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Wednesday, October 29, 1997
Houston man executed in slayings 14 years ago
By MICHAEL GRACZYK / Associated Press Writer
HUNTSVILLE, Texas (AP) -- A two-time convict on parole for auto theft
when he was sent to death row was executed Tuesday for participating in
a stabbing frenzy that left four young men dead at a Houston amusement center
14 years ago.
Kenneth Ray Ransom, 34, was pronounced dead at 6:20 p.m. CST, six minutes
after a lethal dose of drugs was released into his arms.
Ransom's mother, Pearlie, watched through a witness room window five
feet from her son and collapsed hysterically to the death chamber floor
as the lethal drugs began taking effect and her son gasped.
She had to be lifted, screaming uncontrollably, into a wheelchair and
removed from the room before her son was pronounced dead.
Ransom's last statement included a lengthy Muslim chant. He insisted
he was innocent of the killings and said his death would be "an instrument
to abolishing the death penalty."
"First and foremost, I'd like to tell the victims' families I'm
sorry," he said. "I'm not sorry because I feel I'm guilty. I am
sorry because of the pain all of them are going through each holiday, each
birthday that they're without their loved ones."
"I've said from the beginning and I'll say it now: I'm innocent
and I did not kill no one. I feel that this is the Lord's will, and that
will be done."
He looked at his mother and told her that he loved her, asking her not
to cry. Ransom also asked that she tell his brothers, three of whom are
in prison, that he loved them.
"Y'all be strong. Don't cry, mama," he said.
Ransom was condemned for fatally stabbing one of the four employees at
the Malibu Grand Prix, a video arcade and go-cart track in southwest Houston.
An accomplice, Richard Wilkerson, 29, was executed four years ago for
the same spree, one of the worst single murder rampages in Houston. A third
participant, James Randle, who was 16 at the time off the July 1, 1983 killings,
is serving a life prison sentence.
Donnie Trent, whose 22-year-old son, Roddy Harris, was among the victims,
said Tuesday that she would like to have talked with Ransom to ask which
of the three killers murdered her son.
But she had no reservations about the execution.
"That's the whole idea of the thing, to execute those who are guilty,"
she said. "We have too many on death row now. It hasn't been a real
pleasant day, but I'm OK with it."
Ransom was the 32nd Texas death row inmate to be executed this year and
third this month, adding to what already is a record year for executions
in the state. At least seven more inmates have execution dates this year.
Nationally, he was the 61st condemned killer put to death this year,
the most active year for capital punishment since 65 executions were carried
out in 1957.
Ransom was 20 that night when he, Wilkerson and Randle walked into the
amusement center just before it was to close. Wilkerson had been fired from
Malibu Grand Prix two weeks earlier and showed up ostensibly to get his
final paycheck.
Testimony at their trials, however, indicated the three were armed with
butcher knives, stole about $1,300 and killed the night manager, Anil Varughese,
18, a college pre-med student, and three employees: Roddy Harris, 22, and
brothers Arnold Pequeno, 19, and Joerene Pequeno, 18.
Varughese's body was found in an office the next morning. He had been
stabbed at least eight times. The three others were in similar condition
in a rest room that was awash in blood. Two of the victims' had their jugular
veins severed. One had been stabbed 22 times.
"I remember it being really bloody," said Brian Rains, now
a state district judge, who prosecuted Ransom. "My satisfaction is
that he was found guilty of the crime and got his just punishment."
Medical examiners had difficulty determining if the victims also had
been shot because the bodies had been stabbed so many times and there was
so much blood.
"I'll never forget that," J.C. Mosier, a former Houston homicide
detective who was assigned to the scene, said. "It's the most blood
I'd ever seen at one location. It was awful."
Ransom insisted he did not do any of the stabbing but said he held down
one of the victims because he was forced to do so by Wilkerson, the mastermind
of the killings.
"Fear makes you do some stupid things," Ransom said last week
in an interview.
"I'm not going to say I've made my peace. I don't know what that
means. I feel like if I have to die for something I didn't do, it's not
something I can put off. I dearly love to live, but I'd also like to be
free. And living life and freedom go hand in hand."
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