Texas Killer Dies in Presence of Victims’ Kin

HUNTSVILLE, Texas —  A man who killed a brother and sister during a pawnshop robbery eight years ago was executed by injection Friday as the family of his victims peered through a window a few feet away.

Leo Jenkins, 38, had ordered appeals halted. The 10th-grade dropout from Ohio had a long criminal record.

Jenkins was put to death for the 1988 murders of Mark Kelley, 25, and his sister Kara Voss, 20, in their family-owned pawnshop.

Victims’ survivors had not previously been invited to executions in Texas. But under pressure from victims’ rights groups, the Texas Board of Criminal Justice authorized renovations to the death house to allow up to five family members of the murder victims to be present.

Six of the 39 death-penalty states already offered that option.

The victims’ mother, Linda Kelley, was accompanied to the death house by her husband, mother-in-law, daughter and daughter-in-law. A soundproof wall separated them from Jenkins’ designated witnesses.

“I don’t care if he makes a statement,” Linda Kelley said beforehand. “The best statement he can make is to go through with this. I’m not scared. He’s taken my life away.”

Linda Kelley said Jenkins would not have to live anymore with what he had done, but she would.

“He’s going out really nicely. There’s nothing bad about it. He’s made his peace with God. I don’t think I have. I’m still real angry with God about this. I just hope God doesn’t forgive him.”

Jenkins and an accomplice, Eugene Hart, walked into the Golden Nugget Pawn Shop and told Voss he wanted to buy a rifle. Then, according to testimony, he shot her in the head with a .22-caliber pistol. He turned and fired three times at her brother, fatally wounding him, then stole rings, watches and jewelry.

Jenkins was arrested four days later. Witnesses told authorities that they had seen a heavily tattooed man leaving the store. Among Jenkins’ tattoos were two teardrops beneath his left eye, commemorating two prison terms.

He told detectives that he and Hart, high on cocaine, needed money to buy more drugs.