Texas and Oklahoma each have executed death row inmates for merciless murders they committed decades ago.
Oklahoma executed James Dwight Pavatt, 72, for the 2001 murder of his lover's estranged husband, Rob Andrew. Pavatt, a 22-year Air Force veteran, became lovers with Brenda Andrew after meeting her at church, and both were convicted of shooting Rob Andrew dead. Brenda Andrew, a former Sunday school teacher, is the only woman on Oklahoma's death row and has always maintained her innocence, as has Pavatt.
Pavatt, who was executed by lethal injection, was pronounced dead at 10:12 a.m. local time on Thursday, Nov. 12.
About eight hours later, Texas executed John Allen Rubio, 46, for the 2003 beheadings of his common-law wife's three children: 3-year-old
Julissa Quesada, 1-year-old John Stephan Rubio and 2-month-old Mary Jane Rubio. Mary Jane was the only biological child of Rubio's. Rubio was pronounced dead at 6:47 p.m. CT.
Pavatt and Rubio became the 36th and 37th inmates put to death this year in the U.S., which is seeing an uptick in the death penalty that began in 2025. Double executions − in which two separate states execute inmates on the same day − are purely coincidental timing.
For its lethal injections, Texas uses pentobarbital, the same drug used in the botched execution of Christa Pike in September. Oklahoma uses a three-drug combination that doesn't include pentobarbital.
Here's what you need to know.
Texas executes John Allen Rubio, who claimed he was 'chosen one'
On March 11, 2003, 23-year-old John Allen Rubio began talking about the anti-Christ and told his common-law wife, 23-year-old Angela Camacho, that her three children were possessed.
Rubio first attacked his only biological child, 2-month-old Mary Jane, decapitating her, before getting Camacho to hold down 3-year-old Julissa while he decapitated her, according to court records and the couple's own admissions. Rubio also decapitated 1-year-old John when the baby woke up crying, court records say.
Rubio, who was known to sniff paint, later told police that he was "the chosen one" and that he had been selected "to help the world" and "help give their life to Jesus," according to archived news reports.
The unthinkable crime shocked the Texas border city of Brownsville at the time and remains infamous today.
A jury rejected Rubio's plea of not guilty by reason of insanity and he was sentenced to death. Camacho was sentenced to life in prison.
Over the years during a lengthy appeals process, judges repeatedly found Rubio competent enough to stand trial and be executed, including during a hearing last month. As the hearing was underway, a woman began screaming at Rubio that he killed her niece and that her family would be there to watch him die on Nov. 12, according to local news media outlets Valley Central and myRGV.com.
"You’re going to meet your father the devil that day," she said, though she declined to share her name, according to the outlets.
Outside the courtroom, she told reporters that Rubio was a hypocrite and a coward, saying that he only cried during the hearing for himself.
“He’s crying because he’s scared that he’s going to die," she said, according to Valley Central. "He didn’t even look me in the eye and say he was sorry."
Oklahoma executes James Dwight Pavatt
On Nov. 20, 2001, Rob Andrew was picking up his 7-year-old son and 10-year-old daughter for Thanksgiving at the home they shared with their mother, Brenda Andrew. But Brenda Andrew told Rob Andrew that the pilot light on the furnace was out, so he went to the garage to take a look.
Once there, prosecutors say James Dwight Pavatt used Rob Andrew's own 16-gauge shotgun to shoot him once. Then, they say, Brenda Andrew shot him. Pavatt also shot Brenda Andrew in the arm with a .22-caliber pistol to make it look like she was a victim, too, prosecutors say.
Brenda Andrew told police that two masked men had attacked and shot her husband. Police later found evidence that Pavatt hid afterward in the attic of the home of the Andrews' next-door neighbors, who were away.
As police suspicions about her story grew, Pavatt and Brenda Andrew fled to Mexico with her children. After running out of money, the couple returned to the U.S. in February 2002 and were arrested at the border.
A jury convicted Pavatt of first-degree murder and sentenced him to death in 2003. In a separate trial in 2004, a jury convicted Andrew of first-degree murder and sentenced her to death.
Brenda Andrew's conviction has come under scrutiny and gained national attention in recent years over concerns that she didn't receive a fair trial because of the way prosecutors portrayed her to jurors. At one point, a prosecutor held up a pair of her thong underwear and asked jurors if they thought a grieving widow really wear such a sexy undergarment.
The jurors also heard from five witnesses who told them about how Andrew dressed sexy in low-cut shirts and short skirts.
Andrew was unfairly portrayed as "a scarlet woman, a modern Jezebel ... plucking away any realistic chance that the jury would seriously consider her version of events," wrote 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals Judge Robert Bacharach in 2023.
The U.S. Supreme Court later ordered a lower court to review Andrew's claim of an unfair trial, saying that prosecutors came to acknowledge that Andrew's sex life and failings as a mother and wife were largely irrelevant to whether she killed her husband. The lower court upheld Andrew's conviction and death sentence earlier this year.
As for Pavatt, he had always maintained his innocence and reiterated that before the Oklahoma Pardon and Parole Board on Oct. 14: "I am not guilty of shooting anyone," he told the board.
Pavatt also apologized to Rob Andrew's family for their heartbreak and said he wished he had answers for them.
"I fell in love with Brenda. We had an affair," he told the board. "I was so infatuated with her that I lost sight of what was really happening. I had tunnel vision, and I believed everything that she told me. ... I had no reason to believe that anything she had said to me was not true, including what she told the police had happened that night."
He said he left for Mexico because Brenda Andrew had said she would kill herself and her children rather than go to jail.
"I knew this made us look guilty but I believed that whoever killed Rob would be arrested and ... once that had happened, we could come back," he said. "It was not until my trial that I began to see the extent to which I had been manipulated by Brenda. I can see why the jury ... believed that we were both involved in Rob's murder."
He did not address evidence that he cut the brake lines to Rob Andrew's vehicle a month before the shooting.
Pavatt also sought mercy because of his nearly 22 years of service in the U.S. Air Force, both overseas and at Tinker Air Force Base in Oklahoma. He finished his military career as a master sergeant.
The parole board voted 3-2 against recommending clemency for Pavatt.
Amanda Lee Myers is a senior crime and courts reporter who covers the death penalty, cold cases and breaking news for USA TODAY. Follow her on X at @amandaleeusat.
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Texas, Oklahoma carry out double execution
