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Killer Of Mentally Ill Man Executed

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The Associated Press

Published: November 7, 2008

HUNTSVILLE, Texas - A parolee convicted of using coat hangers to strangle a 65-year-old mentally ill man during a burglary of the victim's house was executed Thursday evening.

"You ain't got to worry about nothing," Elkie Lee Taylor told an aunt and two friends from the death chamber gurney. "I am going home. I hope to see all of y'all one day. Lord have mercy on my soul."

He was pronounced dead at 6:30 p.m. CST.

Taylor, 46, was condemned for killing Otis Flake in 1993. Flake was found dead - sitting up against a bed, his feet and hands bound, and hangers twisted around his neck - by a friend after Taylor and an accomplice were spotted walking away earlier from Flake's Fort Worth home.

Taylor was the 15th Texas inmate executed this year and the first of six scheduled for lethal injection this month in the nation's most active capital punishment state.

The execution came after the U.S. Supreme Court and a Texas appeals court turned down last-day appeals.

Flake's slaying came 11 days after an 87-year-old man was killed in a similar fashion. Taylor acknowledged he was involved in both burglaries but insisted a partner was responsible for the killings.

Evidence showed that Taylor had bragged to friends about wrapping a hanger around a man's neck and that "dead men can't talk."

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