By Liz Farmer
The Dallas Morning News
LIVINGSTON — Texas prisoner Coy Wesbrook is realistic about the likelihood that he’ll be executed Wednesday for a Houston-area shooting rampage more than 18 years ago that left five people dead.
“I’m very optimistic they’re going to kill me,” Wesbrook said from a visiting cage outside death row. “Yeah, there ain’t no doubt.”
That’s set to happen Wednesday evening in Huntsville, when Wesbrook, 58, is scheduled for lethal injection for the 1997 shooting rampage during a party at his ex-wife’s apartment in Channelview, just east of Houston.
“The main thing in my case is five victims, five shots, five bodies, and everybody died,” he said. “There was nobody left alive and that pretty much cinched it, you could say.”
Among the five victims was Wesbrook’s ex-wife, Gloria Jean Coons, 32. Others killed were Coons’ roommate, Diana Ruth Money, 43, and three men: Antonio Cruz, 35; Anthony Ray Rogers, 41; and Kelly Hazlip, 28.
Wesbrook would be the eighth convicted killer put to death this year nationally and the fourth in Texas, which carries out capital punishment more than any other state. Two Georgia inmates have been executed so far in 2016, along with one each in Alabama and Florida.
Wesbrook’s attorney, Don Vernay, said appeals have been exhausted and that no last-ditch efforts to save him are expected.
Rejected appeals focused on claims that Wesbrook had deficient legal help at his trial and that an undercover informant was used improperly to obtain incriminating information for his trial. More recently, courts refused arguments that Wesbrook was mentally impaired and ineligible for the death penalty under U.S. Supreme Court rulings.
The former security guard and delivery driver married Coons in 1995. They divorced the following year but continued seeing each other and began living together until he moved out in August 1997. They had lunch on Nov. 12, 1997, and talked about reconciling. When he showed up that night at her apartment, he found a party in progress.
He testified at his 1998 capital murder trial that Coons humiliated him by having sex with two men while he was there.
“You hear all your life if you catch your old lady in bed with somebody, don’t just shoot her but shoot her lover too,” Wesbrook said from prison. “In her case, there was a bunch of lovers. I just took care of my business.
“I made her a promise,” he said. “If you keep on pushing me, I might push back.”
In an interview with 60 Minutes on Sunday, Wesbrook said he blamed his slain ex-wife for him being on death row. He told interviewer Bill Whitaker that he’s a victim like everyone else involved. His portion of the interview begins around the 5:25 time mark.
“It sounds like you don’t quite get the gravity of your crime, when you call yourself a victim as well,” Whitaker said. “You’re still here. They are not.”
Wesbrook responded that he won’t be here much longer.
“I’ll tell you what. If you got a pill I’ll take it right here in front of ya, and we’ll get it over with right now,” Wesbrook said.
He went on to say that he didn’t think Texas should have a death penalty.
Wesbrook testified that when he tried to leave the party, Cruz grabbed the keys to his truck and joined others in taunting him. He said he “lost it,” walked out, grabbed a 30.06 rifle he kept in the truck and returned, shooting each person once. Coons was the final victim.
Court records show the five shots were fired within 40 seconds. Wesbrook testified that he shot Money after she threw a can of beer at him, Rogers and Cruz as they rushed toward him, then Coons and Hazlip as they were engaged in sex.
Neighbors who heard the gunfire and called police saw Wesbrook emerge from the apartment, place the rifle in his truck and then stand calmly by the tailgate to wait for sheriff’s deputies to arrive.
“I’m sorry it happened,” he said from prison. “But I’m not going to sit here and boo-hoo about it.”
Two more Texas inmates are set to die later this month, followed by another in April.
Copyright 2016 The Dallas Morning News