Serial murderer the ‘Desert Killer’ gets 2025 date with death

Wood continues to maintain he is innocent and is appealing his conviction

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Published Sep 05, 2024  •  2 minute read

Convicted killer David Leonard Wood has been booked on the night train to Nowheresville. TDC

Notorious Texas “Desert Killer” David Leonard Wood has been booked on the night train to Nowheresville.

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Nearly 40 years after the 67-year-old monster was arrested for murdering at least half a dozen young women and teens and dumping their bodies in the desert outside El Paso, Wood has a date with death.

Authorities said Wednesday that Wood is slated to be executed on March 13, 2025, at the Texas Department of Criminal Justice’s Huntsville Unit prison.

He will die by lethal injection. Wood continues to maintain he is innocent and is appealing his conviction.

Wood has been on death row since Nov. 10, 1992. He was convicted in the death of one of the girls found in the desert and indicted on capital murder charges for five other victims. All were in their teens or early 20s.

THREE OF THE VICTIMS. TEXAS RANGERS

The serial killer was originally slated for the big adios on Aug. 20, 2009, but the death order was stayed 24 hours before he was to be executed.

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According to the El Paso Times, Wood has employed a multitude of legal gambits to get off the hook. He claimed he was mentally impaired, the DNA evidence was faulty, there were no witnesses, the inmates he confessed to were rats and that executions were “cruel and unusual punishment”.

The U.S. Supreme Court ruled the death penalty is not cruel and unusual punishment and torpedoed Woods’ other arguments as well.

Execution chamber at the Texas Department of Criminal Justice Huntsville Unit in Huntsville, Texas (PAUL BUCK/AFP/Getty Images)

His lawyer told the El Paso Times: “There’s no confession in this case. No confession from David Wood. There’s no witnesses. There’s no biological material connecting David Wood to any of the murders.

“What did connect him to the murders was some of the most unreliable evidence that can be presented in court and that is the testimony of what we call jailhouse snitches.”

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Now, his legal team wants the DNA retested before his date with doom.

“I’m not going to confess to something I didn’t do,” Wood told the Times in 1988.

At the time of the murders in 1987 and 1988, Wood was a convicted rapist.

Three suspected victims of the killer have never been found. The youngest victims were just 14. They died by stabbing and strangulation and some had been raped.

EL PASO TIMES

The victims are Desiree Wheatley, 15; Rosa Maria Casio, 24; Ivy Susanna Williams, 23; Karen Baker, 20; Angelica Frausto, 17, and Dawn Marie Smith, 14. The missing girls are Marjorie Knox, 14; Cheryl Vasquez-Dismukes, 19; and Melissa Alaniz, 14.

Wood grew up in San Angelo, Texas and later moved to El Paso where he worked as a mechanic. He was caged in the 1980s on several rape charges but was sprung after serving only seven years of a 20-year jolt.

When he was released, young women in El Paso started disappearing.

Cops say the killing spree kicked off in 1987 when the skeletal remains of Baker and Casio where discovered in shallow graves. More bodies followed.

Detectives learned that each of the victims had a connection to Wood. Some were last seen alive with Wood.

In March 1988, Wood was convicted of raping a prostitute and sentenced to 50 years in prison.

And then the killings stopped.

Two years later, he was indicted on the Desert Killer murders.

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