LIVINGSTON, Texas -- A 37-year-old prisoner convicted of murder in the slayings of five members of his ex-wife's family stabbed a deputy and was shot to death en route from a court proceeding, police said.
Ovide Joseph Dugas, 37, was convicted and sentenced to death in the July 1, 1978, shooting of 2-year-old Jason Phillips, and was charged but never tried in the deaths of four other members of the Phillips family who were abducted from Winnie, Texas.
A woman Dugas was dating, Linda May Burnett, 34, a mother of three, also was convicted and sentenced to death, but her conviction was overturned on appeal. It was in her case that Dugas was being questioned in Beaumont.
Police Chief Bill Smith of Livingston said details were incomplete but said Dugas, who was in an ambulance en route from Beaumont to Huntsville, stabbed a deputy and was in turn shot to death.
Mrs. Burnett's retrial was scheduled for July 18 in San Antonio, and Dugas was being moved from Beaumont -- where Mrs. Burnett's first trial was held -- back to death row in the Texas Department of Corrections Ellis Unit.
Jason Phillips was abducted with his parents, Elmer and Martha Phillips, of Woodward, Okla., and grandparents, Bishop and Esther Phillips, from the grandparents' Winnie home. All were shot and buried in a shallow grave.
The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals reversed Mrs. Burnett's conviction because the trial judge erred in admitting into evidence a tape recording made during a defense psychiatrist's interview.
Prosecutors at the first trial charged Dugas was angry about being denied access to his ex-wife, a member of the Phillips family, and that Mrs. Burnett helped him carry out the killings in revenge.
