Killer Lends a Hand to Find a Vein for Execution

HUNTSVILLE, Tex. —  After helping technicians find a vein, a remorseful Randy Lynn Woolls was executed by injection today for fatally stabbing and burning a drive-in theater worker--a crime he said he committed while high on Valium.

“I’m sorry for the victim and family. I wish there was something I could do to make it all right,” Woolls, a 36-year-old former drug addict, said in the moments before he was pronounced dead at 12:23 a.m..

It was the first time he apologized for killing Betty Stotts, 48, on June 16, 1979, at the Bolero drive-in in Kerrville. Woolls was convicted of stabbing the ticket-taker in the head and setting her ablaze while she was still alive.

Woolls stayed in the ticket booth and sold theater tickets while her body burned, Kerr County Dist. Atty. Ron Sutton said.

“I’d just like to say goodby to my family. I love all of them,” Woolls said before he was executed. “I love you,” he told his witnesses--his aunt, June Mills, and his cousin Natrona Mills, both of San Antonio.

Woolls was “obviously somewhat frightened and nervous” but helped medical technicians find a vein, many of which collapsed during his prolonged drug use, so they could give the lethal dose, Atty. Gen. Jim Mattox said.