Infamous Serial Killer Executed In U.S.

He looked at the families of those he killed and asked for their forgiveness. And then he died.

That was the final end to an infamous case that rocked the U.S. and made headlines around the world.

The state of Texas executed Angel Maturino Resendiz late Tuesday for a series of murders that made him infamous as the “Railroad Killer”.

The 46-year-old serial killer was linked to as many as 15 murders, although it’s possible he may have committed even more. He received his moniker from his practice of hopping trains to escape the crime scenes and the terrible carnage he left behind.

But he received the ultimate penalty for just one of those murders – the slaying of a 39-year-old physician in 1998. Claudia Benton had been stabbed with a kitchen knife, hit with a statue and raped in her Houston home. Resendiz then hopped a nearby freight to get away.

DNA linked the killer to several other vicious crimes, including the fatal sledgehammer beating of a church pastor and his wife. He was later put on the FBI’s Most Wanted List and fled to Mexico, but surrendered in 1999.

There was never an adequate explanation for the trail of blood. The killer alternately blamed some of his actions on the FBI raid on the Branch Davidian compound in Waco, Texas or on atrocities committed in Serbia. There’s also a theory that Resendiz believed his victims were homosexuals.

But whatever his motives, they died with him, after he was strapped to a gurney and given a lethal injection. 

“I want to ask if it is in your heart to forgive me,” he pleaded with the relatives of his victims before the needle was introduced. “You don’t have to. I know I allowed the devil to rule my life.You did not deserve this. I deserve what I am getting.”

The families weren’t moved by his words. “This is not human behavior but something I can only say is evil contained in human form, a creature without a soul, no conscience, no sense of remorse, no regard for the sanctity of human life,” noted Benton’s husband, George, an execution witness.

Resendiz had always laughed off the death penalty sentence, insisting he was a half-man half-angel who couldn’t be killed. His attorney used those and other statements to try and show his client was delusional and shouldn’t be put to death.

But the state disagreed and executed judgment late Tuesday.