A Texas man has been executed on Thursday after killing a woman in 2002 during a break-in at her home.
Mario Swain, 33, was pronounced dead by lethal injection at 6:39 pm (0039 GMT Friday), 30 minutes after being injected, the Texas Department of Criminal Justice said according to the Associated Press. He had no final statement. None of Nixon's family members were present, nor were Swain's relatives among the witnesses. The prosecutor called him "a serial killer in training."
The Texas man executed for the murder of Lola Nixon at her home in Longview, Texas just two day after Christmas 2002.
Swain was the 13th person put to death so far this year alone in the state responsible for a third of the country's executions, according to the Death Penalty Information Center.
According to the report, Swain threw the 46-year-old Nixon's body into the trunk of her BMW after killing her, drove to a remote area outside of the city about 120 miles east of Dallas and dumped it in the back seat of an abandoned car.
The Washington Post reports that police were called to Nixon's home when her friends were not able to get in touch with her. They found the back door open and found blood throughout the house. A neighbor reported to police that they saw an unfamiliar truck parked on the street the night Nixon disappeared.
According to evidence and testimony at trial, Swain gathered information about women he wanted to rob and then would attack them, forcing them to inhale the anesthetic halothane and hitting them over the head with a wrench or shooting them with a stun gun.
