Texas Executes Man Who Drank 12-Year-Old's Blood

A South Texas man was executed Wednesday for the 1998 slaying of a 12-year-old boy whose blood the convicted killer said he drank after beating the seventh-grader with a pipe and slitting his throat, the AP reports. Pablo Lucio Vasquez told police he was drunk and high when voices convinced him to kill David Cardenas in Donna, a Texas border town about 225 miles south of San Antonio. Asked by the warden if he had a final statement, Vasquez, 38, told relatives watching through a window that he loved them and thanked them for being there, then turned his head to look through an adjacent window where four of his victim's relatives stood.

"I'm sorry to David's family," he said. "This is the only way that I can be forgiven. You got your justice right here." He was pronounced dead 24 minutes later. Vasquez declined an interview request from the AP as his execution date neared. His statement to police about the devil and drinking blood fueled speculation about satanism, but the subject never came up at Vasquez's trial or in appeals. The punishment was carried out about four hours after the US Supreme Court rejected an appeal from Vasquez's lawyer, who sought a reprieve so the justices could review whether several potential jurors were improperly excused from his trial. The execution is the 11th this year in the US and the sixth in Texas. (More Texas stories.)