Sunday, November 16, 2008

Convicted strip club killer threatens senator, reporter

Death row inmate Richard Lee Tabler, whose possession of a cell phone brought about a lockdown at Texas prisons, is back in the news once more.

The Temple Daily Telegram reports Tabler sent a letter threatening a state senator and a reporter. Tabler was convicted and sentenced to death for the 2004 murders of two people connected to a Killeen, Texas, strip club. His partner in crime, 2004 East Newton High School graduate Timothy Doan Payne, was sentenced to life in prison:

The soap opera that is Richard Tabler continues to get messages out from death row even though his cell phone has been confiscated.
This week the message came in letter form.

Tabler, convicted of two murders in Bell County, made an indirect threat to a reporter and a state senator in a letter he sent to the official in charge of the investigation of how cell phones ended up in the hands of death row inmates.

“I took it serious,” Sen. John Whitmire, D-Houston, chairman of the Senate Criminal Justice Committee, said about the threat. “I’m not worried about him. I’m more worried about who he or the nine guys he let use the phone may know on the outside.”

The threat named an Austin reporter and inferred that he and Whitmire may need protection because they played a role in getting his cell phone taken away and having his sister and mother arrested.

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