Bio

Robert Andrew Lookingbill was born on July 22, 1965. He lived in Texas and was connected to Hidalgo County, where his grandparents, Lorenz and Adeline Dannenberg, lived in San Juan. Before the attack on his grandparents, Lookingbill already had a criminal record. In December 1985, he was found guilty of burglary of a habitation with intent to commit aggravated assault. In February 1986, he received a seven-year prison sentence. He was later released on parole. At the time of the 1989 attack, he was on parole for that burglary conviction.

Lookingbill was living with his grandparents in San Juan by December 1989. Prosecutors later argued that the attack was connected to robbery and drug use. In his confession, Lookingbill said he had been drinking and was “all coked up” before he beat his grandparents with a metal bar while they were sleeping. Police later found $568.31 in the jeans he had worn that night.

During the punishment phase of his trial, the prosecution introduced evidence that Lookingbill had also killed Gloria Hoopengarner, a neighbor of his grandparents, in 1984. Witnesses testified that he had later bragged about that murder and robbery. This evidence was used to show future dangerousness during sentencing, but the capital conviction and death sentence were based on the murder of Adeline Dannenberg.

Murder Story

The attack that led to Lookingbill’s death sentence happened in the early morning hours of December 5, 1989, in San Juan, Texas. At the time, Robert Andrew Lookingbill was living with his grandparents, Lorenz and Adeline Dannenberg. Between about 12:30 a.m. and 1:30 a.m., Lookingbill went to the apartment of Melissa Martinez, who lived behind the Dannenberg home. He told Martinez and her friend Alberto Aguilar that someone had beaten his grandparents. Martinez and Aguilar followed him to the house. Inside, they found Lorenz Dannenberg on the floor with a serious head wound and Adeline Dannenberg badly beaten in her bedroom.

Police arrived shortly afterward. Officers found no signs of forced entry and no sign that the house had been ransacked. They noticed blood on Lookingbill’s boots and jacket. A motorcycle outside the home was only warm, not hot, even though Lookingbill claimed he had just arrived. While officers investigated, Lookingbill was seen near the storage shed behind the house. A later search of the shed uncovered a 54-inch metal bar with blood and hair on it.

Investigators recovered the clothing Lookingbill had worn that night. Inside his jeans, they found $568.31. Adeline Dannenberg usually kept money from the couple’s Social Security income in her purse, and the attack was prosecuted as a murder committed during robbery or attempted robbery. Blood on Lookingbill’s boots and on the metal bar was consistent with Lorenz Dannenberg’s blood.

Lookingbill gave two statements to police. In his first statement, he claimed he had arrived at the house and found his grandparents already injured. In his second statement, he admitted attacking them. He said he had been drinking and using cocaine, retrieved a long metal bar from the garage, struck his grandfather while he slept on the floor, and then went to his grandmother’s bedroom and struck her with the same bar. He also admitted taking money from Adeline’s purse.

Adeline Dannenberg suffered fractures to her skull, jaw, and hand. Doctors performed surgery to remove bone fragments and a blood clot from her brain, but she died from her injuries on December 15, 1989, ten days after the attack. Lorenz Dannenberg survived but suffered severe permanent brain damage. He remained badly impaired and died about a year later.

Lookingbill was indicted in Hidalgo County on February 15, 1990, for capital murder and attempted capital murder. On November 15, 1990, a jury found him guilty of the capital murder of Adeline Dannenberg and the attempted capital murder of Lorenz Dannenberg. On November 19, 1990, he was sentenced to death for Adeline’s murder and received a 75-year sentence for the attack on Lorenz.

His conviction and sentence were affirmed by the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals on April 6, 1994. Later state and federal appeals were denied. The Fifth Circuit affirmed the dismissal of his federal habeas petition as untimely in 2002, and the United States Supreme Court denied review in January 2003. Robert Andrew Lookingbill was executed by lethal injection in Huntsville, Texas, on January 22, 2003.