Execution Report: Patrick Knight

Patrick Bryan Knight, 39, was executed by lethal injection on 26 June 2007 in Huntsville, Texas for the abduction and murder of a neighbor couple.

Knight lived in a trailer next door to Walter and Mary Ann Werner in Amarillo. On 26 August 1991, after the Werners left for work, Knight, then 23, and Robert Bradfield, 19, broke into their home and waited for them to return. When the Werners came home, Knight and Bradfield locked them in their basement. The next day, Knight and Bradfield drove around town in the Werners' vehicles.

Around midnight on the 27th, Knight bound, gagged, and blindfolded the couple, forced them into their van, and drove about four miles out into the country. He then forced them out of the van and made them kneel on the ground. He then shot each of them in the back of the head. After dragging their bodies into a ditch on the side of the road, he returned to his trailer and slept.

Knight was questioned by law enforcement officers investigating the couple's disappearance. After an initial denial, he confessed to abducting and murdering them and led investigators to their bodies.

Testimony at the punishment phase of Knight's trial indicated that he had destroyed part of a fence and shot and killed several head of cattle belonging to another neighbor. He was on probation for burglarizing a grocery store at the time of the murders. The state also presented evidence that on the same day as the murders, Knight went to Ted Ramirez's home and threatened to kill him, and also went to Deborah Martin's home and told her that he would "get" her and her boyfriend.

While in jail awaiting trial, threatened to kill a cellmate with a shank made from a coat hanger. He hid razor blades, scissors, and sharpened paper clips in his cell.

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