Bio

Bobby Lee Hines was born on July 7, 1972. According to accounts presented later in his defense appeals, he endured a difficult childhood marked by chronic physical abuse from his father and, later, from foster parents, along with being abandoned by his mother at a young age. He had a diagnosed learning disability and was described by evaluators as emotionally disturbed. At age 13, he was reported to have pulled a knife on a fellow student and threatened him after the student refused to hand over a sheet of paper. 

As a young adult, he was convicted of burglary and served a portion of his sentence before being released on shock probation roughly two years before the events that would lead to his death sentence. At the time of the murder, Hines, then 19, was working as a laborer and staying in an apartment next to his brother, who worked as the assistant manager of an apartment complex in Carrollton, Texas, a suburb northwest of Dallas; another resident of the unit worked as the complex's maintenance man and had access to a master key.

Murder Story

On October 19, 1991, Michelle Wendy Haupt, a 26-year-old woman who had relocated to Carrollton, Texas from the Pittsburgh area to work at a computer company, was visited by her friend Mary Ann Linch, who had driven in to spend the weekend with her. Linch brought along a carton of Marlboro cigarettes with four packs remaining, purchased at a Brookshire's grocery store in Corsicana, Texas, and left the carton at Haupt's apartment before the two went out for the evening to a nightclub. While at the club, Haupt became ill, and a friend drove her home; Linch had originally planned to stay the night at Haupt's apartment but changed her mind and stayed elsewhere instead. That same evening, Haupt was seen wearing a gold sand-dollar charm necklace that she habitually wore.

Also that evening, Hines appeared uninvited at a party being held elsewhere in the same apartment complex. When the host asked who he was, he identified himself as the brother of the apartment manager, and he told another guest that he was part of the complex's maintenance crew, producing a ring of keys and stating that he could get into any apartment in the complex whenever he wanted.

In the early morning hours of October 20, 1991, residents in the unit directly below Haupt's apartment were awakened by loud screaming coming from above, lasting approximately fifteen minutes, along with a repeated heavy thudding noise that one resident compared to a bowling ball being dropped on the floor roughly twenty times. Using a stolen master key, Hines entered Haupt's apartment. She was later found lying face up just inside the doorway, dressed only in a robe that had been tied closed after the attack — the robe showed no puncture damage corresponding to her wounds, indicating it had been placed on her body afterward. She had sustained 18 puncture wounds consistent with an ice pick found nearby on the couch, and stereo speaker wire had been wound tightly around her neck; she had abrasions to her neck and jaw, bruising on her neck, and a fractured hyoid bone.

Hines was arrested that same afternoon. When questioned by police, he had visible scratches under one eye and on his neck and cheek, consistent with a struggle. With consent from his roommate, investigators searched the apartment where Hines had been staying and found Haupt's blood on his clothing. Under the couch where Hines had been sleeping, they recovered a bowl of pennies and packages of cigarettes taken from Haupt's apartment. Her gold sand-dollar necklace charm was found in his pocket. A bloody fingerprint and palm print matching Hines were also recovered from inside Haupt's apartment.

Hines was tried and convicted of capital murder by a Dallas County jury in March 1992 and was sentenced to death, with the sentence formally entered on April 16, 1992. His conviction and sentence were upheld through the Texas court system and in a federal habeas corpus proceeding before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, reported as Hines v. Cockrell, 57 Fed. Appx. 210 (5th Cir. 2002).

Hines's execution, originally scheduled for 2003, was stayed for several years while courts considered his claim that he was intellectually disabled and therefore ineligible for the death penalty under constitutional protections established around that time. Although evaluators found that Hines had a diagnosed learning disability and emotional disturbances, courts ultimately determined he did not meet the legal criteria for that relief. His execution was rescheduled for May 2012, but after the U.S. Supreme Court declined to review his case, the Dallas County District Attorney's office further postponed the execution so that additional DNA testing could be performed on fingernail clippings collected from Haupt's body. That testing did not exclude Hines as a possible source of the genetic material recovered, and his execution was reset. Shortly before the rescheduled date, his attorney filed a further appeal arguing that none of Hines's prior defense counsel had adequately investigated mitigating evidence about his childhood background that might have persuaded a jury to choose a life sentence; that appeal did not succeed in halting the execution.

Bobby Lee Hines was executed by lethal injection on October 24, 2012, at the Huntsville Unit ("The Walls") in Huntsville, Texas. In his final statement, he apologized directly to Haupt's family, saying he knew he had taken someone special from them and that what he had done was wrong, and expressed a wish that he could undo it. He was pronounced dead at 6:28 p.m., roughly twelve minutes after the lethal injection began, becoming the 11th inmate executed in Texas that year.