Michael Minasi | KUT News
The Texas State Penitentiary at Huntsville, or Huntsville Unit, opened in 1849 and houses Texas’ execution chamber.
Texas is set to carry out its first execution of the year Wednesday.
Charles Victor Thompson, 55, was sentenced to death in 1999 for two murders he committed a year prior in Houston. Thompson shot his ex-girlfriend, Dennise Hayslip, and another man, Darren Cain, after showing up to Hayslip’s apartment and kicking down the door. Police had been called to the apartment for a disturbance the night before and escorted Thompson away, according to the Texas Department of Criminal Justice.
Cain died at the scene. Hayslip was transported to a hospital, where she died a week later.
Thompson made national headlines in 2005 when he escaped Harris County Jail during a retrial of his case. He was found days later in Shreveport, Louisiana, more than 200 miles away.
Thompson’s case is also the subject of an episode of the Netflix docuseries “I Am A Killer.”
The execution is the first of four scheduled in Texas this year. Once the leader in the number of death sentences carried out in the U.S., Texas has seen a decline in executions in recent years, according to a recent report from the Texas Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty.