Texas man set to be executed Thursday for killing his 3 young children in 2003 told a local station this year ‘Every day I miss them’
Nearly 23 years after three children were killed in a Brownsville apartment, the man convicted of their deaths is days from his execution. John Allen Rubio is scheduled to die by lethal injection on Thursday, according to KRGV. Earlier this year, he sat down with the station for his first on-camera interview about the crimes.
During the conversation, Rubio expressed regret about the past. “I miss them so much. Every day I miss them,” Rubio said. He recounted his memory of the hours before the deaths, claiming his 3-year-old daughter, Julissa, displayed unusual behavior.
He told the station that Julissa claimed to be his grandmother. According to Rubio, she screamed in a strange voice, which led him to contact Angela Camacho, his common-law wife at the time. Rubio maintains a belief that his daughter was possessed. However, court records paint a different picture.
Rubio still believes his daughter was allegedly possessed that night
Rubio admitted in recorded video testimony that he killed the family’s pet hamsters before telling Camacho that Julissa was possessed. The records state that Rubio directed Camacho to the bathroom, where their 2-month-old daughter, Mary Jane, was killed. Rubio then stabbed Julissa while Camacho held her down. After having sexual intercourse, the couple killed their 1-year-old son, according to the records. Records also show the two older children were not Rubio’s biological children.
Camacho is serving life in prison after taking a plea deal. At the time of the interview, Rubio and his defense team argued that he lacked the mental competency required for execution. Cameron County District Attorney Luis Saenz rejected this claim. “He was competent, he is competent, and he engaged in conduct deliberately and consciously intentionally knowingly and should be executed for what he did,” Saenz said.
Nat Perez Jr., who represented Rubio, holds a different view. He points to a doctor who found Rubio incompetent at the time of the murders. Perez also said his team approached a local bishop before the second trial to discuss demonic possession in the Catholic faith. However, the church did not want to help, according to Perez.
Perez opposed the execution, believing the community environment played a role in the outcome. “In this society, John never had a chance,” Perez Jr. said. He added that a Catholic deacon took part in the second trial and claimed the man would have carried out the execution himself if allowed.
Unless a federal court intervenes, Rubio is scheduled to die by lethal injection on Thursday at the Huntsville Unit, which would make him the eighth person executed in Texas this year.
A judge has already ruled that Rubio is competent to be executed
State District Judge Noe Gonzalez found Rubio competent in October after two experts evaluated him and reached the same conclusion. Competency claims like his trace back to Panetti v. Quarterman, a 2007 Supreme Court ruling. It held that a prisoner whose mental illness prevents a rational understanding of why he is being executed cannot be put to death.
That ruling built on the court’s 1986 decision in Ford v. Wainwright, which barred executing the insane. Rubio’s lawyers later asked the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals to halt the execution, alleging prosecutors relied on false testimony from forensic psychiatrist Michael Welner. However, the court denied the request, finding the repeated filings an abuse of the writ.
The same court overturned Rubio’s first conviction in 2007, which is why a second jury convicted him and sentenced him to death again in 2010. On Tuesday, the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles unanimously denied him clemency.
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