Texas appeals court blocks scheduled execution of David Leonard Wood

From El Paso Matters:

Texas’ highest criminal court on Tuesday blocked Thursday’s scheduled execution of David Leonard Wood, the man sentenced to die for the 1987 deaths of six girls and young women whose bodies were buried in the Northeast El Paso desert.

The unsigned order was issued per curiam by the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals, meaning it was done in agreement with a majority of the nine judges. Judges Mary Lou Keel and Gina Parker disagreed with the decision. Judge Bert Richardson – who has handled Wood’s appeals at the trial court level since 2011 – didn’t participate in the decision.

David Leonard Wood in a 2025 prison mugshot

The judges outlined the issues raised in the latest appeal, but didn’t list reasons for their ruling. “The stay will remain in place until further order of this Court,” the ruling said.

The order was issued less than 48 hours before Wood was to be executed by lethal injection at the state prison in Huntsville. It was the second time the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals had stepped in to block Wood’s execution days before he was to be put to death.

“I don’t know why they keep doing this. It’s like they’re playing a game,” said Marcia Fulton, a Northeast El Paso resident whose 15-year-old daughter, Desiree Wheatley, was among those killed in 1987.

Wood has been on death row since January 1993, more than 32 years. The longest stay on death row by an inmate executed in Texas is 31 years.

Only two people older than Wood, now 67 years and eight months, have been executed by the state of Texas.

Wood’s attorney, Gregory Wiercioch, couldn’t immediately be reached for comment.

Wood was indicted on a capital murder charge in 1990, three years after nine girls and young women were reported missing in and around Northeast El Paso. From September 1987 through March 1988, the remains of six of the missing girls and young women were found in shallow graves in the Northeast desert, where Painted Dunes Golf Course is now located.

Wood was accused of killing the six women whose remains were found: Ivy Susana Williams, 23; Desiree Wheatley, 15; Karen Baker, 20; Angelica Frausto, 17; Dawn Marie Smith, 14; and Rosa Maria Casio, 24.

No sign of the other three missing women and girls – Marjorie Knox, 14; Melissa Alaniz, 13; and Cheryl Lynn Vasquez Dismukes, 19 – has ever been found. No one has been charged in their disappearances.

The discovery of multiple shallow graves in the Northeast desert sparked a wave of fear in El Paso. It was El Paso’s deadliest crime spree until 2019, when a gunman killed 23 people and wounded 22 others in a racist mass shooting at the Cielo Vista Walmart.

Wood’s trial was moved to Dallas in 1992 because of extensive pretrial publicity in El Paso. A jury found him guilty of capital murder in November that year, determining he killed Williams and at least one of the five other victims. The jury sentenced Wood to death four days after convicting him.

He always maintained his innocence, through the trial and decades of appeals.

Wood faced an execution date in 2009, but the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals stayed the execution a day before it was set to happen to allow Wood’s lawyers to pursue a claim that he had an intellectual disability that barred the death sentence.

But that appeals and a series of requests for DNA testing of evidence were turned down by the courts over the years. Wood’s defense lawyers were critical of the state for objecting to DNA testing, especially after one of three tested blood samples in 2010 excluded Wood as the source of the blood.

Prosecutors and the courts said the one blood sample would not have altered the jury’s decision in 1992, and further tests weren’t allowed.

Wood’s attorneys made multiple last-ditch appeals in state and federal courts in recent days  to stop the execution.

He had an extensive history of sex crimes before being charged with the 1987 killings.

In 1976, when he was 19, Wood was sentenced to five years in prison for indecency with a child. He was paroled in 1978.

In 1980, when he was 23, Wood was sentenced to 20 years in prison for raping a 19-year-old woman and 13-year-old girl over an eight-day span. He was paroled just over six years later, in January 1987, and returned to Northeast El Paso.

Wood also was found guilty of the 1987 kidnapping and sexual assault of a woman who survived the attack. His lawyers said the victim initially identified another man but changed her story under police pressure. She testified against Wood in his capital murder trial.