Twenty years after killing his strip club boss and another man, a repentant death row inmate murmured a farewell message and begged for forgiveness before being executed in Texas on Thursday.
In addition to confessing to killing two adolescent dancers at the club, 46-year-old Richard Lee Tabler claimed to have discovered God while serving a 20-year prison sentence.
While strapped to the death chamber gurney, Tabler looked at the family of his victims who were watching through a window a few feet away. “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,” he said. “No amount of my apologies will ever return them to you.”
He thanked prison officials for their compassion and shown his ability to “change and become a better man and rehabilitate.” He reminded the relatives of the victims that he regretted his acts every single day.
Tabler apologized a number of times more before declaring that it marked the start of a new life in heaven.
He mouthed “I’m sorry” once again as the medicines started to flood into his body after telling the warden at the state penitentiary in Huntsville, “I am finished.”
Then Tabler’s respiration quickened. All movement ceased after a dozen or so breaths.
On Thanksgiving 2004, Tabler lured Mohammed-Amine Rahmouni, 28, and Haitham Zayed, 25, to a secluded region near Killeen in Central Texas under the false premise of purchasing stolen stereo equipment, then shot and killed them.
The two had a falling out, and Rahmouni was a co-owner of a club named TeaZers.
Rahmouni allegedly claimed he could have Tabler’s family “wiped out” for $10, according to investigators.
Two days later, Tabler shot and killed Tiffany Loraine Dotson, an 18-year-old dancer at the club, whom he claimed to have been seeing, as well as another dancer, Amanda Benefield, 16.
Paul McWilliams, who prosecuted Tabler almost twenty years ago, said that prosecutors did not need to pursue the conviction for the killings of the young women because Tabler was found guilty of killing the two men and given the death penalty.
According to McWilliams, “the men’s murder was as cold-blooded as it could be.” “It made no sense to kill the girls.” That had no justification whatsoever.
One of the witnesses was George, Dotson’s father. He refused to remark on Tabler’s apology, stating that while he was happy to see it, he needed time to comprehend what he had just witnessed.
His words, “I couldn’t wait,” “It took me 20 years to get here.”
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“Today is for Tiffany,” said Tom Newton, her godfather. “And this is justice.”
Prosecutors played Tabler’s written and recorded admissions during the sentencing portion of his trial, claiming that he killed Dotson and Benefield because he was afraid they would tell others he had done so.
Tabler has repeatedly requested that the courts halt his appeals and allow his execution. His attorneys questioned if he was psychologically capable.
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When he snuck a cellphone into the state penitentiary in Huntsville in 2008 and started making death-threat phone calls to then-state Sen. John Whitmire, who is now the mayor of Houston, he sparked a massive lockdown throughout the state’s 150,000-inmate prison system.
