A Texas man convicted of beating to death an 80-year-old woman was executed by lethal injection last night.
Ivan Murphy (38) was the second inmate put to death in two days in Texas and the second of five set to die this month in the nation's leading death penalty state.
Murphy was condemned for killing Lula Mae Denning, a woman he had known since his childhood, in Denison, Texas, on January 9th, 1989, when he and accomplice Doug Stoff went to her home to rob her.
Denning invited Murphy in and gave him strawberry ice cream but was beaten over the head with a blunt object until she died. Murphy blamed the murder on Stoff, but police said evidence pointed to him. Stoff received a life sentence for his part in the crime.
Murphy was the 313th person executed in Texas since the state resumed capital punishment in 1982, six years after the U.S. Supreme Court lifted a national death penalty ban.
On Wednesday, Richard Charles Duncan was put to death for killing the parents of his gay lover to cash in on their insurance policies.