Texas Executes Man for Double Murder in 2004 Dispute with Manager

HUNTSVILLE, Texas—A Texas man who fatally shot his strip club manager and another individual, subsequently causing a widespread lockdown of the state prison system by threatening a lawmaker with a smuggled cellphone while on death row, was executed on Thursday night.

Richard Lee Tabler, 46, received a lethal injection at the state penitentiary in Huntsville. The time of death was recorded at 6:38 p.m. CT, just 15 minutes after the powerful sedative pentobarbital was administered into his veins.

“There isn’t a day that passes without me regretting my actions,” Tabler said, strapped to the gurney in the death chamber, facing the relatives of his victims who were observing through a nearby window.

“I had no right to take your loved ones away, and I ask and pray for the day when you might find it in your hearts to forgive me,” he stated. “No amount of my apologies can ever bring them back.”

He conveyed his love to family, friends, lawyers, and supporters, expressing gratitude to prison officials for their compassion and “the opportunity to demonstrate that I can change and become a better man.”

After delivering several more apologies and asserting that this marked the beginning of a new life for him in heaven, he told the warden, “I am finished.”

As the lethal drugs took effect, he silently mouthed “I’m sorry” before beginning to breathe rapidly. After taking a dozen breaths, he ceased all movement.

Tabler was the second individual executed in Texas within just over a week, with two more executions scheduled by the end of April. He was sentenced to death for the shooting deaths of Mohammed-Amine Rahmouni, 28, and Haitham Zayed, 25, on Thanksgiving Day in 2004 at a secluded location near Killeen in Central Texas.

Rahmouni was managing a strip club where Tabler had worked until he was banned. Zayed, a friend of Rahmouni, was reportedly killed during a late-night setup to purchase stolen stereo equipment that turned out to be a trap.

Tabler also confessed to murdering two teenage girls who worked at the club, Tiffany Dotson, 18, and Amanda Benefield, 16. Although he was indicted for their deaths, he was never tried.

Dotson’s father, George, was among the witnesses present. He refrained from commenting on Tabler’s apologies, stating he needed time to process what he witnessed but expressed relief that he was able to attend.

“I couldn’t wait,” he said. “It took me 20 years to get here.”

“Today is for Tiffany,” declared her godfather, Tom Newton. “This is justice.”

Tabler had consistently requested that the courts drop his appeals and carry out his death sentence, although he changed his stance multiple times. His attorneys questioned his mental competency in making such a decision. Tabler’s prison record includes at least two suicide attempts, and he previously received a stay of execution in 2010.

“Petitioner has spent the last twenty years in court and sees no point in wasting this Court’s time, or anyone else’s,” Tabler wrote to the state Court of Criminal Appeals on Dec. 9, 2024, after his current execution date was announced.

Tabler’s calls from death row in 2008 to state Sen. John Whitmire, now the mayor of Houston, led to an unprecedented lockdown affecting over 150,000 inmates in the second-largest prison system in the nation. Many inmates were confined to their cells for weeks while officers conducted thorough sweeps of over 100 prisons, seizing hundreds of items of contraband, including cell phones.

Whitmire, who chaired a Senate committee overseeing state prisons, noted that Tabler threatened him by claiming he knew the identities of his children and their addresses. Whitmire declined to comment on Tabler’s pending execution through a spokesperson at the mayor’s office.

The ACLU appealed Tabler’s case to the U.S. Supreme Court last year, arguing that he was denied adequate legal representation during his prior appeals by attorneys who declined to participate in hearings at what they claimed was his request.

This appeal maintained that Tabler’s attorneys dismissed a psychological assessment indicating he had a “deep and severe constellation of mental illnesses” that had gone unaddressed since childhood. However, the court refused to stay his execution.

The club where Tabler worked, called TeaZers, was marked by conflict between him and Rahmouni, who allegedly threatened to have Tabler’s family “wiped out” for a sum of $10.

Tabler enlisted a friend, Timothy Payne, a soldier stationed nearby at Fort Cavazos, and deceived Rahmouni and Zayed into meeting under the pretense of purchasing stolen stereo equipment. He shot both men in their vehicle, dragged Rahmouni out, and had Payne record a video of him shooting Rahmouni again.

Subsequently, Tabler confessed to the murders. During the penalty phase of his trial, prosecutors presented Tabler’s written and videotaped confessions revealing he also killed Dotson and Benefield shortly after, fearing they might disclose his earlier crimes.

Before his arrest, Tabler made threatening phone calls to the Bell County Sheriff’s office, taunting deputies about the murders and vowing to kill more strip club employees and undercover officers.

On the same Thursday, in Florida, a man convicted of killing a husband and wife during a fishing trip while their toddler observed was executed via lethal injection, marking the state’s first execution of the year.

By Jim Vertuno and Michael Graczyk