This week in 2001

“I am so sorry for what y’all had to go through. I am so sorry for what all of you had to go through. I can’t imagine losing two children. If I was y’all, I would have killed me. You know? I am really so sorry about it, I really am. I got to go sister, I love you. Y’all take care and God bless you. Gracie was beautiful and Tiffany was beautiful. You had some lovely girls and I am sorry. I don’t know what to say. All right, Warden, let’s do it.”

— Dennis Dowthitt, convicted of murder, lethal injection, Texas.
Executed March 7, 2001

Auto salesman Dowthitt received a lethal injection for the murders of his son’s sixteen-year-old former girlfriend, Grace Purnhagen, and her sister, nine-year-old Tiffany Purnhagen. Dowthitt’s sixteen-year-old son, Delton, first admitted to the gruesome killings before recanting and revealing that his father had slashed Grace’s throat and sexually assaulted her with a beer bottle and had strangled Tiffany with a rope.

Delton led police to the evidence; he was convicted of murder and sentenced to forty-five years behind bars.