Bio

Kenneth Bernard Harris was born on August 8, 1962, and completed education up through the 11th grade. By the mid-1980s, Harris resided in an apartment complex located in the southwest Gulfton neighborhood of Houston, Harris County, Texas. During the months preceding June 1986, Harris secretly engaged in a series of violent predatory acts across the local area. 

While maintaining a normal domestic life with his girlfriend in their apartment, Harris targeted and sexually assaulted multiple women. Though he was not initially caught or processed by law enforcement for these offenses, subsequent judicial proceedings revealed that Harris perpetrated at least five unadjudicated sexual assaults between December 10, 1985, and May 3, 1986. 

Murder Story

On June 7, 1986, Harris targeted his 28-year-old neighbor, a legal secretary named Lisa Stonestreet. Harris entered Stonestreet's apartment, where a violent struggle ensued, leaving the residence in total disarray. He bound Stonestreet's left wrist with a segment of pantyhose, subjected her to blunt force trauma, and sexually assaulted her. Autopsy results later showed that Harris manually strangled Stonestreet and submerged her head into a filled bathtub, causing her death by drowning. On June 9, 1986, police discovered her nude body draped over the side of the bathtub.

Early in the investigation, detectives interviewed Harris due to his proximity to the crime scene. He denied knowing Stonestreet and attempted to redirect police focus by claiming to have seen a suspicious pickup truck near the complex a week prior. However, forensic analysis soon connected Harris directly to the crime scene. Investigating officers discovered a steak knife in Stonestreet's bedroom that carried a latent fingerprint matching Harris's left index finger, and multiple pubic hairs recovered from the victim's body matched his own. 

Furthermore, on July 16, 1986, authorities investigating Stonestreet's recently burned vehicle recovered a palm print that matched Harris's right palm.Law enforcement officials arrested Harris on July 22, 1986. After being read his Miranda rights and speaking with his father, Harris provided several law enforcement statements confessing to strangling Stonestreet, though he claimed the sexual encounter was consensual and that he acted under the influence of narcotics. 

A Harris County grand jury subsequently indicted him on capital murder charges.His state trial was exceptionally lengthy, running from August 17, 1987, until January 4, 1988, when the jury found him guilty of capital murder. During the sentencing phase, which concluded on January 22, 1988, the state introduced testimony from five separate women who identified Harris as the serial rapist who had assaulted them in the months leading up to the murder. 

The jury answered the state's special statutory issues affirmatively, and the trial court sentenced Harris to death by lethal injection.Harris spent nearly a decade filing state and federal appeals. Although the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals briefly abated his appeal to order a specialized hearing regarding jury selection, his conviction and death sentence were ultimately upheld. Following the denial of his final federal habeas corpus petitions, Harris was executed at the state penitentiary in Huntsville, Texas, on June 3, 1997.