Man facing execution for stabbing his wife dead and drowning her daughter in bathtub
If Green's execution proceeds on Tuesday, he will become the fourth person executed in Texas in 2023.
A man in Texas is set to be executed on Tuesday night for the murder of his estranged wife and her six-year-old daughter.
Gary Green, 51, is scheduled to receive a lethal injection at the Texas State Penitentiary’s Huntsville Unit, which houses the state’s death row. He was convicted for the 2009 murders of Lovetta Armstead, 32, and her daughter, Jazzmen Montgomery, 6.
Prosecutors argued that Green decided to kill Armstead after she asked him for an annulment. The couple had been estranged for some time before she asked.
Armstead asked for the annulment in two letters she sent to Green on the day of the murder in 2009.
‘You asked to see the monster so here he is the monster you made me,’ he wrote in a letter the same day as the crime. ‘There will be 5 lives taken today me being the 5th,’
Green stabbed Armstead over two dozen times. He then drowned her daughter in their bathtub.
He also planned to kill Armstead’s two sons, ages 12 and 9 at the time.
According to a police report, Armstead had dropped the boys off at a church activity around 5.30pm that night. Green left Armstead’s home, then picked the children up around 9.30pm and brought them back to their home.
‘Shortly afterwards suspect Green grabbed the 9-year-old and in front of the 12-year-old stabbed the child once in the torso,’ the police report reads. ‘Suspec5t Green then forced the two children to a rear bedroom where she showed them the deceased bodies of their mother and 6-year-old sister, and admitted to causing their deaths.’
One of the boys talked him out of killing them, saying ‘we’re too little to die and we won’t tell anybody about it.’
The two boys then called 911 after Green was gone. First responders declared Armstead and Montgomery dead at the scene, and the children were transported to Dallas Children’s Hospital for treatment.
Green then planned to take his own life by taking large dosages of Tylenol and Benadryl. When that didn’t work, he turned himself in at a Dallas Police station and confessed to the murders in a videotaped statement.
Green was found guilty and sentenced to death in 2010. He has appealed his conviction and requested a new trial, which was denied by the court
Green’s attorneys have not filed any appeals to stay his execution as of Tuesday afternoon. In past appeals, his lawyers have argued that he is intellectually disabled.
The US Supreme Court banned states from executing people with intellectual disabilities, but Green’s status has been disputed. He scored a 78 on an IQ test, and Texas defines intellectual disability as scoring 70 or lower, the Texas Tribune reported.
If Green’s execution proceeds on Tuesday, he will become the fourth person executed in Texas in 2023. The Lone Star State only executed a total of five people in 2022.
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