A 'hit man' who took $2,000 to murder a woman as she pulled into the driveway of her northwest side home back in 1992 is set to be executed tonight, after spending more than a quarter century on death row, News Radio 1200 WOAI reports.
Rolando Ruiz, 44, who has requested and received several stays of execution, is now, ironically, arguing that his life should be spared because spending so much time on death row in itself amounts to prohibited 'cruel and unusual punishment.'
The crime remains one of the most infamous in San Antonio history, both to to the brutal nature of the murder itself, and it's bizarre aftermath.
Theresa and Michael Rodriguez has a comfortable middle class life in the early 1990s, funded largely through Theresa's job at USAA.
But Michael had his eye on another woman, so he and his brother Mark hatched a half-brained scheme right out of the comic books.
They hired Ruiz, who Mark met in a bar, to shoot Theresa to death so the brothers could divvy up her USAA employee life insurance policy, and Michael would be free to pursue his new infatuation.
In one of the creepiest murder scenarios ever, Michale invited Theresa out for a romantic 'date night' in July of 1992. They went to dinner and to a movie, with Michael knowing full well that as soon as they returned him, Ruiz was lying it wait to murder the woman he had not long ago promised to love and honor for the rest of his life.
Witnesses testified at Michael Rodriguez' emotional trial that when they pulled the car into their driveway, Ruiz approached and asked Theresa, 29, for directions. She smiled, and he shot her in the head.
Not surprisingly, the brothers' cunning plot was immediately uncovered, and both men, and Ruiz, were arrested for capital murder.
The Rodriguez brothers were sentenced to life in prison and Ruiz sentenced to death.
But the case didn't end there.In 2000, Michael Rodriguez, who was serving his life sentenced at the Connolly Prison Unit near Beeville, led the infamous Texas Seven escape, in which an Irving Police Officer was shot and killed while the men were on the run.
Rodriguez was recaptured and sentenced to death, and was executed in 2008.
Tonight, it's Rolondo Ruiz' turn.