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2007-08-29

#people/R/Roach/Tony

Texas Attorney General

Wednesday, August 29, 2007

Media Advisory: Tony Roach scheduled for execution

AUSTIN – Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott offers the following information about Tony Roach, who is scheduled to be executed after 6 p.m. Wednesday, September 5, 2007. Roach was sentenced to die for the burglary-related murder of Ronnie Dawn Hewitt in Amarillo.

FACTS OF THE CRIME

On June 8, 1998, Amarillo firefighters responded to an apartment fire. After putting out the fire, firefighters found the body of Ronnie Dawn Hewitt on the living room floor of her apartment. She was burned and had a belt wrapped around her neck. An investigation determined that the fire was intentionally set and that Hewitt had been strangled.

About ten days later, Amarillo police received a phone call from police in Guymon, Oklahoma, who said they were holding Roach in connection with some stolen property. While in custody, Roach told the Guymon police that he had killed a woman in Amarillo.

After Amarillo officers traveled to Guymon, Roach told officers he broke into Hewitt’s apartment through a window and hid in the bathroom. When Hewitt walked past the bathroom door, Roach said, he came out, put his hand over her mouth and told her he would not harm her. She said, “Don’t hurt me, don’t hurt me,” and told him that she had a husband and a daughter.

Roach then pushed her into the living room, where she started kicking and scratching. He strangled her using his arm and a belt. After she was dead, Roach said, he raped her. From the residence, he took some rings, a knife, beer, and money, then started a fire with hair spray and a cigarette lighter; and left.

PROCEDURAL HISTORY

Nothing in the record shows that Roach has appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court the Fifth Circuit Court's denial of his application for certificate of appealability.

EVIDENCE RELATED TO PUNISHMENT

In the punishment phase of his trial, the State introduced evidence that about three days before killing Hewitt, Roach robbed and beat a 71-year-old one-legged man, Carroll Doshier, who died of a heart attack after the beating.

As a juvenile in Greenville, South Carolina, Roach was accused in a string of burglaries and thefts running from December 1989 to February 1990 and was committed to juvenile facilities five times.

And in November and December 1993, Roach committed a car theft and two armed robberies in Greenville. After one of the robberies, when Roach’s then-girlfriend refused to accompany him to Florida, he pulled a gun on her and threatened to blow her brains out. After he was arrested, Roach pleaded guilty to the theft and robberies and was sentenced to five years in prison.

In the days leading up to the murder of Hewitt, on May 7, 1998, Roach left Greenville after stealing from his boss some cash, a video camera, and a minivan. He went to Jacksonville, Florida, where he worked for a while and then stole money from a motel. He took the bus to Amarillo where in addition to killing Hewitt and beating Doshier, he stole food from a K-Mart, snatched a purse, stole a radio from a car, and burglarized a home, from which he took blank checks that he cashed.

After leaving Amarillo, he went to Guymon, where he stole a bike from a yard, broke into a Girl Scout office and stole money, postage, and some knives, and broke into a convenience store, where he stole about twenty to twenty-five cartons of cigarettes, which he later sold.