Angel Maturino Resendiz

What the record shows

Angel Maturino Resendiz, the Railroad Killer, long sought under the alias Rafael Resendez-Ramirez, was a Mexican national who rode freight trains and killed people in homes and along tracks in Texas, Florida, Kentucky and Illinois between 1997 and 1999; later confessions reached back to 1986. A Harris County, Texas jury convicted him of capital murder on May 18, 2000 for the killing of Dr. Claudia Benton, and he was sentenced to death. The Associated Press reported in July 2000 that he had told Florida detectives he killed 11 people in Florida, Texas, Illinois and Kentucky; the FBI linked him to at least 15 murders. Texas executed him on June 27, 2006.

The earliest documented killings were in Florida on March 23, 1997: Jesse Howell, 19, was beaten with a railroad air brake coupling near Belleview and Wendy Von Huben, 16, was strangled; her remains were found in July 2000 after Resendiz directed investigators to them, according to the Associated Press. In August 1997 Christopher Maier was killed beside tracks in Lexington, Kentucky, and his companion Holly Dunn survived a rape and beating. In October 1998 Leafie Mason, 87, was beaten to death in Hughes Springs, Texas. According to the Department of Justice Inspector General, Dr. Benton, a pediatric neurologist, was killed in her home in West University Place near Houston in December 1998; fingerprints at the scene and in her stolen Jeep matched Resendiz, and a warrant followed in January 1999.

In spring 1999 pastor Norman Sirnic and his wife Karen were beaten to death with a sledgehammer in Weimar, Texas; the Inspector General reported that DNA linked those murders to the Benton case, and the FBI formed a task force in Houston on June 8, 1999. The same review found that Border Patrol agents apprehended Resendiz near Santa Teresa, New Mexico on June 1, 1999 and returned him to Mexico the same day because no lookout appeared in the INS fingerprint system. He soon re-entered; the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals opinion records the June 1999 killings of Noemi Dominguez in Houston, Josephine Konvicka near Schulenburg, Texas, and George Morber and his daughter Carolyn Frederick in Gorham, Illinois.

The FBI placed him on its Ten Most Wanted list in June 1999. His sister contacted authorities, and on July 13, 1999 he crossed from Ciudad Juarez and surrendered to Texas Ranger Drew Carter and federal officers at the El Paso port of entry, according to the Inspector General and NBC News.

At trial the defense argued insanity; United Press International reported that a defense expert called him a paranoid schizophrenic, while FBI profiler Alan Brantley testified that he was an organized sexual serial killer, not a psychotic. The jury rejected the defense after about 11 hours and convicted him on May 18, 2000; the judge imposed death on the jury's answers to the special issues, and he reached death row on May 24, 2000. In May 2003 the Court of Criminal Appeals affirmed the conviction and sentence over two dissents.

He was never tried for any other killing. Wikipedia records that in September 2001 he admitted three earlier killings in the San Antonio area, two of them in 1986, and that he was suspected but not charged in deaths in Carl, Georgia (1998) and Colton, California (1997). His lawyers argued he was not competent to be executed because he believed he was half-man, half-angel and could not die, but a Houston judge found him competent on June 21, 2006, and Mexico's request for clemency was not granted. NBC News reported that the U.S. Supreme Court rejected final appeals and he was executed by lethal injection on June 27, 2006; in his last statement he said he deserved his punishment and asked the victims' families for forgiveness.

Resendiz was born August 1, 1959 in Izucar de Matamoros, Puebla, Mexico, per the birth certificate cited by the Inspector General (Texas prison records give 1960). Texas prison records list prior convictions in Florida for burglary, vehicle theft and aggravated assault, federal immigration and fraud offenses, and a New Mexico burglary. He was deported or returned to Mexico repeatedly and re-entered each time.