Texas is set to execute a convicted serial-killer known as the “Tourniquet Killer” Thursday. It will be he first execution of a U.S. inmate in 2018.
Anthony Shore, 55, was scheduled for execution by lethal injection in Huntsville, Texas, at 6 p.m., Reuters reported Thursday. Shore was convicted in 2004 of raping and/or murdering five girls and young women, using a homemade tourniquet to strangle them. His gruesome crime spree took place during the 1980s and 1990s, and it is unlikely that there will be last-minute appeals to save his life. His execution had already been scheduled for October 2017, but prosecutors postponed it because Shore was in an investigation regarding another inmate.
“Anthony Shore is the worst of the worst, a serial killer who took pleasure in his victims’ suffering,” Harris County District Attorney Kim Ogg said in a statement. “Even Shore’s own family believes the death penalty is appropriate for his crimes.”
The oldest of his victims was 21-year-old Maria del Carmen Estrada, whose body was found nude in a Dairy Queen drive through in 1992. Next by age was 16-year-old Dana Sanchez, murdered in 1995. He killed 14-year-old Laurie Tremblay in 1986 and raped an unnamed 14-year-old in 1993. His youngest victim was Dana Rebollar, a 9-year-old whom he raped and murdered in 1994.
Shore’s family has little sympathy for him, and his sister, Gina Shore, has gone so far as to say there must have been more victims than the five he’s known to have killed, according to the Houston Chronicle. As a result, she believes her brother’s execution is just and necessary.
“I think it will give closure. Then when people ask what about him, we can just say he’s dead,” Gina said. “I know in my heart without a doubt that there are more. There had to have been other girls.”
Mr. Shore avoided detection for 20 years after his last recorded murder and was only brought down as a result of his DNA being put on file in 1998 after he was convicted of molesting his daughters. Police checked his DNA against cold cases and was able to match him with a murder. Shore has used everything in his power to avoid the death penalty since that time for nearly 20 years.
His most recent defense was that he’d experienced a personality-affecting brain injury when he got into a car crash in 1981, an excuse which his younger daughter, Tiffany Hall, isn’t buying.
“I think it’s a load of crap,” said Hall, now 32. “The only reason I can see him wanting a stay is so he can torture his victims and his family by being alive.”
Shore remained remarkably chipper during his time on death row, as was evidenced by his relentless correspondence with his family.
“I will likely get a stay, but ya’ just never know,” Shore wrote to his father in July 2017. “I’d prefer to live a bit longer but am ready if it’s God’s will.”
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