Texas executes 600th inmate since 1982 in Busby case

2 min readUpdated May 20, 2026

Convicted in the 2004 suffocation killing of retired Texas Christian University professor Laura Lee Crane, Edward Busby Jr. was put to death Thursday as the 600th person executed in Texas since capital punishment resumed there in 1982, the Associated Press reported. He was pronounced dead at 8:11 p.m. after receiving a lethal injection at the Huntsville state penitentiary.

According to prosecutors, Busby and co-defendant Kathleen Latimer snatched Crane, 77, from a Fort Worth grocery store parking lot in January 2004, forcing her into the trunk of her own vehicle as they drove around. She died there, asphyxiated beneath 23 feet of duct tape that had been wound across her entire face. Authorities apprehended Busby in Oklahoma City, where he was found behind the wheel of Crane's vehicle; he subsequently directed investigators to her body, which was located in Oklahoma a short distance north of the Texas state line, the AP reported.

Independent evaluators working for both Busby's legal team and the Tarrant County District Attorney's Office had concluded he was intellectually disabled, and the prosecutor's office had sought to have his sentence commuted to life imprisonment, ABC News reported. A trial judge, however, rejected those disability findings and in 2023 allowed the death sentence to stand. The Texas Attorney General's Office argued Busby's disability claims were "meritless" and "time-barred."

In his final statement, Busby offered repeated apologies and pleas for forgiveness. He described Crane as "a lovely woman" and said he was "so sorry for what happened," expressing a wish that he could "take it all back," the AP reported. Latimer remains in prison serving a life sentence for murder.

Witnessing the execution on the Crane family's behalf, author and historian Bryan Mark Rigg said the proceeding was not an act of vengeance but rather, in his words, "about accountability under the law and about remembering the life of an extraordinary educator," the AP reported.

Since the Supreme Court declared the death penalty constitutional in 1976, no state has come close to Texas in its use of capital punishment — the state has been responsible for more than one in three executions conducted across the country, NBC News reported. His death marked the fourth execution carried out in Texas so far this year, and the twelfth to take place anywhere in the United States.

Texas reaches grim milestone with 600th execution since resuming capital punishment in 1982

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