The Crime Web: Angel Resendiz

On May 18, 2000 the "Texas Railroad Killer" Angel Resendiz was convicted of capital murder and requested the death penalty after an insanity defense was rejected for the slaying of Dr. Claudia Benton, a 39-year-old geneticist who was stabbed, bludgeoned and raped in her West University home Dec. 17, 1998.

When police found Benton, she had been beaten 19 times; her right arm was broken, and her body showed numerous defensive bruises and abrasions suffered as she tried to fight off her attacker.

Among the items that police discovered missing were a jewelry box and a campaign button that were later recovered from the home of Resendiz's common-law wife, as well as pieces of the broken steering column from Benton's Jeep. Police identified Resendiz's fingerprints on all the items.

Resendiz, 40, a Mexican citizen, was charged with the murders of six people in Texas, two in Illinois and one in Kentucky while riding freight cars across the United States. (see map)

Resendiz is an remorseless killer who believed the nine people he bludgeoned to death in a two-year, rail-riding crime rampage deserved to die.

Defense experts at his trial testified that he suffered from paranoid schizophrenia, thought he possessed supernatural powers and believed he was doing God's work. According to testimony, glue-sniffing and several childhood head injuries -- his mother said he was dropped on his head right after he was born -- could have played a role in his mental illness.

Most of Resendez' victims were found covered with a blanket; none were of a tall or burly stature, for the killer himself is of a diminutive size and stature. But, he might well have been a giant for the terror he struck in the hearts of otherwise-relaxed communities.

On August 29, 1997, University of Kentucky student Christopher Maier, 21, and his girlfriend are attacked while walking along railroad tracks. Resendiz bludgeons Maier to death with a rock and rapes his girlfriend, beating her so badly he breaks her nose and crushes one of her eye sockets. Left for dead, she survives the attack.

Relatives find 87-year-old Leafie Mason dead in her house near a rail line in Cass County. She was beaten in the head with an antique iron on October 2, 1998. Resendiz leaves a partial palm print on a windowpane.

A co-worker at the Baylor College of Medicine finds Dr. Claudia Benton, 39, dead in her house. Police say Benton was raped, stabbed three times and clubbed in the head as many as 19 times.

A parishioner of the United Church of Christ finds the Rev. Norman J. "Skip" Sirnic, 46, and his wife, Karen, 47, bludgeoned to death in the church's parsonage, located near railroad tracks on May 2, 1999. Police say the couple was struck with a sledgehammer from the garage.

Frist-grade schoolteacher Noemi Dominguez, 26, dies after being clubbed in the head repeatedly with a pick-axe in her Houston apartment. Relatives found her body on June 5, she had died within 48 hours of being discovered.

On June 4, Resendiz traveled to Fayette County, where he bludgeoned Josephine Konvicka, 73, to death with a pick axe in her farmhouse in Fayette County, Texas.

George Morber Sr., 80, was shot in the head with a shotgun in his mobile trailer in Gorham, Ill., on June 14 1999, and his daughter, Carolyn Frederick, 51, was sexually assaulted and clubbed to death with the butt of her father's rifle.

On July 15, 2000 authorities found the remains of another victim. A day after Resendiz, 39, was interviewed by Marion County Sheriff's detectives in Texas. The remains are believed to belong to Wendy Von Huben, a 16-year-old runaway from Woodstock, Ill. The remains were wrapped in a blanket and camouflage jacket, about 100 yards from the railroad tracks.

Resendiz told the detectives on Friday that he strangled Von Huben eight hours after he killed her traveling companion, Jesse Howell, 19.

Howell was found slain on March 23, 1997, near railroad tracks running through Belleview, a north-central Florida town about halfway between Tampa and Jacksonville.

Resendiz told the detectives he met Howell and Von Huben near Jacksonville on March 23, 1997, the day of Howell's killing. The couple caught a ride with Resendiz in a grain car, hoping to find work picking oranges.

UPDATE:

January 24, 2002: Angel Maturino Resendiz, the so-called railroad killer who has confessed to several slayings across the country, now claims he killed three more people in Central Texas, but police have confirmed only one.

On January 30, 2002 Bexar County authorities are convinced that Angel Maturino Resendiz is responsible for the 1986 slaying of a homeless woman.

Bibliograhy

Newspaper articles from the time of the murders and Resendiz's arrest and trial.

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Original Written: May 20, 2000