HUNTSVILLE, Texas (AP) — Leon David Dorsey IV already was in prison, serving 60 years after pleading guilty to killing a woman during a convenience store robbery, when a Dallas police cold case squad gathered enough evidence to tie him to the unsolved shooting deaths of two employees at a video store four years earlier.
"I've done cut folks; I've done stabbed folks; I've killed folks," he told The Dallas Morning News while awaiting trial. "But it don't bother me."
Dorsey, now 32, was set to die Tuesday for the April 1994 attack.
No appeals were in the courts to stop the lethal injection. which would be the seventh this year in the nation's most active capital punishment state and the first of two this week. Another two executions are scheduled for next week.
"I did 21 death penalty cases either as the lead or on a team," said Toby Shook, a former Dallas County assistant district attorney. "Upon reflection, Leon Dorsey is probably No. 1 as the meanest criminal I prosecuted."
Dorsey, who called himself "Pistol Pete," was facing capital murder charges in 1998 for the fatal shootings of James Armstrong, 26, and Brad Lindsey, 20, at the Blockbuster Video store in East Dallas where they worked when he acknowledged to a reporter in a prison interview that he commited the killings. He also suggested the families of his victims not focus on their losses, equating their grief to losing money in a craps game.
"That's over and done with," he told The Dallas Morning News in 1998. "I could have came in here and been, 'Oh, I'm sorry, I'm so bad.' But I don't feel like that. That's not being honest with myself."
Texas Bus Crash
Criminal charges against Houston bus owner possible in deadly crash:
DALLAS (AP) — Criminal charges were being considered against a Houston motorcoach owner and president whose bus crashed in north Texas killing 17 Vietnamese Catholics on their way to a religious festival in Missouri, according to a Harris County prosecutor.
"Criminal charges are possible," said assistant district attorney Donna Hawkins in a story Monday in the online edition of The Dallas Morning News.
Of the 17 people who died, 12 were killed at the scene. Six of the survivors, including the bus driver, remained in critical condition on Monday.
The newspaper reported that Harris District Attorney Ken Magidson would not say whether owner Angel De La Torre would face prosecution in connection to the Aug. 8 crash in Sherman, but state and federal investigators are examining what they say is Torre's "grossly deficient" maintenance record.
"Most criminal prosecutions occur when a person subject to USDOT regulations has intentionally provided false or fraudulent records or statements to the agency," Brigham McCown, former counsel for the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration, the regulating agency, told the newspaper. "Examples would be driver records, maintenance records, application forms, and in (some circumstances) statements to inspectors and investigators," said McCown.
Rarely do owners face criminal charges in bus accidents, but it has happened.
In the 2005 Hurricane Rita bus accident near Dallas that left 23 passengers dead, owner Jim Maples was convicted of failure to maintain his buses and sentenced to six months of home incarceration and six months in a halfway house. Prosecutors had sought to have him imprisoned for seven years, but he was convicted of lesser charges.
As the investigation into the Sherman crash continues, two U.S. senators called on their colleagues to immediately pass a motorcoach safety bill when Congress reconvenes in September.
Dolly-FEMA
3 South Texas counties hit by Hurricane Dolly receive $14.4M from FEMA:
BROWNSVILLE, Texas (AP) — The Federal Emergency Management Agency has sent a little more than $14.4 million in aid to residents of three South Texas counties hit by Hurricane Dolly.
Cameron, Hidalgo and Willacy counties were declared eligible on July 31 to receive the aid for individual assistance for temporary housing assistance for those forced from their homes, as well as money for limited home repairs.
The deadline to apply is Sept 30. Residents in those counties will be able to register for the assistance immediately through the FEMA hot line at 800-621-FEMA and the agency's Web site http://www.fema.gov.
Dolly hit the lower South Texas coast July 23 as a Category 2 hurricane, with 100 mph winds. It dumped more than a foot of rain in places.
Dad Wins Custody
Judge gives father custody of abused daughter, Texas to care for her siblings
DALLAS (AP) — A judge signed a motion approving a jury's verdict to award custody of an abused girl to her father while sending her two half-sisters into Texas state custody.
For more than a month, the girl and her two half-sisters were caught in legal limbo between grandparents who wanted to care for them and a stalling court system that threatened to give them back to their abusive mother.
The girls had been abused by their mother, Susan Hyde, according to testimony in a monthlong trial. The testimony said the girls went to the emergency room at least 150 times in four years and were treated for illnesses, such as cystic fibrosis, cerebral palsy and seizures, that they never had, The Dallas Morning News reported Monday in its online editions.
Doctors testified that Hyde's behavior correlated with both Munchausen syndrome and Munchausen syndrome by proxy. Both are psychological disorders in which people exaggerate or create false symptoms of illness, but the second is characterized by a parent making her child appear sick and possibly harming the child. Hyde faces no charges but the Tarrant and Dallas county district attorneys' offices have been asked to review her case.
Jim Ehlers was granted custody after Ellis County Judge Greg Wilhelm signed the order on Monday. The order approved a jury's June 30 verdict which ended the mother's parental rights.
Ehlers' daughter's siblings, ages 8 and 4, will be in Texas state custody, according to the jury's verdict.
The girls' maternal grandparents, Brian and Patricia Andersen of Ennis, said last week that they plan to appeal in hopes of regaining custody. The Andersens and their attorney could not be reached for comment Monday.
The 39-year-old Ehlers, who is single, said he hopes to occasionally get all three girls together in Davenport, Iowa, where he lives.
