Texas executed a 70-year-old man for killing three of his wife’s family members in the Waco area nearly three decades ago.
His son and grandson were also arrested for trying to disrupt the execution, the Texas Tribune reported.
After his final appeal was denied by the U.S. Supreme Court two hours before his execution was scheduled, Billie Coble became the oldest person Texas put to death since the modern era of the death penalty began in the 1970s, according to prison data.
He was sentenced to death in July 1990.
Family members of Coble and his victims both attended the execution in Huntsville on Thursday.
Coble’s son, daughter-in-law and friends watched from one small rectangular room.
Aa Coble, lay on a gurney connected to an IV, he spoke his last words.
“Yes Sir, that will be $5,” Coble said into the microphone hanging above his gurney, before telling each of his family and friends in attendance that he loved them. “Take care.”
A lethal dose of pentobarbital was then injected into Coble’s veins, and he was pronounced dead at 6:24 p.m.
According to a prison spokesperson, during the execution, Coble’s son began pounding on the glass of the death chamber and, after an interaction with officers in the room, he and his son were removed from the viewing room and taken to the Walker County jail, arrested on charges of resisting arrest.
The spokesperson said an investigation into the incident is ongoing.
Coble was convicted of capital murder in the 1989 slayings of his estranged wife’s parents and brother in McLennan County, court records show. He had been married to his wife, Karen, for a little over a year when she told him she wanted a divorce.
They lived in the small town of Axtell, just across the street from her parents, Robert and Zelda Vicha, and down the road from her brother, Bobby.
According to court records, when Karen came home from work, she found her children tied up, and Coble approached her and told her that he had killed her parents and brother.
At gunpoint, he led her to the car and tried to flee with her. She fought back, and eventually a sheriff’s deputy began following them before Coble crashed into a parked car.
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