Texas executes burglar who killed while on parole

HUNTSVILLE, Texas _ A parolee convicted of using coat hangers to strangle a 65-year-old mentally ill man during a burglary of the victim's house was executed Thursday evening.

"You ain't got to worry about nothing," Elkie Lee Taylor told an aunt and a couple of friends from the death chamber gurney. "I am going home. I hope to see all of y'all one day. Lord have mercy on my soul."

He was pronounced dead at 6:30 p.m. CST.

Taylor, 46, was condemned for killing Otis Flake in 1993. Flake was found dead -- sitting up against a bed, his feet and hands bound and hangers twisted around his neck -- by a friend after Taylor and an accomplice were spotted earlier walking away from Flake's home near downtown Fort Worth.

Taylor was the 15th Texas inmate executed this year and the first of six scheduled for lethal injection this month in the nation's most active capital punishment state.

The execution came after the U.S. Supreme Court and the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals turned down last-day appeals.

Flake's slaying came 11 days after an 87-year-old man was killed in a similar fashion. Taylor acknowledged he was involved in both burglaries but insisted a partner was responsible for the killings.

Evidence showed that Taylor had bragged to friends about wrapping a hanger around a man's neck and that "dead men can't talk."

His accomplice, Darryl Birdow, was sentenced in 1994 to life in prison for his involvement in Flake's death.

Taylor was arrested after he eluded police for more than 100 miles while behind the wheel of a stolen tractor-trailer cab, leading officers on a chase from Fort Worth to Waco. The pursuit ended with a state trooper shooting out the tires but not before Taylor tried to ram two police cars and run over troopers at the side of the road.

Taylor had been on parole about three months when Flake was found murdered. He had been released after serving less than nine months of an eight-year prison term for burglary.