Death Watch: Next Up, the Tourniquet Killer

Time is running out for convicted serial killer Anthony Shore. Dubbed the "Tourniquet Killer" due to his predilection for strangling victims between 1986 and 1995, Shore's most recent appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court was denied on Oct. 2. The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals denied a motion for a last minute stay on Wednesday, and the Houston killer will face execution next Wednesday, Oct. 18. Though Shore was only convicted on one count of capital murder in 2004, he confessed to the killing and rape of several other girls, ranging in age from 9 to 21. On Sept. 12, Shore filed an appeal with the CCA that claimed he suffers from brain injuries incurred in a 1981 car accident. The state followed with a motion to dismiss his appeal and stay the request on the grounds that Shore has been diagnosed as a psychopath: That is "what someone is, not what someone becomes," read the motion. The state also referenced Shore's childhood history of sexual violence.

Shore was caught nearly a decade after what investigators believe was his last kill; he was arrested in the late Nineties for sexually assaulting his two daughters. But because of Houston's notoriously dysfunctional crime lab, there wasn't a CODIS hit on his DNA until 2003, after a sample of one of his victim's DNA was outsourced to a ­different crime lab for testing. If Robert Pruett is indeed executed today, Thursday, Oct. 12 (see "Death Watch," Oct. 6), Shore is in line to be the seventh Texan to be killed this year.

Death Watch is in Bastrop this week to cover Rodney Reed’s most recent hearing. See austinchronicle.com/daily/news for a report on Tuesday’s proceedings.