Bio

Jerry Lee Hogue was born on September 26, 1950. In Colorado during the 1970s, he was convicted of raping his ex-wife, a conviction that was later cited by Texas prosecutors as evidence of his character during the sentencing phase of his capital trial. In 1994, years after his Texas death sentence, a Colorado court set aside that earlier rape conviction, finding that Hogue's defense counsel in that case had been constitutionally ineffective, this reversal came too late to affect the outcome of his Texas appeals.

In November 1978, Hogue and his then-wife rented a house at 2412 Southcrest in Arlington, Texas. They vacated the property on December 4, 1978, without returning their key. The house was subsequently leased on December 24, 1978, to two women, Mary Beth Crawford and Jayne Lynn Markham, who lived there along with Markham's eight-year-old son and a friend, Steve Renick.

Murder Story

On Wednesday, January 10, 1979, Hogue returned to the house, telling Markham he had previously lived there and asking to retrieve a wall hanging he said he had left behind. Markham let him in, and the two spoke. Hogue returned again early the next morning; after Renick left for work and Crawford took Markham's son to school, Hogue remained at the house with Markham. The following day, Friday, January 12, 1979, while Crawford, Markham, and Hogue were eating breakfast, Hogue suddenly announced that he was a police officer and that he was arresting the women for marijuana possession, before adding that his real purpose was to arrest Renick, whom he falsely claimed was a heroin dealer. He instructed the women to stay in his sight and not speak to each other, then moved them into Markham's bedroom.

Over the following hours, Hogue took a loaded pistol belonging to Renick from a footlocker in the house. He sexually assaulted Crawford and stabbed her in the stomach with a butcher knife; she survived. Markham was tied up and raped. When Markham's son returned from school and Renick returned from work that evening, Hogue restrained all four occupants of the house — binding or handcuffing them — before setting the house on fire using more than two gallons of gasoline, according to a fire investigator's later findings. Crawford, Renick, and Markham's son all managed to escape the blaze. Markham did not: her hands and feet had been tightly bound behind her back with insulated wire, leaving her in a crouched position from which she could not free herself. Emergency crews responding to the fire at 1:14 a.m. found the house fully engulfed; Markham's body was later recovered inside.

Hogue was arrested at a friend's home in Arlington the following day, January 14, 1979. At trial, Hogue testified that events had unfolded in reverse of what other witnesses described, claiming that Markham had wanted Renick removed from the house over suspected drug dealing, and that he had merely restrained Renick using a bluff rather than an actual weapon. His account was not accepted by the jury. His first trial, in December 1979, ended with a deadlocked jury. He was retried in March 1980, convicted of capital murder, and sentenced to death.

Hogue's case remained in the courts for nearly two decades, during which he filed nine separate applications for habeas corpus relief. As his execution date approached in 1998, the case drew renewed scrutiny. Weeks earlier, Steve Renick, one of the survivors of the fire, whom Hogue had always maintained was the true arsonist, was separately charged in an unrelated case involving a fire at his own home. An independent arson investigator, comparing evidence from both fires, grew concerned enough to assist Hogue's defense team in seeking a stay of execution. On the morning of March 11, 1998, the day of the scheduled execution, a woman signed a sworn statement alleging that Renick had privately bragged about having gotten away with the murder; this statement was faxed to the office of then-Governor George W. Bush. Renick, for his part, denied any involvement and maintained the fire at his own home was an unrelated coincidence; the arson charge against him in that separate case was later dropped as part of a plea agreement.

No stay was granted. The U.S. Supreme Court denied a final request for a stay on the day of the execution, though Justices John Paul Stevens and Ruth Bader Ginsburg indicated they would have granted one. DNA testing that could have been completed within hours was never conducted on hair evidence recovered from the case.

Jerry Lee Hogue was executed by lethal injection in Huntsville, Texas, on March 11, 1998, at age 47, the third execution carried out in Texas that year. His execution was witnessed by Mary Beth Crawford (referred to as "Mindy" in his final statement), the surviving victim who had testified against him at trial. In his final words, delivered directly to her, Hogue maintained that Renick was the true killer and expressed forgiveness toward Crawford, while denying his own guilt.