Execution Report: Jeffrey L. Williams

Jeffrey Lynn Williams, 30, was executed by lethal injection on 26 June 2002 in Huntsville, Texas for the rape, murder, and robbery of a woman in her apartment.

In October 1994, Williams, then 23, forced his way into the apartment of Barbara Jackson Pullins. He cut her with a knife in a brief struggle, then forced her to disrobe and raped her. He then tied her feet together with a telephone cord and placed a plastic bag over head, in an attempt to suffocate her. When that failed, he strangled her with the cord from an iron. After burning her body with a cigarette to make sure she was dead, Williams attempted to set the body afire by igniting a roll of paper towels.

Williams then moved to a bedroom where he found the victim's 9-year-old daughter, Jamie Jackson, sleeping. He started strangling her with his hands, and she awoke. Williams then ordered her to take off her clothes, struck her in the mouth, and raped her. He told her, "If you tell anybody, I'll kill you." He then stole several items from the apartment and drove off in Barbara Pullins' car.

After she heard Williams leave, Jamie went into the living room and found her mother lying motionless on the floor. She then ran to her grandmother's apartment nearby.

Police investigators who arrived on the scene found a neighbor in the apartment complex who said that an acquaintance of hers, Jeffrey Williams, came over to her apartment. He was there for about 20 minutes and acted in a very unusual manner, pacing the floor. The neighbor, Patricia Allen, directed police to the adjacent apartment complex where Williams lived. They found Pullins' car there.

Police matched the fingerprints of Williams, who had four prior felony convictions, with fingerprints taken from Pullins' apartment. They also made a photo array in which Jackson identified a photograph of Williams as her attacker. Williams was arrested. Pullins' purse and keys and several items from her apartment, including a VCR, television, and pistol, were in his apartment.

Williams made a videotaped statement in which he confessed to raping and murdering Barbara Pullins and raping Jamie Jackson. He said that he went to the apartment to steal from Pullins, but didn't plan to kill her. After he started to rape her, he stopped, he said, because "I wasn't getting anything out of it." He then started smoking a cigarette and talked with her and that was when he "just went off" and killed her, he said.

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