A Texas death row inmate convicted of killing a jogger in 1997, which he said he “couldn’t help” but do, was executed Wednesday after claiming his confession should have never been shown in the murder trial.
Arthur Lee Burton, 54, was found guilty of killing Nancy Adleman, 48, in Houston in July 1997. One day after she didn’t come home on a run, Texas police discovered the mother of three’s bludgeoned corpse in a 4-foot hole in a wooded area along Brays Bayou.
According to court records, the death row inmate admitted that he attempted to rape Nancy and then strangled her with her own shoelaces. He later told a prison psychologist that the murder was “just something I couldn’t help.” In 1998, a jury returned a guilty verdict.
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Burton is the third inmate executed in Texas this year and the 11th in the US. Nancy would often jog around her house in northwest Houston. But on July 29, 1997, at around 7 p.m., she left her home and was never seen again.
According to court documents, the mother’s body was discovered by Harris County deputies the next morning in a horrific state. She had been severely beaten, and her underwear and shorts had been taken off and discarded.
Ten days later, Burton was taken into custody; at first, he denied any involvement in the woman’s murder. He was questioned by law enforcement regarding evidence discovered at the site, and they promptly exposed gaps in his testimony. The 54-year-old’s confession was spurred by this.
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According to a 2004 court document, Burton acknowledged in writing that he had beaten Nancy, carried her body into the woods while she was still alive, and strangled her until she passed out so he could undress and rape her. When the mother awoke, she had once more been choked and pulled into a hole.
He saw another person wandering close by before leaving the site. He hurried back to the hole and used her shoelace to choke the mother of three. Chief of the Harris County District Attorney’s Office’s Post-Conviction Writ Division Josh Reiss told USA TODAY, “This case is their worst nightmare for any woman who has ever exercised alone, or walked to their car alone at night.”
In court, prosecutors probed Burton’s troubled past, bringing up the 39 burglaries he’d committed in a single month when he was just 18 years old. The 54-year-old and his accomplices stole various items, including radios, weapons, fishing gear, and calculators. In 2002, Michael Burton, Burton’s brother, testified that his sibling started selling cocaine at the age of 17 and consuming marijuana at the age of 16.