HUNTSVILLE, Texas -- Convicted killer James David 'Cowboy' Autry, soothed by the loving words of a housewife who knew him only four months, died hard but wearing 'that Autry smile' early today.
Autry, who came within minutes of being executed by injection last year, directed his final words to a Dallas housewife, Shirley Tadlock, with whom he had started a correspondence.
'I love you,' he said to her.
Autry, who had three previous stays of execution, wrote Mrs. Tadlock between 75 and 80 letters in his last four months. Mrs. Tadlock said she felt sorry for Autry after his near-execution last October, when prison officials kept him strapped to the death chamber gurney for a half hour after a stay was issued by Supreme Court Justice Byron White.
Autry, 29, convicted for the April 20, 1980, shooting death of Port Arthur, Texas, store clerk Shirley Drouet, 43, in a dispute over a six-pack of beer, was pronounced dead at 12:40 a.m. CST.
'It was painful to me and it was painful to him emotionally and physically by the way he reacted,' said official witness Bob Tarbutton, 34, an ex-convict who had known Autry since 1973.
'The way he laid there on that gurney for 30 minutes staring at us and us staring at him -- if that's not cruel and unusual punishment, I don't know what is,' Tarbutton said.
At 12:25 a.m., 23 minutes after Autry was placed on a gurney and moved to the death chamber, warden Jack Pursley had asked him if he had any final words.
'No,' said Autry.
'Let it begin,' said Pursley.
Autry was the second man to be executed in Texas by injection and the 14th to be executed in the United States since the Supreme Court ended its moratorium on capital punishment in 1976.
It was the first of two scheduled executions this week. In Raleigh, N.C., James W. Hutchins was moved to a holding cell pending his execution by injection Friday morning.
Autry had given prison officials five letters to be distributed after his death to his mother, his sister, Mrs. Tadlock and reporters for the Huntsville Journal and a wire service.
Mrs. Tadlock, reached today at her Dallas home, would not discuss the letter or Autry.
'I'm sick. I have been up all night. I don't feel like talking to anyone,' she said, hanging up the telephone.
The reporters received identical brief letters, reprinted today in the Huntsville Journal, in which Autry proclaimed his innocence. He also blamed accomplice John Sandifer, who was not prosecuted for lack of evidence.
'I am fixing to die and my God has a better place for me,' the letters said. 'My mother, brother, sisters and loved ones have been hurt tonight only. And the Sandifers can relax again! So who was punished tonight?'
When the execution began with the flow of the deadly solution, Autry gazed steadily at Mrs. Tadlock, standing behind a barred railing that separated Autry, two doctors and Pursley from reporters and witnesses.
Autry showed no visible reaction for about six minutes and at one point he opened his right palm, looked at the warden and shrugged. Within a minute of the gesture he was lifeless. Four minutes later he was pronounced dead.
'He had that Autry smile when he died,' said Tarbutton. 'That smile did me some good.'
Mrs. Tadlock spoke tenderly to Autry throughout the 20 minutes witnesses were in the death chamber.
'Pretty brown eyes, pretty brown eyes,' she said from a distance of about 12 feet.
'I love you J.D. Give it up. Give it up. I love you so much, so awful much,' she said.
The drugs given in lethal overdose were sodium thiopental, a barbiturate used to anesthetize people for surgery; potassium chloride, to stop the heart, and pavulon, a muscle relaxant to arrest his breathing.
'I feel good,' said Thomas Neal of Dolen, Texas, Mrs. Drouet's son. 'I feel a lot better than him staying alive. I feel like justice has been done because anybody who kills someone else like he killed my mother, well they should die.'
Autry's father, Jim, expressed bitterness.
'I demand that the people who killed J.D. stand trial,' he said. 'These people have got to be stood up in front of their peers. My book - they don't know my book -- says, 'Vengeance is mine.''
Autry was nicknamed 'Cowboy' by fellow inmates because he dipped snuff, read western novels and listened to country music.
Mrs. Tadlock, 32, who spent two hours with Autry Tuesday afternoon, began corresponding with him last October after one scheduled execution was stayed. Her husband and relatives supported her in her correspondence with Autry.
'He said they're executing the wrong one,' Mrs. Tadlock said, repeating Autry's often stated claim a sidekick did the shooting.
Autry, a native of Amarillo, Texas, was one of six children who relatives said fought with his parents and ran away from home at age 13. He was first put behind bars at age 11 for shoplifting.
He spent most of his adult life in prison, serving terms for burglary and assault to rob before being convicted in Mrs. Drouet's death.
