As Texas readies 3rd execution of 2025, 'Desert Killer' asks for stay, DNA testing
David Wood (Source: Texas Department of Criminal Justice)
HUNTSVILLE, Texas - As the state of Texas prepares for its third execution of the year, the man set to be executed continues to maintain his innocence more than three decades later.
What we know:
David Leonard Wood, 67, is scheduled to be executed Thursday.
Nicknamed the "Desert Killer," Wood has been on death row longer than any other Texas inmate.
Wood was convicted in 1992 of capital murder for the killings of six women. Their bodies were found in remote areas of the desert surrounding El Paso around 1987.
David Wood's prison file (Texas Dept. of Criminal Justice)
Wood's attorneys have asked the courts to again stay his execution as Wood has maintained his innocence since his arrest.
Wood's attorneys say new evidence could help clear Wood from the charges.
Jailhouse informants
A petition for stay filed in the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals on Feb. 21, 2025, that was obtained and posted by Action Network claims the two men who testified against Wood during his trial made up Wood's confession in exchange for favors.
The document claims Randy Wells had his own murder charge dismissed in exchange for his testimony.
James Sweeney, the other jailhouse informant, was paid $13,000, documents claim.
The filing contains a declaration from a man named George Hall.
Hall said he was in prison for murder and shared a cell with Sweeney. Wood and Wells shared a cell just down from them.
Hall said he had been moved to another prison away from the other three before he was brought to El Paso with Wells and Sweeney.
His declaration states the three were asked about Wood and he refused to cooperate with police and testify against Wood. He said the other two were shown the case files from the murders and then told investigators that Wood had confessed to them.
Wood's original counsel
The filing also brings into the question the effectiveness of Wood's original attorney, Dolph Quijano, Jr.
The filing states that prosecutors never disclosed memos from El Paso police that Wood had been under surveillance during a time with two of the victims went missing.
The memos never mention a beige truck, which is one of the vehicles Wood was accused of using during the crimes, court documents state. The truck was involved in a crash in July 1987 resulting in it spending the month of August in a salvage yard.
Wood's attorneys claim the testimony from Judith Kelling came after police pressured her to accuse Wood of assaulting her so they could continue to build their case against him.
DNA evidence
Wood's attorneys are fighting for more DNA testing on items. That fight has been shut down in court numerous times as the state argues the filings are just delay tactics by Wood.
Court documents claim no DNA evidence has ever linked Wood to any of the crimes.
A retest on a blood stain on one of the victim's clothing was performed in 2011.
The testing of the sample excluded Wood from the DNA profile, court documents state.
What we don't know:
An appeal filed in the Texas Criminal Court of Appeals has not yet been decided.
The backstory:
Wood has been denied appeals at every level of the court system since his 1992 conviction.
He had originally been scheduled for execution in 2009 before claiming intellectual disability. Those claims were denied in 2014.
After many years of claims to test new evidence or existing evidence with new DNA testing processes, Thursday's execution date was set.
Still, with just days to go before the scheduled execution, Wood and his legal team are pushing for a stay of his execution in order to have additional DNA testing completed.
U.S. Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals
On Feb. 19, the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals denied a request for a preliminary injunction after Wood's attorneys argued his rights to DNA testing under Texas law were being unfairly denied.
"He cannot demonstrate a likelihood of success on the merits," the court said of Wood's requests for further DNA testing.
"Granting Wood a stay at this late juncture would clearly inhibit the State’s vested interest in carrying out an otherwise valid sentence and would impair the finality of the state court’s criminal judgment," Judge Robert Pittman said.
An appeal to that decision was denied on March 7.
U.S. Supreme Court denies hearing appeal
Just days after the appeals court ruled against Wood, the U.S. Supreme Court declined to take up a case claiming the judge who denied Wood's request for DNA testing was doing so to further his political career.
Wood's attorneys said Judge Bert Richardson used his decision that Wood was not intellectually disabled to appeal to voters on his campaign website.
Richardson was later the same judge who ruled against Wood's appeals for DNA testing.
The Texas Attorney General's Office argued that the standards for a judge being removed had been used by the state's appeals court and applied correctly. They said the Supreme Court was not the proper venue for the case.
1992 Trial - The Desert Killer
Six women disappeared from the El Paso area between May and August 1987. The bodies were found in shallow graves in a desert area near the city between September 1987 and March 1988.
David Wood's prison file
During his 1992 trial, prosecutors laid out that five of the victims had been seen on the day of their disappearance leaving with a man on either a red Harley-Davidson motorcycle or a beige pickup truck, the vehicle descriptions matched vehicles owned by Wood.
Prosecutors were able to match orange fibers found on the clothing of one victim to fibers found in a vacuum cleaner bag left at Wood's apartment.
Two of Wood's cellmates testified that he had confessed to each of them that he was responsible for the killings.
One of the cellmates testified that Wood described how he would lure the victims by offering them drugs before taking them to the desert.
Judith Kelling testified that Wood had offered her a ride home while she was walking in July 1987. She told the court that she accepted the ride, but instead of taking her home he took her to the desert where he tied her to his truck and stated digging a grave behind a bush.
Kelling told the court that Wood said he heard voices and made her get back in the truck and they drove to another location.
At the new location, Kelling said Wood sexually assaulted her and left her naked in the desert after again hearing voices.
A Dallas County court found Wood guilty, and he was sentenced to death.
State and federal appeals
Wood appealed the court's decision unsuccessfully at both the state and federal levels.
He was originally scheduled to be executed in 2009.
Two days before his scheduled execution on Aug. 20, 2009, Wood filed a request claiming intellectual disability. The courts granted the request for a stay of execution, but Wood's claim was denied in 2014.
Since then, Wood has filed several motions requesting new items be DNA tested in order to prove his innocence.
Texas law allows a person convicted of a crime to ask for forensic testing of evidence if certain requirements are met.
In 2010, the courts granted Wood's request to test three items using methods that were not available before. The court determined that the new evidence would not be enough to believe Wood would not have been convicted if it had been available.
Wood continued to file new requests for DNA testing until 2024 when the Court of Criminal Appeals said Wood's testing requests were being used to "unreasonably delay the execution of sentence."
The court ruled Wood was "purposefully attempting to delay the execution of his sentence."
The Source: Information on Wood's execution date comes from the Department of Criminal Justice. Information on new evidence comes from a court filing. Background information on previous appeals and the case comes from court filings in the U.S. Supreme Court, Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals and the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals.