Texas man is executed for the 2004 strangling and stabbing death of a young mother
HUNTSVILLE, Texas (AP) — A Texas man convicted of fatally strangling and stabbing a young mother more than 20 years ago was executed Wednesday evening as the victim's mother and other relatives looked on.
Moises Sandoval Mendoza, 41, received a lethal injection at the state penitentiary in Huntsville and was pronounced dead at 6:40 p.m. He was sentenced to death for his conviction in the March 2004 killing of 20-year-old Rachelle O'Neil Tolleson.
After a spiritual adviser prayed over him for about two minutes, Mendoza apologized repeatedly to the victim's two parents and other relatives present, calling to each by name. 'I am sorry for having robbed you of Rachelle's life,' he said, addressing the parents, one of her brothers, a cousin and an uncle watching through a window from an adjoining room.
Mendoza also said he had robbed Tolleson's daughter of her mother, adding, 'I'm sorry for that. I know nothing that I could ever say or do would ever make up for that. I want you to know that I am sincere. I apologize.' The daughter wasn't present for the execution.
He then spoke briefly in Spanish, addressing his wife, his sister and two friends watching through a window from another witness room. 'I love you, I am with you, I am well and at peace,' he said in Spanish, his words provided in a transcript in English translation. 'You know that I'm well, and everything is love.'
As the injection began, he could be heard making two loud gasps and then began snoring. After about 10 snores, all movement ceased and he was pronounced dead 19 minutes later.
Prosecutors say Mendoza, 41, took Tolleson from her north Texas home, leaving her 6-month-old daughter alone. The infant was found cold and wet but safe the next day by Tolleson's mother. Tolleson's body was discovered six days later, left in a field near a creek.
Evidence in Mendoza's case showed he also had burned Tolleson's body to hide his fingerprints. Dental records were used to identify her, according to investigators.
Pam O'Neil, the victim's mother, told reporters after witnessing Mendoza's execution that it could not undo the loss of her daughter. Reading from a statement, she said of Mendoza: 'He's been on death row 20 years. That ended today. He was put to sleep. He felt no pain. I wish I could say the same about my daughter's death.'
As Mendoza's relatives and friends left the prison, they appeared distraught and embraced one another.
Hours earlier on Wednesday, the U.S. Supreme Court denied a final request by Mendoza's attorneys to stop his execution. Mendoza's attorneys told the justices in a filing that he had been prevented by lower courts from arguing that he had been denied effective assistance of counsel earlier in the appeals process.
But the Texas Attorney General's Office told the Supreme Court that Mendoza's claim of ineffective assistance of counsel had previously been found 'meritless and insubstantial' by a lower federal court.
Lower courts also had previously rejected his petitions for a stay. The Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles on Monday denied Mendoza's request to commute his death sentence to a lesser penalty.
Authorities said that in the days before the killing, Mendoza had attended a party at Tolleson's home in Farmersville, located about 45 miles (72 kilometers) northeast of Dallas. On the day her body was found, Mendoza told a friend about the killing. The friend called police, and Mendoza was arrested.
Mendoza confessed to police but couldn't give detectives a reason for the killing, authorities said. He told investigators he repeatedly choked Tolleson, sexually assaulted her and dragged her body to a field, where he choked her again and then stabbed her in the throat. He later moved her body to a more remote location and burned it, they said.
Mendoza was the third inmate put to death this year in Texas, historically the nation's busiest capital punishment state, and the 13th in the U.S.
On Thursday, Alabama plans to execute James Osgood for the 2010 rape and murder of a woman.
___
Follow Juan A. Lozano: https://twitter.com/juanlozano70
Juan A. Lozano And Michael Graczyk, The Associated Press
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Associated Press
20 minutes ago
- Associated Press
Weinstein retrial nears end as lawyers argue: sexual predator or #MeToo 'poster boy'?
NEW YORK (AP) — Harvey Weinstein 's lawyer portrayed him as the falsely accused 'original sinner' of the #MeToo era, while a prosecutor told jurors at his sex crimes retrial Tuesday that the former movie mogul preyed on less-powerful women he thought would never speak up. The two sides took very different tones in their closing arguments, which are due to conclude Wednesday. Weinstein's lawyer, Arthur Aidala, veered into folksy jokes and theatricality — sometimes re-enacting witnesses' behavior — as he contended that his client engaged in a 'courting game,' not crimes. Prosecutor Nicole Blumberg, as direct as Aidala was discursive, urged jurors to focus on Weinstein's accusers and their days of grueling testimony. 'This was not a 'courting game,' as Mr. Aidala wants you to believe. This was not a 'transaction,'' she told jurors. 'This was never about 'fooling around.' It was about rape.' The majority-female jury is expected to start deliberations at some point Wednesday, inheriting a case that was seen as a #MeToo watershed when Weinstein was convicted five years ago. It ended up being retried, and reshaped, because an appeals court overturned the 2020 verdict. Weinstein, the former Hollywood honcho-turned-#MeToo outcast, has pleaded not guilty to raping a woman in 2013 and forcing oral sex on two others, separately, in 2006. Aidala argued that everything that happened between the ex-producer and his accusers was a consensual, if 'transactional,' exchange of favors. The attorney accused prosecutors of 'trying to police the bedroom' and zeroing in on the man seen as 'the poster boy, the original sinner, for the #MeToo movement.' 'They tried to do it five years ago, and now there's a redo, and they're trying to do it again,' he told jurors. His hours-long summation touched on matters from the acclaimed, Weinstein-co-produced 1994 film 'Pulp Fiction' to his own marriage and his grandmother's Italian gravy, at times playing for — and getting — laughs from jurors and Weinstein. Aidala depicted the former studio boss as a self-made New Yorker, while painting Weinstein's accusers as troubled and canny 'women with broken dreams' who plied him for movie opportunities and other perks, kept engaging with him for years and then turned on him to cash in on his #MeToo undoing. All three received compensation through legal processes separate from the criminal trial. Blumberg countered that Weinstein interpreted a sexual 'no' as a cue to 'push a little bit more, and if they still say no, just take it anyway.' She argued that his accusers stayed in friendly contact with Weinstein because they were trying to work in entertainment, and they feared their careers would be squashed if they crossed him. 'He chose people who he thought would be the perfect victims, who he could rape and keep silent,' the prosecutor said. 'He underestimated them.' Weinstein had a decades-long run as one of the movie industry's most influential people. In 2017, allegations of sexual assault and harassment tanked his career and catalyzed the #MeToo movement, which seeks accountability for sexual misconduct. He was subsequently convicted of sex crimes and sentenced to prison in New York and California. His California appeal hasn't been decided. Since the New York retrial opened April 23, prosecutors have brought in more than two dozen witnesses. The prosecution centered on Weinstein's three accusers, who each faced days of questions. In often graphic and sometimes tearful testimony, the women said the Oscar-winning producer used his showbiz stature as a hook to prey on them. Jessica Mann, who accused Weinstein of rape, was a hairstylist hoping to make it as an actor when she met him. The sexual assault accusers also were trying to build careers in entertainment: Miriam Haley was a production assistant and producer, and Kaja Sokola was a teenage model who wanted to get into acting. Prosecutors added Sokola's allegations to the case for the retrial. But some other accusers from the first trial weren't part of the second. The appeals court said it was prejudicial to include their accusations, which never resulted in charges. Weinstein, 73, decided not to testify. His attorneys presented a few witnesses to cast doubts on certain aspects of the accusers' accounts. But Weinstein's defense also relied heavily on questioning prosecution witnesses — even surprising Sokola with her own private journal — to try to undermine their credibility. The Associated Press generally does not identify people without their permission if they say they have been sexually assaulted. Sokola, Mann and Haley have agreed to be named.
Associated Press
25 minutes ago
- Associated Press
Trial starts for Salvadoran officers accused of killing Dutch journalists in 1982
SAN SALVADOR, El Salvador (AP) — The trial of three retired Salvadoran military officers for the 1982 killings of four Dutch journalists during the Central American country's civil war began Tuesday in the northern city of Chalatenango. The three men could face prison sentences of up to 30 years if convicted in the jury trial, which was scheduled to start and conclude on the same day. On trial are former Defense Minister Gen. José Guillermo García, 91, former treasury police director Col. Francisco Morán, 93, and Col. Mario Adalberto Reyes Mena, 85, who was the former army commander of the Fourth Infantry Brigade in Chalatenango. García and Morán are under police guard at a private hospital in San Salvador, while Reyes Mena lives in the United States. In March, El Salvador's Supreme Court ordered that the extradition process be started to bring him back. García was deported from the U.S. in 2016, after a U.S. judge declared him responsible for serious human rights violations during the early years of the war between the military and the leftist Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front guerrillas. The Dutch TV journalists had linked up with leftist rebels and planned to spend several days behind rebel lines reporting. But Salvadoran soldiers armed with assault rifles and machine guns ambushed them and the guerrillas. The prosecution of the men was reopened in 2018 after the Supreme Court declared unconstitutional a general amnesty passed following the 1980-1992 war. It moved slowly, but in March 2022, relatives of the victims and representatives of the Dutch government and European Union demanded that those responsible for killing Jan Kuiper, Koos Koster, Hans ter Laag and Joop Willemson be tried. The United Nations Truth Commission for El Salvador, which was set up as part of a U.N.-brokered peace agreement in 1992, concluded there was clear evidence that the killings were the result of an ambush set up by Reyes Mena with the knowledge of other officials, based on an intelligence report that alerted of the journalists' presence. Other members of the military, including Gen. Rafael Flores Lima and Sgt. Mario Canizales Espinoza were also accused of involvement, but died. Canizales allegedly led the patrol that carried out the massacre of the journalists. Juan Carlos Sánchez, of the nongovernmental organization Mesa Contra la Impunidad, in comments to journalists, called the trial a 'transcendental step that the victims have waited 40 years for.' An estimated 75,000 civilians were killed during El Salvador's civil war, mostly by U.S.-backed government security forces. The trial was closed to the public. ____ Follow AP's coverage of Latin America and the Caribbean at
Associated Press
34 minutes ago
- Associated Press
Arkansas authorities release photo rendering of 'Devil in the Ozarks' as manhunt continues
LITTLE ROCK, Ark. (AP) — Arkansas authorities on Tuesday released a photo rendering of a convicted murderer and former police chief known as the 'Devil in the Ozarks " as the search for the escaped inmate entered its second week. The Arkansas Department of Corrections said the photo rendering of Grant Hardin, 56, depicts how he may look after he escaped May 25 from the Calico Rock prison. The rendering shows Hardin with some hair on his head and face. Authorities have said Hardin escaped by donning an outfit designed to look like a law enforcement uniform. Rand Champion, a department spokesperson, said officials are focusing their search on the north-central Arkansas region where the prison is located. Tips from elsewhere about potential Hardin sightings have come in, but so far none have panned out, Champion said. Hardin, a former police chief in the small town of Gateway near the Arkansas-Missouri border, was serving lengthy sentences for murder and rape. He was the subject of the TV documentary 'Devil in the Ozarks.' Hardin was housed in a maximum-security wing of the primarily medium security prison, formally known as the North Central Unit. Officials are investigating whether a job Hardin held in the kitchen aided in his escape, including whether it gave him access to materials he could have used to fashion his makeshift uniform.
