Execution Report: Christopher Wilkins

Christopher Chubasco Wilkins, 48, was executed by lethal injection on 11 January 2017 in Huntsville, Texas for the murder of two men who tricked him in a drug deal.

In October 2005, Wilkins, then 37, left a halfway house in Houston, stole a truck, and drove to Fort Worth. There, he happened upon Willie Freeman, 40, who offered to sell him some drugs. Freeman and his supplier, Mike Silva, 33, tricked him into paying $20 for a piece of gravel instead of a rock of cocaine. When Wilkins discovered the deception, Freeman and Silva laughed at him.

Over the next few weeks, Wilkins and Freeman used drugs together. Freeman apologized for stealing from him and gave him some drugs to make up for it. Wilkins would later testify that at that point, he had already decided he was going to kill Freeman.

On Thursday, 27 October, Wilkins told Freeman that he had some guns and drugs stashed on the west side of Fort Worth. Silva agreed to drive Wilkins and Freeman there in his vehicle the next day.

From the back seat, Wilkins directed Silva to a deserted stretch of road on the west side of Fort Worth. While Silva was still driving, Wilkins shot Freeman in the back of the head. Silva stopped the vehicle and tried to escape, but he got caught in his seatbelt. Wilkins shot him once in the neck and twice in the head. He then climbed into the driver's seat and began driving, with Silva's body hanging out. He cut the seatbelt to remove Silva, then dumped both of the victims' bodies in a ditch on the side of the road.

Wilkins was arrested by the Fort Worth Police Department about a week later, after two high-speed chases that ended in a wreck. He was driving Silva's vehicle. A pentagram matching one of Wilkins's tattoos had been carved into the hood.

While confessing to the murders of Freeman and Silva, Wilkins also confessed to killing Gilbert Vallejo in Fort Worth on 26 October because he was disturbing him and cursing at him in Spanish while he was using a pay phone outside a bar. He also confessed to other murders and other crimes in several states. While Vallejo was, in fact, murdered in Fort Worth on 26 October, many of Wilkins's other confessions could not be matched to reported offenses. At his trial, the defense argued that these apparently false confessions weakened the credibility of Wilkins's confession to the murders of Freeman and Silva.

While in jail awaiting trial, Wilkins swallowed a handcuff key and fashioned a knife to be used in an escape attempt.

At his trial, Wilkins testified that he killed Freeman and Silva because they laughed at him after tricking him into buying a piece of gravel. He said he did not care if he was sentenced to death.

"Look, it is no big deal," he told the jury.

"When I get wound up, I have a fuse that is short," he testified. "I don't think about what I am doing."

"I know they are bad decisions. I make them anyway."

Court document and news articles refer to previous time Wilkins served in prison on weapons and drug convictions, but they provide few details about his criminal history. He had no prior prison record in the Texas Department of Criminal Justice.

Wilkins was heavily tattooed with Satanist and white supremacist symbols. He explained them as remnants of his youth and "mostly hype" to keep other prisoners from bothering him.

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