Texas man who decapitated his three children set to be executed Thursday

article John Allen Rubio in 2003 (Texas Department of Criminal Justice photo) The Brief Texas death row inmate John Allen Rubio is scheduled to be executed Thursday for the 2003 decapitation murders of three young children in Brownsville. The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals denied a stay of execution after a state district judge ruled Rubio legally competent to be executed. It remains to be seen whether Rubio's defense team will file any last-minute appeals with federal courts before Thursday's scheduled lethal injection. BROWNSVILLE, Texas - Texas death row inmate John Allen Rubio is scheduled to be executed Thursday by lethal injection at the state penitentiary in Huntsville for the 2003 murder of his three young children in Brownsville. His execution is scheduled for 6 p.m. Death Row execution scheduled The backstory: Rubio, 45, was convicted of capital murder for the decapitation killings of 3-year-old Julissa Quesada, 14-month-old John E. Rubio, and 2-month-old Mary Jane Rubio. Authorities said Rubio told investigators after his arrest that he believed the children were demonically possessed. The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals recently rejected a motion by Rubio’s defense attorneys requesting a stay of execution. The ruling followed an October decision by a state district judge who found Rubio legally competent to face execution after reviewing psychiatric evaluation findings. Featured article Texas court rejects death row inmate Melissa Lucio’s bid for new trial The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals has rejected Melissa Lucio’s latest effort to overturn her 2008 conviction and death sentence for the death of her 2-year-old daughter, ruling that she failed to show prosecutors withheld evidence that could have changed the outcome of her trial. Rubio was originally convicted and sentenced to death in 2003, but the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals overturned the conviction in 2007. He was retried in 2010, found guilty a second time of capital murder, and again sentenced to death. His common-law wife and the children’s mother, Angela Camacho, was also convicted for her role in the killings and is serving three consecutive life terms. If carried out, Rubio’s execution will take place at the Texas Department of Criminal Justice Huntsville Unit. Remaining execution scheduled for 2026 in Texas Reinaldo Dennes, now 70, is set for execution on November 19—nearly 30 years after he was convicted of murdering Houston jeweler Janos Szucs during a 1996 inside-job heist. Reinaldo Dennes at age 41 (Source: TDCJ) In January 1996, Dennes and his brother orchestrated a robbery at Szucs' office building with the help of a cleaning employee, Estrella Martinez, whom Dennes dated and paid $5,000 to grant them access and distract the guard. Dennes shot and wounded security guard David Copeland before fatally shooting Szucs in his seventh-floor office. The perpetrators stole $200,000 in cash, a five-carat diamond pinkie ring, and over $3.5 million in diamonds (valued at roughly $7.2 million today). While some cash was traced to a sports car purchase, the diamonds have never been recovered. Sentenced to death in 1997, Dennes exhausted his final U.S. Supreme Court appeal in December 2020 and was recently returned to Harris County ahead of his scheduled execution. Texas Executions Scheduled for 2027 April 6 Carlos Trevino On June 9, 1996, in San Antonio, Trevino and four other men abducted 15-year-old Linda Salinas while she was using a pay phone. They took her to a wooded area, where she was sexually assaulted and fatally stabbed in the neck. Trevino had been released on parole just one month earlier. Convicted of capital murder and sentenced to death in 1997, Trevino was the only member of the group to receive a death sentence. His case was the subject of the landmark 2013 U.S. Supreme Court ruling Trevino v. Thaler , which expanded federal review of ineffective-assistance-of-counsel claims in Texas, though lower federal courts ultimately rejected his appeals on the merits. April 7 Patrick Murphy Murphy was a member of the notorious " Texas 7 " —a group of inmates who broke out of the John B. Connally Unit near Kenedy, Texas, on Dec. 13, 2000. On Christmas Eve 2000, the escapees robbed an Oshman's sporting goods store in Irving. When 29-year-old Irving Police Officer Aubrey Hawkins arrived on scene, he was ambushed, shot 11 times, and run over by their getaway vehicle. Patrick Henry Murphy Jr. (Source: TDCJ) RELATED: Texas 7 escapee Randy Halprin marries ahead of new Dallas trial At the time of the escape, Murphy was serving a 50-year sentence for a 1984 aggravated sexual assault. Although Murphy acted as a lookout in a nearby vehicle and did not fire a shot during the Irving robbery, he was sentenced to death in 2003 under Texas' "law of parties". Four other Texas 7 members have already been executed and one died by suicide; Murphy previously received execution stays in 2019 over litigation regarding his right to have his Buddhist spiritual advisor present in the death chamber. May 3 Joe Luna Luna used a crawl space connected to his girlfriend's apartment in San Antonio to break into the neighboring unit of 25-year-old Michael Andrade, a fourth-year pre-med student at St. Mary's University. Finding Andrade home, Luna held him at gunpoint, bound him, and strangled him to death so Andrade could not link him to the crawl space. Luna then set the apartment on fire to destroy evidence. Joe Michael Luna (Source: TDCJ) At the start of his capital murder trial, Luna pleaded guilty before the jury. Against his attorneys' advice, he took the stand during the punishment phase, stated that he posed a continuing danger, and explicitly asked the jury to sentence him to death. He was admitted to death row in April 2006, and his subsequent state and federal habeas appeals—largely centered on trial counsel's handling of mitigating evidence—were denied. The Source: Information in this article is from the Texas Deparment of Criminal Justice, court documents, and previous reporting. Texas Crime & Public Safety