Convicted killer of Houston opera singers executed
HUNTSVILLE, TX
Derrick Jackson, 42, contended he was unfairly convicted by a
Harris County jury of the fatal beatings and slashings of Forrest
Henderson and Richard Wrotenbery. The two 31-year-old men were in
the Houston Grand Opera chorus.
Their September 1988 slayings inside Henderson's apartment went
unsolved for years until a bloody fingerprint from the murder scene
was matched to Jackson. By then, in 1995, Jackson already was in
prison serving a 12-year term for aggravated robbery.
Jackson said nothing when the warden asked if he would like to
make a final statement. He never moved, staring at the ceiling of
the death chamber, as the lethal drugs began, then gasped several
times as they took effect.
Eight minutes later, at 6:20 p.m. CDT, he was pronounced dead.
Jackson's father, who wept quietly, and two brothers were among
people watching the execution. Carl Wrotenbery, the father of one
of his victims, was in an adjacent witness room.
No last-day appeals were made to the courts Tuesday to try to
block the 15th lethal injection this year in Texas, the nation's
most active death penalty state. The Texas Court of Criminal
Appeals rejected an appeal Monday, and the Texas Board of Pardons
and Paroles turned down a clemency request.
In a recent interview from death row, Jackson told The
Associated Press he didn't want to die but wasn't scared.
"It's more a reluctance that it had to come to this," he said.
"It's like you have terminal disease for a number of years and
finally they say you're not going to be able to live with it any
longer so you're going to have to get your affairs together with
your family and within yourself."
Jackson was arrested in 1992 for three robberies and took a plea
bargain that sent him to prison. He was there when detectives
working cold cases and using new computer databases matched his
fingerprint to one at the scene of the murders.
Jackson said bad decisions led to burglaries and robberies and
ultimately the prison term, but he denied involvement in the
killings.
Fingerprints on a beer can, a glass and a door knob were linked
to Jackson. Stains on bathroom towels matched his DNA.
"Technology caught up with him," said Bill Hawkins, a Harris
County district attorney who prosecuted the case.
Hawkins said the odds against the DNA match actually belonging
to someone other than Jackson were "off the charts."
Richard Wrotenbery also taught music at an elementary school in
the Houston suburb of Deer Park. He'd been house-sitting at
Henderson's apartment following a divorce until he could find a
place of his own. Henderson had just returned to Houston after
performing with the opera in Scotland.
The day of the slayings, Sept. 10, 1988, Wrotenbery and
Henderson, both tenors, had been rehearsing for an opera production
of Bizet's Carmen. Wrotenbery went to the apartment after
rehearsals. Jackson hit some bars, may have met Jackson there and
took him home.
Evidence showed Henderson was stabbed in the chest. Wrotenbery's
throat was slashed. Both were bludgeoned with a heavy metal bar
that could have been part of a weight set. Wrotenbery may have been
asleep when he was killed.
"It's not something I look forward to," Carl Wrotenbery, 80,
said before watching his son's killer die. "I feel a personal
obligation. I feel this is something I need to see through.
"As father of a 31-year-old, a man expects in his old age for
his children to take care of him. This was just a total shock to
lose someone at that age. ... It was all for nothing. There was
nothing accomplished by a crime like this."
Jackson said from prison he realized "two people lost their
lives and I feel for their families."
"I saw the pictures. It was a savage scene," he said, adding
that he understood jurors had to "do something when two guys were
killed like that."
But when they found him guilty, "It kind of blew me away," he
said. "I didn't do it."
The men's wallets were taken along with Henderson's car. A
Houston traffic officer tried to pull over the car for speeding,
but the driver fled, leading police on a chase until the car
crashed. The driver managed to run off and escape.
An administrator from the school district where Wrotenbery
taught called the apartment manager when the teacher didn't show up
for work. The manager found the bloody scene.
At least three other condemned killers in Texas have execution
dates in the coming months.