David Leonard Wood says he's innocent. His execution is days away. | The Excerpt
On Sunday’s episode of The Excerpt podcast: Botched crime scenes, circumstantial evidence, and false testimony - David Leonard Wood claims that all were used to convict him of the murder of six women and girls in the late 1980s. Wood has been fighting to prove his innocence ever since. But facing an execution date of March 13, time is running out. USA Today Death Row Reporter Amanda Lee Myers had an exclusive sit-down interview with Wood and shares excerpts of their conversation and her impressions of his claims of innocence.
Hit play on the player below to hear the podcast and follow along with the transcript beneath it. This transcript was automatically generated, and then edited for clarity in its current form. There may be some differences between the audio and the text.
Podcasts: True crime, in-depth interviews and more Paste BN podcasts right here
David Leonard Wood:
I am down here for the conviction of six murders.
Dana Taylor:
David Leonard Wood has been on death row for close to four decades ostensibly for murdering six women and girls in El Paso, Texas. But he has maintained his innocence from the beginning.
David Leonard Wood:
How can I not be angry at the corruption that put me here? How can you let people just dump cases on you and not be angry?
Dana Taylor:
Now 67, what has been accused of being the Desert Killer and is scheduled to be executed by lethal injection on March 13th? This would make Wood the seventh man put to death in the US this year and the third in Texas alone. But what if he's really an innocent man? Welcome to The Excerpt, I'm Dana Taylor. In an exclusive hour-long interview with USA Today's national trending desk editor and death penalty reporter, Amanda Lee Myers at the State's Death Row facility just north of Houston. Wood stood behind his longtime claims of innocence, picked apart the state's case against him, and talked about his struggle to find peace as his execution nears. Amanda joins me now to talk about the interview. Amanda, welcome to The Excerpt.
Amanda Lee Myers:
Thank you for having me.
Dana Taylor:
Amanda, tell us about David Leonard Wood. Who is he and what are the crimes the State of Texas says he did?
Amanda Lee Myers:
He grew up in El Paso, Texas, which is the location of the crimes that he was convicted of committing. And in his own words when we talked, he says he was a problem child.
David Leonard Wood:
I went to jail for the very first time for me and some friends of mine were siphoning gas and the car that it was, it was an off-duty cop's car. We didn't know it, but I went to jail for it because I just turned 18 years old. I was in there two days when I got stabbed, he put a spoon into my lung.
Amanda Lee Myers:
Did that almost kill you?
David Leonard Wood:
It hurt. It hurt really bad.
Dana Taylor:
You write that Wood has confessed to some crimes he committed as a young man. What are they?
Amanda Lee Myers:
So before the Desert Killer victims were murdered, Wood was convicted of three major crimes: indecency with a 12-year-old girl in 1977, and then in 1980 he was convicted of raping a 13-year-old girl and a 19-year-old woman in separate crimes. Now, he flat out denied raping the 19-year-old when I interviewed him. He did apologize for his crimes involving the 12-year-old and the 13-year-old girl. But he denied raping them. They testified that he did rape them. He says he did not do that. He said he blames alcohol and marijuana for his behavior.
Is there anything you wanted to say about those crimes in terms of being sorry or-
David Leonard Wood:
Of course, I'm sorry. Of course, man. We don't have time for it, but everybody else knows the history. See I feel like I want to talk about things, but some of the stuff I don't want in print, you know what I mean? People don't need to read about how I pulled somebody's shorts off. You know what I mean? Nobody wants to read that, but that's all that happened.
Dana Taylor:
And what happened after that?
Amanda Lee Myers:
So the first one in 1977, the indecency with the 12-year-old, he served three and a half years in prison. He was released in 1980, and that's the same year he was sentenced to another 20 years in prison for the rapes of the 13-year-old and the 19-year-old. And he was sentenced to 20 years, but he ended up serving seven years of that sentence before he was paroled and let out in January of 1987. And then a month after that, the Desert Killer victims started turning up missing. And Wood's attorneys say that timing is coincidental, but they certainly acknowledge that that's why investigators honed in on him pretty early.
Dana Taylor:
Tell us more about those victims. Who were they?
Amanda Lee Myers:
The victims were, I'm just going to share their names in just a little bio about them, but they were 14-year-old Dawn Marie Smith. She was a 9th grader who may have been pregnant when she was killed. There was 15-year-old Desiree Wheatley. She was a middle school student and her mom says she loved to collect plushies. A 17-year-old on Angelica Frausto was a beloved sister with an infectious laugh and 23-year-old Ivy Susanna Williams, she loved riding her Harley Davidson, and 24-year-old Rosa Maria Casio was getting ready to start community college, and 20-year-old Karen Baker was a mother of three who wanted to go to cosmology school.
So all the women and girls, their bodies were found in various states of decomposition in the same desert area in Northeastern El Paso. Police believed there were three other girls connected to those crimes, these missing girls, their bodies were never found. Just a quick note about the victims. A lot of the family members in this case took issue with how they were portrayed only just because a couple of them worked in a topless club, one was a runaway, and at least two were involved with drugs. But these were all young women and girls and they were just getting their start in life and they all had hopes and dreams and they all mattered. And some of the evidence against Wood at trial was testimony from some people who said they saw him with some of the victims at some point before their murders. So I asked Wood that if he knew any of those victims.
You were acquainted with at least a few of the victims in the case and I think that was-
David Leonard Wood:
Yes, that's not true. Everybody keeps trying to say I knew all these people. At least 12 different statements were given by witnesses, not one single person described me or my bike.
Dana Taylor:
Amanda, you write that Wood went even further to accuse the El Paso law enforcement of mismanaging the crime scene. What did he tell you?
Amanda Lee Myers:
He told me flat out that his whole case was a setup. He thinks police zeroed in on him because of his past and then had tunnel vision after that, that they were just so focused on him that they couldn't really see anyone else and that they manipulated everything to fit him.
David Leonard Wood:
When they were leaving the detective's post, they didn't put down no tarps, no tents. All they put up was some yellow tape, crime scene tape, and told the police officer. Now remember, this crime scene is like you could see the backyards of people's yards. This is how close it is to a community. And they told this cop, "When it gets dark, just go home." They left this crime scene open to the public for nine days. There were people still out there dumping garbage. When on the ninth day the detectives called a K-9 cop and said, "We need you to go back out to the Wheatley site and see if you can find it." Now, this is all facts. This is not something we're making up.
So a K-9 cop went back out there and the dog went to the grave site, whatever, and he didn't detect nothing, he couldn't find anything, but the officer happened to look down and said he eyeballed a handful of orange microscopic fibers. Well, if you've talked to my attorney, he's already given you the opinion of that. You don't see microscopic fibers. Well, the dog didn't detect them, but he happened to see them and it wasn't found by the guy who was there originally with the sifter. Well, they're trying to figure out where this orange fiber come from and then all of a sudden they want to say, "Well, it came from a vacuum cleaner from David Wood's house."
Amanda Lee Myers:
I should just point out I have reached out to the El Paso Police Department for comment, and they have not responded to me, but just keep in mind that this was almost 40 years ago. So there may not be any detectives there that actually worked on the case still there anymore.
So he says when he was first brought in for questioning that he was super angry, he admits that he was really hostile and violent actually. But he says that he thinks that that's why police zeroed in on him, that he was really on their bad side after that as well. So he's got a lot of accusations about the police department. He says they botched crime scenes, planted evidence, convinced witnesses to lie about him. Most of the evidence against Wood at trial was testimony from people and that included his previous victims. But it also included two jailhouse informants who said that Wood confessed his crimes to them, and a sex worker who says that Wood raped her in the same desert area as the victims were found and that he was digging her grave when he was interrupted. So Wood and his attorney are very adamant that all three of those witnesses were lying because all three of them were incentivized to lie.
David Leonard Wood:
I've never confessed anything to anybody about anything, from the day one I have protested my arrest. I've done everything I could to prove my innocence. People take it as a joke, but I've meant it as serious. I've given enough body specimens from every part of my body on multiple times to create 15 crime scenes. Believe me, there's nothing I haven't done to cooperate, to show I had nothing to do with this case, everything. I even tried to tell them, detectives, "Put me in a car and I will take you where this place is you're saying I was supposed to be at this time with these people." Nothing. I've done everything I could do.
Dana Taylor:
You've covered many prison stories and stories from people on death row, Amanda, but this was your first time getting such a personal interview from an inmate on death row. Do you think Wood was telling the truth that he was innocent?
Amanda Lee Myers:
The fact is that not one single piece of DNA evidence connects him to these crimes. These are six serial murders. His attorney points out there should be a mountain of evidence that connects him to the crimes. But he was convicted on almost all circumstantial evidence and only three pieces out of hundreds of those physical items were ever tested for DNA. Two of those fingernail scrapings and a blood stain came back as inconclusive. And one of those was a blood stain on one of the victim's clothes and the DNA test on that showed that it was male blood, but the test concluded that it could not have been David Wood's blood. So that to me is a pretty powerful statement. Whether he's telling the truth, I cannot say. I don't know.
Dana Taylor:
You write that Wood is full of anger and it's something that he's been working on, he says. What else did he tell you about how he's feeling?
Amanda Lee Myers:
He said he was sorry at a couple different points and that he feels some regret about his past crimes. He also said he felt sorry for the victims of the Desert Killer while also maintaining that he wasn't the one who killed them. He maintains he's wrongfully convicted and as a result is extremely angry and still is. But he says he has strong faith in God and believes that when he is executed that he will be going to Heaven. So I think he's found some peace with that.
Dana Taylor:
What have the victim's family said about Wood?
Amanda Lee Myers:
So we've interviewed one of the family members of the victims and she says she actually doesn't believe that Wood killed her sister. She thinks that he was part of the three people planning it, but she has a theory about what happened to her sister and says it has to do with her sister being involved in the drug trade. But she has always felt that Wood wasn't the one who did it, though she does think he deserves the death penalty for his involvement and for, as she says, not telling the truth. Now, other victims who've spoken to the El Paso Times, which is part of the USA Today network, have said that they do believe he is guilty, and one woman who is Desiree Wheatley's mother says she's going to be at the execution and she wants her face to be the last thing Wood sees when he dies.
Dana Taylor:
Is there a chance that Wood's case will be reopened and reinvestigated at this point, or is he out of appeals?
Amanda Lee Myers:
He's not out of appeals. He has an outstanding one right now in the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals, and he's arguing for more DNA testing, though that same court has previously denied him that testing. But there's still a chance they could grant a stay of execution and say there should be more testing in the case. If that court turns him down. He could always appeal to the Supreme Court and also Texas Governor Greg Abbott could intervene if he wanted to.
Dana Taylor:
Amanda, thank you for coming on The Excerpt and sharing Wood's story with us.
Amanda Lee Myers:
Thank you so much.
Dana Taylor:
Thanks for watching. I'm Dana Taylor. I'll see you next time.