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Killer apologizes to victim’s family
Published August 21, 2002
HUNTSVILLE — A Freeport parolee who betrayed the woman who gave him a second chance by killing her daughter apologized to the family and blew kisses to his wife before his execution Tuesday.
The lethal injection ended Gary Wayne Etheridge’s 12-year stint on Texas Death Row for the Feb. 2, 1990, sexual assault and murder of 15-year-old Christie Chauviere in her Tamarind Woods home near Richwood.
“To the victim’s family, I’m sorry for what was taken from you; I hope you find peace,” Etheridge said, looking toward the room where Christie Chauviere’s sisters and uncle stood with law enforcement officials who worked the case.
Wearing a blue shirt and pants, Etheridge had needles in both arms and straps across his arms and chest. His head was freshly shaved.
He looked toward his wife, who he met and married while on Death Row.
“To my sweet Claudia, I love you, stay strong, keep building and be careful,” Etheridge said. “That’s it.”
Lethal drugs — sodium thiopental to sedate him, the muscle relaxant pancuronium bromide to collapse his diaphragm and lungs and potassium chloride to stop his heart beat — flowed through his body at 6:13 p.m.
“I can feel it burning,” Etheridge said. “I’m getting real dizzy.”
Etheridge took deep breaths, like snores, gasped a few times, and then went still. A doctor pronounced him dead at 6:22 p.m.
Etheridge was the 22nd inmate to be executed in Texas this year. However, he was only the third inmate sentenced to death in Brazoria County to be executed since 1976. The last was in 1992.
On Feb. 2, 1990, Etheridge was high on cocaine and looking for more drug money when he robbed the home of his employer, Gail Chauviere. He was convicted of stabbing and sexually assaulting Christie Chauviere, leaving her to die in the hallway of her home. Gail Chauviere was stabbed more than 30 times in the attack, but survived to testify against Etheridge.
Gail Chauviere died a few years ago of liver disease she contracted through blood transfusions after the attack.
Etheridge admitted, in a Death Row interview last week, that he “cut Gail’s throat and stabbed her three or four times with a little bitty knife.” But he claimed someone else, who he declined to name, stabbed Christie.
Law enforcement officials have said there was no evidence of a second attacker. Eye-witnesses, fingerprints, DNA evidence and Etheridge’s own confessions overwhelmingly pointed to his guilt, prosecutors said.
Christie’s sisters, Cynthia Brecht and Carolyn Barrett, and her uncle, Richard Chauviere, declined comment after the execution.
In previous interviews, they have said lethal injection was too good for Etheridge. “He’s getting off easy,” Brecht said in June. “This will be like putting a dog to sleep. No pain or suffering like he caused.”
Etheridge’s wife, a German woman who he met through pen-pal correspondence but never saw without Plexiglas between them, was his only family member attending the execution. Also on Etheridge’s side, a Catholic priest held a cross against the window to the death chamber.
Etheridge was pleasant when prison officials spoke with him in a holding cell at the Huntsville Unit’s Death House before the execution, said Larry Fitzgerald, a prison spokesman.
He ate most of his requested last meal of nachos, french fries, a cheeseburger, a fried chicken patty and a cinnamon roll with sides of cheese, ketchup and pickles, Fitzgerald said.
Earlier Tuesday, Etheridge visited with his wife and spoke to his brother, Ellis Michael Etheridge, by phone, Fitzgerald said. Ellis Michael Etheridge is serving a 99-year sentence at another Huntsville prison for burglary of a building and injury to a child.
In his last interview, last week, Etheridge said he was ready to die and that he had been saved.
“I’m more than excited to get out of this tired, old, fat body,” Etheridge said. “They can’t kill the spirit.”
Etheridge’s body will be taken to the east Texas town of Van for cremation, Fitzgerald said. His wife plans to take his ashes home with her to Germany.
The execution proceeded after Etheridge’s attorney received word the U.S. Supreme Court had declined to review his case.
Jim Marcus, who represented Etheridge for the nonprofit Texas Defender Service, had complained jurors were unable to consider Etheridge’s childhood abuse and drug addition when deciding between death and life in prison.
Etheridge had been scheduled to die at least twice before. Reprieves postponed execution dates in 2000 and in June.
By prison system statistics, Etheridge was an average inmate.
His time at almost 12 years on Death Row is just above the 10.6 year average length of stay. He was 38, just below the average age of 39 for executed offenders.
But his crime stood out in Brazoria County as one of the worst even experienced lawmen can remember. The bloody scene told of a massive struggle.
Gail Chauviere had helped Etheridge, keeping him on as a maintenance worker at condominiums she owned in Surfside Beach after discovering he was on parole for stabbing an inmate while both were in prison.
Etheridge had served less than half of his 10-year sentence when he was paroled in January 1990.
Some in law enforcement have said Etheridge’s release was symptomatic of a dark time in Texas justice, when some inmates were released quickly to make room in prison for the most violent offenders.
“That was during a period in our criminal justice system where we had a revolving door going on,” said Sweeny Police Chief Gary Stroud, who worked the case for the Brazoria County Sheriff’s Department and was present at the execution. “I’m not sure he should have been walking around anywhere.”
On Tuesday, law enforcement officials in Brazoria County expressed relief but not joy.
“The cycle of the justice system in this particular case has been completed,” said Chief Deputy Charles Wagner of the Brazoria County Sheriff’s Department. “There’s not a feeling of satisfaction. There’s a feeling that it’s finally all over with.”
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