were two 12-year-old girls. He was sentenced to life for the rape, four to 15 years for the attempted rape and two to 10 years for gross sexual imposition, all to run at the same time. He pleaded guilty. Years later, from death row, he told the AP that the girls had lied and that he had pleaded guilty on bad advice from a lawyer. "Lies and false testimony," he said.
The Fifth Circuit's opinion places the pleas in 1980, and some news summaries follow that date. The Attorney General's record gives the conviction year as 1982 and the date of the rape as December 19, 1980.
The Ohio prison records his lawyers later gathered were described by the Fifth Circuit as extensive. They showed that he completed numerous prison classes and scored well in prison job and school evaluations. In 1999, an Ohio court found by clear and convincing evidence that he was a sexual predator under that state's sex-offender law.
The release dates in the record conflict. The Texas Department of Criminal Justice's death row record says Perkins was paroled from his Ohio life sentence in 1986. The Associated Press reported that he was paroled in 1988 and moved to Fort Worth, where his father lived. The Attorney General's office gave 1990. All three sources agree that he was out on parole in 1991.
The Perkins family ran a trucking business in Fort Worth. Gertie Mae Perkins had been married to Willie for 45 years, according to ProDeathPenalty.com. Reginald was her stepson.
In 1991, two women were found strangled in their apartment in east Fort Worth. Hattie Wilson was 79. Shirley Douglas, 44, was her niece. Shirley Douglas had also been raped, according to ProDeathPenalty.com's summary. Perkins knew the family: Fort Worth cold-case Detective Manny Reyes told the Fort Worth Star-Telegram that Perkins had dated Hattie Wilson's granddaughter.
The exact date in 1991 of the killings was not reported, and the reports say little more about either woman's life, work or family. The case went unsolved for 17 years.
In June 2008, by which time Perkins had been on death row for six years, Fort Worth police said a DNA database had linked him to semen recovered from the bodies of both women. In late October 2008, homicide Sergeant J.D. Thornton said a second DNA test had confirmed the link. The Associated Press reported the confirmation on November 1, 2008, citing the Star-Telegram.
Perkins was never charged with either death. He was already under a death sentence, and his execution date had been set. His lawyer, Bill Harris, said at the time: "Mr. Perkins denies having any involvement in any killings." The Texas Attorney General's office, in its media advisory before the execution, said Perkins "has been connected by DNA evidence to at least two other murders, and is suspected in a third."
Perkins's parole did not last. The AP reported that a parole violation sent him back to an Ohio prison in December 1993. The Texas prison record and the Attorney General's office put his return in 1994. He stayed in prison until February 8, 2000, when he was paroled again. He went back to Fort Worth.
As a registered sex offender in Texas, he reported to the Fort Worth Police Department's sex crimes unit. The detective assigned to oversee him was Scott Campbell. He worked as a truck driver. The state habeas court later noted that he held a commercial driver's license, drove a truck with a nine-speed manual transmission, read maps, wrote checks and calculated his pay as a percentage of his employer's receipts.
Gertie Mae Perkins was 64. She and Willie Perkins had been married for decades, and the family ran a trucking business in Fort Worth. On school days she picked up their grandson.
The record of her relationship with her stepson comes from his trial. The Fifth Circuit, summarizing the punishment phase, said the state contrasted "the kindness and affection" Gertie had shown him with the way she died. She wrote him letters in prison. She lent him money. When he was paroled, she arranged a job for him. She treated him, the court said, like a son.
Her family's words at the end of the case show what she meant to them. After the execution they called the day one "of justice for Gertie Mae Perkins." Her sister was among the witnesses in the death chamber.
The prosecution's account of the days before the killing, as the Attorney General's office summarized the trial evidence, was this. On Friday, December 1, 2000, Perkins told his stepbrother's wife that he had money problems and needed $1,000 by Monday. He said he planned to get it by robbing a woman who worked alone in a store. On Sunday, December 3, he told his sister he was having money problems.
Monday was December 4. Gertie Perkins did not pick up her grandson. When police reached the house, they found the small bloodstain at the edge of the carpet and the missing telephone cord. ProDeathPenalty.com's summary adds that a section of carpet had been removed and sheets were missing from a bed.
That same day, the trial evidence showed, Perkins used his own driver's license to sell Gertie's wedding ring at a pawn shop for $150. He then paid a man, described in the Attorney General's summary as a known crack user, $200 to cash two checks for him. The checks were drawn on the account of the Perkins trucking business, one for $600 and one for $700.
Perkins became a suspect quickly. The AP reported that detectives learned of his Ohio convictions for rape and attempted rape and that he had been a suspect in the Cleveland killings.
He was picked up that evening and brought to the police station. Detective Campbell, of the sex crimes unit, had been called back to work to decide whether there was probable cause for a warrant charging Perkins with failing to comply with the sex-offender registration rules. According to the Court of Criminal Appeals, Campbell was typing that warrant when three officers brought Perkins in. Campbell told them to take off his handcuffs. Perkins said, "Hey, Mr. Campbell, I'm not good for this, and I was just up in your office today to see you." A few moments later, on the way to an interview room, he said again, "Hey, I was here to see you just today. I even signed the logbook."
Campbell pulled the sex-offender registration logbook. Perkins's name was there with a sign-in time of 9:00 a.m. But the entries above his name ran in order backward from 12:45 p.m., and his 9:00 a.m. entry was out of sequence with them. The state later argued that Perkins had tried to build an alibi and to put the blame on someone else. The Fifth Circuit noted that the state habeas court accepted that he took steps to conceal the crime in exactly those ways.
It was after his arrest that Perkins asked to talk to his father, told him that Gertie was dead, and led him and the police to the parking garage. When Willie Perkins asked whether he could get out of the car, his son said, "Daddy, no, don't get out. Don't go." Officers opened the trunk of Gertie's car, a Cadillac, according to the AP, and found her body.
The autopsy found bruises on her head and mouth. The medical examiner said she had been strangled with a thin, fairly smooth object, such as a telephone cord.
Perkins was charged with capital murder, which in his case meant murder committed in the course of a robbery. He gave a written statement and several oral statements to police. His lawyers tried to suppress them, arguing that he had not been properly warned of his rights and that his arrest was illegal. The trial judge admitted them.
The prosecution also had a witness it did not expect. Several weeks into jury selection, prosecutors told the defense about a newly found witness: a man who had shared a cell with Perkins in the Tarrant County Jail. He testified that Perkins had told him the police "only had a body and a phone cord and no witnesses and they couldn't get fingerprints off a phone cord." According to the Attorney General's summary, the inmate said Perkins told him he had beaten the victim to death, that his motive was robbery and that he took money and checks but had another man cash the checks. The inmate remembered something about a telephone cord but could not recall whether Perkins said he strangled her with it or tied her up with it.
The informant's appearance changed the defense's plans. Perkins's lawyers asked for two extra peremptory strikes to remove two jurors they had already accepted, saying those jurors had been chosen with a circumstantial-evidence case in mind. The trial judge refused.
The trial was held in Tarrant County in March 2002. The prosecutor was Kevin Rousseau of the Tarrant County District Attorney's office.
Willie Perkins testified for the state about his son's return to the family. During that testimony he said, "Yeah. I think he was in prison," a reference the judge had ordered both sides to avoid in front of the jury. The defense moved for a mistrial. The judge refused, told the jurors to disregard the remark and polled each of them individually; each said they could.
Through the trial Perkins maintained, in the words of the Clark County prosecutor's compilation, that he was innocent of "ever hurting anybody." The jury convicted him of capital murder.
Texas law at the time allowed a death sentence only if the jury unanimously found a probability that the defendant would commit criminal acts of violence that would be a continuing threat to society. At the punishment phase, the state set out to show that Perkins had already done so.
Prosecutors introduced his Ohio guilty pleas. The woman he had raped as a 12-year-old girl in Cleveland took the stand, now an adult, and described the attack and his threat. The state presented evidence linking him to the strangling of her mother. Ramola Washington testified about her sister Paula and about Perkins's statement to her on the phone from jail.
The defense did not put on evidence of a hard childhood. Its strategy, the Fifth Circuit later wrote, was to convince the jury that Perkins would not be dangerous inside a prison. An expert showed the jury a videotape describing the structure and order of Texas prisons. Perkins's jailer testified that he had not been a disciplinary problem. A forensic psychologist who had reviewed his Ohio prison records, along with statistical studies of prison violence, said there was an 85 to 90 percent likelihood that Perkins would not commit a serious act of violence in prison, and noted that his age, 47, and his relatively nonviolent prison record lowered the risk. The defense also called witnesses to cast doubt on the Ohio killings.
The jury deliberated for about 30 minutes before answering the special issues in a way that required a death sentence. After the verdict, Perkins's lawyer read a statement Perkins had written. It expressed sympathy for his family's pain and said he was innocent. He was formally sentenced to death in March 2002 and received on death row on March 22, 2002.
Because the sentence was death, the appeal went straight to the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals, which affirmed the conviction and sentence unanimously on June 30, 2004, in an unpublished opinion written by Judge Holcomb (Perkins v. State, No. 74,318). Perkins raised eleven points of error.
The most unusual concerned Ramola Washington's testimony. The trial lawyers had argued about whether Ohio's spousal privilege kept out what Perkins told her by phone. Both sides told the trial judge that the statement would be admissible under Texas law and that the only question was whether Ohio law should override it. The Court of Criminal Appeals said that shared assumption was wrong: under Texas's own marital-communications privilege, the statement, a confidential communication made during the marriage, was not admissible. But because Perkins's lawyers had told the judge he had no Texas objection, he had forfeited it. And because they had not given the judge the text of the Ohio privilege, the Ohio claim was not preserved either. The court let the conviction stand.
The court rejected the other points as well: the mistrial over Willie Perkins's remark about prison; the claim that Detective Campbell's testimony was the fruit of an illegal arrest, which the court found had not been raised at trial in that form; the refusal to allow late strikes against two jurors; a complaint about the trial judge's comments on a juror's race, which had drawn no objection at trial; and challenges to the Texas death-penalty statute and the jury instructions. The U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear the case on February 22, 2005.
In 2002 the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Atkins v. Virginia that people with intellectual disability could not be executed. Perkins's new lawyers claimed he qualified. The state trial court held long evidentiary hearings, which produced six volumes of transcript, and the Court of Criminal Appeals adopted its findings and denied relief on September 13, 2006.
The Fifth Circuit later summarized the testing. In September 2003, Perkins scored 68 on a standard adult IQ test. The psychologist who gave it had first believed he was intellectually disabled, but later testified he was uncertain, and that it would have been better to give the test before, rather than after, an upsetting psychological interview. In June 2004, Perkins took the same test again without an interview beforehand and scored 80. The psychologist who gave that test believed it reflected his true ability. The state court ordered a third evaluation, and in May 2005 Perkins scored 66 on a different test. The psychologist who gave that one testified "with a high degree of certainty" that the result was not valid because Perkins had not given full effort, and that he met the criteria for "probable malingering."
The state court found the score of 80 reliable. It also pointed to his commercial license, his truck-driving job, his prison school and job records, and that he played chess. It found no proof that any disability began before age 18. "The crux of the matter," the Fifth Circuit wrote, "is that not one of the three psychologists who evaluated Perkins was willing to definitively label him mentally retarded."
His lawyers also argued that his trial attorneys had failed to investigate and present evidence of his childhood. The record showed the defense had asked Perkins for a written life history, collected his Ohio prison records, and sent an investigator to Cleveland to meet five family members, several of whom later traveled to Fort Worth for the trial. The courts found that the decision to focus on future dangerousness rather than childhood was a reasonable strategy, given his record and his age, 45, at the time of the murder.
Perkins filed a federal habeas petition in the Northern District of Texas, Fort Worth, raising seven grounds. Judge McBryde denied it on March 1, 2007, and refused a certificate of appealability on April 2, 2007.
On November 15, 2007, a Fifth Circuit panel of Judges King, Higginbotham and Garza also refused one, in Perkins v. Quarterman, No. 07-70010. It rejected his intellectual-disability claim, both ineffective-assistance claims, a challenge to the Texas rule placing the burden on the defense on the mitigation question, and a claim of actual innocence. In support of the last, Perkins had offered only his own affidavit and the suggestion that the jailhouse informant might have received a deal. The court said a stand-alone innocence claim was not a ground for federal habeas relief in that circuit. The U.S. Supreme Court declined review on May 27, 2008.
His execution was set for January 22, 2009. On January 21, the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles voted unanimously to deny his request that the sentence be commuted to life in prison. His lawyer, William Harris, said his appeals were exhausted.
In an interview with the Associated Press from death row the week before, Perkins said: "I loved my stepmother. I didn't have nothing to do with none of those killings. I have never taken an individual's life. They're just trying to pin them on me." He said he had lost his driver's license and someone else must have used it at the pawn shop. He denied confessing to anyone in jail.
Rousseau, his prosecutor, rejected all of it. "He's a consummate liar and a con artist," he told the AP. "I wouldn't believe anything he said. He's a serial killer." On the day of the execution he said, "He's not stupid. He's very cunning. I'd like to know how many other victims are out there."
About an hour before he was to die, Perkins called a prison spokesman, Jason Clark, to his holding cell at the Huntsville Unit and gave him a statement. "I am innocent and I did not do this," he said. "They didn't link me to nothing. I did not kill my stepmom. I loved her. Texas is going to kill an innocent man." Of the other killings, he said: "There's other suspects they questioned besides me. They let them go. I don't know what they're talking about. I can't tell you who killed them. I ain't killed nobody. I've never killed."
In the chamber, when the warden asked whether he had a last statement, he said he had already made it. The official last statement on the TDCJ website reads: "I already gave my statement. (talked to family) Love you all, take care. Bobby Nell Love ya." News reports say he told Gertie Perkins's sister, who was witnessing, that he loved her. As the drugs began, he said, "I can feel it going in." He was pronounced dead at 6:24 p.m., about eight minutes later. He was 53. He was the third person executed in Texas in 2009 and the 426th since the state resumed executions in 1982.
Gertie Perkins's family issued a statement: "This day was a long time coming, but thank God for this day. Now we can close this chapter in our life. Thank you Texas, for a day we will always remember, this day of justice for Gertie Mae Perkins." Another passage, carried in the AP's report on KSWO, said: "God will deal with him now."
Perkins's conviction for the murder of Gertie Mae Perkins was final, and he was executed on January 22, 2009, as the TDCJ's executed-offender records show.
None of the other killings attributed to him was ever tried. As of the January 2009 AP and Huntsville Item reports, the deaths of Shirley Douglas and Hattie Wilson in Fort Worth rested on the DNA match and police statements, with no charge filed before his execution. The Cleveland killings of 1980 and 1981 were never prosecuted. Whether Fort Worth or Cleveland police ever formally closed any of these cases has not been reported.
Proven in court: the capital murder of Gertie Mae Perkins (Tarrant County jury, March 2002, affirmed on appeal), and the Ohio convictions for rape, attempted rape and gross sexual imposition of two 12-year-old girls (guilty pleas).
Linked by DNA, never charged: the 1991 deaths of Shirley Douglas and Hattie Wilson. Fort Worth police said two DNA tests matched Perkins to semen recovered from both women. The evidence was never tested at a trial.
Testimony, never charged: the October 1980 death of Paula Nelson. Her twin sister testified in Texas that Perkins told her he killed Paula. The Court of Criminal Appeals held that this statement should have been excluded under Texas law, though the objection was forfeited.
Suspected, arrested, never tried: the January 1981 strangling of the mother of the girl he raped. The victim's name differs between sources.
Suspected only: a further Cleveland strangling in 1981, which the AP attributed to a victim named Jerry Thomas. The number of Cleveland killings attributed to him varies from two (the Fifth Circuit) to three (the AP).
Perkins denied every one of these killings, said his guilty pleas in Ohio were the result of bad advice, and said he had been framed in his stepmother's death. The courts that reviewed his case found no merit in his innocence claim.
April 29, 1955: Reginald Perkins is born; his Texas record lists Woodruff County, Arkansas.
About 1968: at 13, he moves to Texas with his father (his own account; year computed from his age).
October 23, 1980: Paula Nelson is found strangled in Cleveland. Perkins is suspected but not charged.
December 19, 1980: Perkins rapes a 12-year-old neighbor in Cleveland (per the girl's 2002 testimony and the Texas Attorney General).
January 23, 1981: the girl's mother is found strangled with a hair dryer cord. Perkins is arrested as a suspect but never tried.
1981: a further Cleveland strangling, attributed by the AP to a victim named Jerry Thomas.
1982: Perkins pleads guilty in Ohio to rape, attempted rape and gross sexual imposition of two 12-year-old girls; life sentence.
1986, 1988 or 1990 (sources differ): paroled; moves to Fort Worth.
1991: Shirley Douglas, 44, and her aunt Hattie Wilson, 79, are found strangled in their east Fort Worth apartment.
December 1993 or 1994: returned to Ohio prison for a parole violation.
1999: an Ohio court finds him a sexual predator.
February 8, 2000: paroled again; returns to Fort Worth.
December 1 and 3, 2000: tells relatives he has money problems.
December 4, 2000: Gertie Mae Perkins, 64, disappears; her wedding ring is pawned and two business checks cashed. Perkins is arrested and leads police to her body in the trunk of her car.
March 2002: convicted of capital murder in Tarrant County; the jury takes about 30 minutes to reach the death verdict.
March 22, 2002: received on Texas death row.
June 30, 2004: Texas Court of Criminal Appeals affirms.
February 22, 2005: U.S. Supreme Court denies review.
September 13, 2006: state habeas relief denied after lengthy hearings.
March 1, 2007: federal district court in Fort Worth denies habeas relief.
November 15, 2007: Fifth Circuit denies a certificate of appealability.
May 27, 2008: U.S. Supreme Court denies review.
June 2008: Fort Worth police say a DNA database links Perkins to the 1991 Douglas and Wilson killings.
Late October 2008: a second DNA test confirms the link (reported November 1, 2008).
January 21, 2009: the Board of Pardons and Paroles denies clemency.
January 22, 2009: Perkins is executed at Huntsville, aged 53.