Texas executes man who killed ex-girlfriend

Texas executed a killer Thursday who was on parole when authorities say he stabbed his ex-girlfriend in a jealous rage after beating down the door to her Dallas-area apartment nearly a decade ago.

Before being put to death, Robert Jean Hudson repeatedly expressed love to his wife and a friend who watched the death chamber through a window.

"I will take you to heaven with me," Hudson said from his gurney. "I will always be with you." He was pronounced dead at 6:24 p.m., eight minutes after the lethal drugs began to flow.

Hudson, 45, was the 18th inmate put to death this year in the nation's busiest capital punishment state and the last scheduled for this year.

Edith Kendrick, 35, was killed and her 8-year-old son seriously wounded in the 1999 attack in Mesquite, east of Dallas.

Evidence showed Hudson called Kendrick on the phone and got upset when he heard another man's voice in the background. Armed with a knife, he went to her apartment and kicked in the door, yelling that he was going to kill both of them, and started swinging the knife. The other man fled.

Kendrick's 8-year-old son got between his mother and Hudson and was severely slashed. A witness in a parking lot saw Kendrick crash from the apartment to a balcony with Hudson grabbing her by the hair, then raising his arm as he stabbed her six to eight times.

Kendrick's son called 911 and identified Hudson as the attacker. Police found Hudson at a nearby convenience store.

Kendrick's son required several operations to repair his scars.

Attorneys for Hudson didn't question that the three-time parolee was responsible for the slaying but faulted his trial lawyers for not presenting evidence that it was a crime of passion, which lawyer Maurie Levin said "reduced Mr. Hudson's moral culpability."

Jurors never heard about his unstable childhood, a father with drug and alcohol problems, a mother with psychiatric problems, and his own psychiatric treatment and medication to control his behavior and anger, Levin said.

Hudson had been on parole for about six months after serving less than seven years of a 20-year term for check forgery when he was arrested for the murder. He has had two other paroles and at least eight convictions, including one for a 1987 killing in Dallas for which he took a plea bargain while he already was imprisoned.