Bio

Danny Lee King was born in 1950. He spent a deeply troubled childhood marked by severe physical and emotional abuse, leading to his placement in foster care at an early age. As an adult, he struggled with a long history of substance abuse and accumulated a criminal record that spanned multiple states, including prior convictions for grand larceny and armed robbery. 

In 1990, alongside his wife Becky, he orchestrated a fatal plot to rob Roanoke real estate agent Carolyn Horton Rogers, leading to his conviction for capital murder. Despite later attempts during his appeals to blame his wife for the fatal stabbing, his previous confessions and the forensic evidence sealed his fate, culminating in his execution by lethal injection in Virginia on July 23, 1998, at the age of 47.

Murder Story

On October 11, 1990, Carolyn Horton Rogers agreed to show a vacant home in the Kings Chase area of Roanoke County to people she believed were potential buyers. Danny Lee King and Becky Smith arrived at the house using false identities. Rogers took them through the property, and the three eventually reached the basement.

During the showing, Becky left the basement area to get a cigarette from the van. What happened next became the central issue at trial. King later gave different accounts. In statements to Becky’s lawyers, he admitted that he struck Rogers, choked her, threw her down, and stabbed her. He later changed his version and claimed that Becky was responsible for the fatal stabbing.

Rogers was found later that day in the basement furnace room. She was lying face down in a pool of blood. She had been beaten, choked, stomped, and stabbed. A ring and an earring had been forcibly removed from her body, and other jewelry was missing. Her car was later found at a nearby shopping mall.

After the murder, Becky cashed forged checks taken from Rogers and pawned Rogers’s ring. King and Becky were arrested several days later in a stolen van in New Philadelphia, Ohio. At the time of arrest, King told police that Becky did not know anything and that he was the person they wanted.

King was tried in Chesterfield County after the case was moved because of publicity in Roanoke County. On June 14, 1991, a jury convicted him of capital murder, robbery, two counts of forgery, and two counts of uttering. The jury recommended death for the murder conviction and life imprisonment plus additional time for the non-capital offenses.

The prosecution relied on King’s confessions, physical evidence, and evidence of the robbery and forged checks. Court records state that King’s boots were linked to marks on Rogers’s head, supporting the prosecution’s argument that he had stomped her during the attack. King continued to argue that Becky had inflicted the fatal stab wound, but the jury rejected that defense.

Becky Smith was not sentenced to death. Her murder charge was reduced because Virginia’s “trigger-man rule” required proof that the person sentenced to death was the person who inflicted the fatal wound. She was later convicted of being an accessory after the fact and received a five-year sentence.

King pursued direct appeals and postconviction challenges. The Virginia Supreme Court affirmed his conviction and sentence in 1992. The Fourth Circuit later affirmed the denial of federal habeas relief in April 1998. Danny Lee King was executed by lethal injection on July 23, 1998, at Greensville Correctional Center.