A remorseful death row inmate pleaded for forgiveness and mouthed one final message before being put to death in Texas Thursday, 20 years after he killed his strip club manager and another man.
Richard Lee Tabler, 46, also admitted to killing two teenage dancers at the club and said he had found God during his two decades in prison.
“I had no right to take your loved ones from you, and I ask and pray, hope and pray, that one day you find it in your hearts to forgive me for those actions,” Tabler said strapped to the death chamber gurney, looking at relatives of his victims who watched through a window a few feet away. “No amount of my apologies will ever return them to you.”
Richard Lee Tabler seen in a photograph.
Dotson’s father, George, was among the witnesses. He declined to comment on Tabler’s apologies, saying he needed time to process what he had just seen but was glad to have seen it.
“I couldn’t wait,” he said. “It took me 20 years to get here.”
“Today is for Tiffany,” said her godfather, Tom Newton. “And this is justice.”
In 2008, Tabler prompted a massive lockdown at the 150,000-inmate prison when he smuggled a cell phone into the facility and began making death-threat phone calls to then-state Sen. John Whitmire, who is now the mayor of Houston. (Yi-Chin Lee/Houston Chronicle via Getty Images)
During the sentencing phase of his trial, prosecutors introduced Tabler’s written and videotaped statements saying he killed Dotson and Benefield because he was worried they would tell people he had killed the men.
Tabler had asked several times for courts to stop his appeals and let him be executed. His lawyers questioned whether he was mentally competent.
In 2008, he prompted a massive lockdown at the 150,000-inmate prison when he smuggled a cell phone into the facility and began making death-threat phone calls to then-state Sen. John Whitmire, who is now the mayor of Houston.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
