Texas executes man who killed his pregnant wife and 5-year-old daughter

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Texas has executed a death row inmate who murdered his pregnant wife, five-year-old daughter, and father-in-law more than a decade ago.

John Hummel received a lethal injection on Wednesday evening at a state prison in Huntsville for the killings.

The 45-year-old fatally stabbed his wife Joy more than 30 times at their Fort Worth Home in December 2009, then beat his daughter and wheelchair-bound father-in-law to death with a baseball bat, before setting the house on fire.

At trial prosecutors said that he killed his family because he wanted to run off with a woman he had met at a convenience store. After the killings, the hospital security guard fled to Oceanside, California, where he was arrested and, authorities say, he confessed to the killings.

His lawyers argued he suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder from military service that caused him to “snap” on the night of the killings.

But prosecutors also said Hummel previously tried to kill his family by lacing spaghetti with rat poison.

Hummel was convicted of capital murder, and had been scheduled to be executed in March 2020, before coronavirus caused a delay.

“This guy senselessly took the life of a beautiful mother, a beautiful child and a grandfather that just did everything for them. For him to want to be single and just kill this way is senseless, Miles Brissette, a prosecutor, said during the trial.

Hummel is the second Texas inmate executed in 2021 and the fifth in the US.

Cylinda Bedford, the sister of Hummel’s father-in-law, said she considers the man “some kind of monster.”

“I don’t have no closure,” she previously said ahead of the execution. “And him being put to death is not going to be closure either because then we’ll never know why.”

Twenty-seven states still use the death penalty.

In Texas, as in most other places, Black people are disproportionately put to death. They make up less than 13 per cent of the population, but constitute 44.5 per cent of death row inmates, according to the Texas Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty, an advocacy group.