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| Steven Woods |
Former drifter and self-described junkie Steven Michael Woods says he and a friend were high on LSD when they drove to a remote road by a Dallas-area golf course where they met a man and woman a decade ago, but he insists that his friend was the one who gunned the pair down.
“It was kind of surreal,” Woods said. “It registered in my head as it was raining, and I got sprayed by some of the blood.”
Woods, 31, said his friend, Marcus Rhodes, was the gunman and he had nothing to do with the murders of 21-year-old Ronald Whitehead and 19-year-old Bethena Brosz in Denton County.
Woods said he remembers lighting a cigarette for Whitehead.
“All of a sudden, this guy’s face exploded,” he said.
Rhodes avoided a possible death sentence by pleading guilty and accepting a life sentence. A jury convicted Woods of capital murder and decided he should die.
His execution was set for Tuesday in Huntsville. Woods’ lethal injection would be the 10th this year in Texas and the first of two set for this week. 2 more are scheduled for next week.
“I’m terrified — terrified,” he said last week from a small visiting cage outside death row. “I’m a lot calmer than I thought I’d be. But I wake up shaking.”
Testimony at his trial showed Woods told others that he planned to kill Whitehead and bragged afterward about the slayings. Prosecutors said his DNA was found on a latex glove in Rhodes’ car after the killings.
“I hate conspiracy theory stuff,” Woods said. “I didn’t do anything at all.”
Woods’ lawyers asked the U.S. Supreme Court to halt the punishment, contending he had poor legal assistance during the early stages of his appeals and that he had been barred from claiming that one of his trial jurors was biased.
Brosz and Whitehead, who had moved to Dallas from Wichita Falls only a few months earlier, were found by golfers May 2, 2001, along a golf course road near The Colony, a North Dallas suburb midway between Dallas and Denton.
Whitehead was shot six times in the head. Brosz was shot twice in the head and once in the knee. Both had their throats cut. Brosz was alive when she was found but died the following day.
Witnesses testified at Woods’ 2002 trial that he lured Whitehead to the isolated road on the pretense of a drug deal and killed him because he knew about another killing that Woods had been involved in two months earlier, in California.
Brosz was killed because she was an eyewitness, prosecutors said.
“Justice will prevail, and we will see him punished for what he did to her,” Brosz’s mother, Sheila, told the Fort Worth Star-Telegram.
Woods and his trial attorneys blamed Rhodes for the killings, including the death in California.
Woods was from Livonia, Mich., a Detroit suburb, quit school at 17 and drifted through Chicago, New York and then Dallas in search of drugs and punk rock clubs. In Dallas, he frequented the city’s Deep Ellum area and was known on the streets as “Halo.” Court records described him being involved in Satanism, bomb-making activities, abusive treatment of his brothers and animals, and affiliation with white supremacists.
“I said a lot of things to get attention,” Woods said from prison, insisting the records were untrue.
Authorities said Woods had been supplying other drug dealers with liquid LSD and other drugs sold at clubs and parties in Deep Ellum, a trendy entertainment district of redeveloped warehouses near downtown Dallas.
He was arrested in Garberville, Calif., about 200 miles north of San Francisco, some 2 months after the Texas slayings.
When confronted by police, Woods said he gave a false name but an elaborate tattoo of a red rose on a green branch the length of his right arm gave him away.
2 months after he was extradited from California to Texas, Woods told The Dallas Morning News from jail he never left Deep Ellum the night of the slayings and that he was high on drugs. He also said he couldn’t remember much of his teenage years because he usually was high. Court records indicated he told his lawyers he wasn’t at the shooting scene and had been awake for 14 days and was high on a variety of drugs when the shootings occurred.
“I know how stupid it sounds,” he said. “I know a lot of people don’t believe it when you say you’re innocent.”
Rhodes, identified by police as one of Woods’ drug customers, turned himself in to police days after the shooting victims were found and implicated Woods. Detectives determined Woods left Dallas that same day and believed he fled to avoid police.
Authorities recovered backpacks belonging to the slain pair in Rhodes’ car. Guns used in the slayings were recovered from the home of Rhodes’ parents.
On Thursday, a Houston man, Duane Buck, was set to die for a double slaying 16 years ago.
Source: Associated Press, September 12, 2011
September 13 UPDATE:
Supreme Court turns down condemned Texas killer
September 13 UPDATE:
Supreme Court turns down condemned Texas killer
HUNTSVILLE, Texas (AP) — Former drifter Steven Michael Woods has lost an appeal at the U.S. Supreme Court, clearing the way for his execution Tuesday evening in Huntsville.
The high court, without comment, has rejected an appeal from attorneys for Woods who contended poor legal help during earlier stages of his appeals didn't allow him to pursue a claim of jury bias.
The 31-year-old Woods says he was on an isolated road near a Dallas-area golf course in May 2001 when 21-year-old Ronald Whitehead and 19-year-old Bethena Brosz were murdered. But Woods blames the double slaying in Denton County on a fellow drug-dealing friend, Marcus Rhodes, who pleaded guilty and took a life prison term.
Woods went to trial and was sentenced to death.
His execution would be the 10th this year in Texas.
Source: Houston Chronicle, September 13, 2011
The high court, without comment, has rejected an appeal from attorneys for Woods who contended poor legal help during earlier stages of his appeals didn't allow him to pursue a claim of jury bias.
The 31-year-old Woods says he was on an isolated road near a Dallas-area golf course in May 2001 when 21-year-old Ronald Whitehead and 19-year-old Bethena Brosz were murdered. But Woods blames the double slaying in Denton County on a fellow drug-dealing friend, Marcus Rhodes, who pleaded guilty and took a life prison term.
Woods went to trial and was sentenced to death.
His execution would be the 10th this year in Texas.
Source: Houston Chronicle, September 13, 2011
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