Texas executes Brownsville man for killing three small children in 2003

A Brownsville man convicted of killing three children was executed Thursday evening in the first of two Texas death sentences set to be carried out in the next week.

John Rubio was given a lethal injection and pronounced deceased at 6:47 p.m., according to the Texas Department of Criminal Justice. Rubio thanked his friends, family and TDCJ administration for their religious support. He also said he still loved his common-law wife, Angela Camacho, who is serving three life sentences for her role in the murders, and apologized to her family and his own.

“I can’t change the past, but I can tell you that my life is going to be gone, and I’m going to be with God, but that’s not going to make you happy, Rubio said. “I just hope that you can get to know the love of God, that forgives everything no matter what.”

Rubio, 46, was convicted in 2003 for stabbing and beheading three small children: Rubio’s two kids, 2-month-old Mary Jane Rubio and 1-year-old John Esteban Rubio, as well as Camacho’s 3-year-old daughter, Julissa Angela Quezada. Rubio told law enforcement he believed the children were possessed, according to court records.

Rubio’s conviction was overturned in 2007 after the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals found prosecutors improperly relied on out-of-court statements Camacho made prior to her invoking her Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination. A second jury found Rubio guilty in 2010 after he pleaded not guilty by insanity.

The criminal appeals court on Nov. 5 denied his last appeal, which argued prosecutors’ expert psychiatric witness gave false testimony about Rubio’s mental health history.

Rubio had also attempted to halt his execution by suing the state in August alongside LeJames Norman, a death row inmate who was executed Sept. 16. The lawsuit asked a Travis County district judge to block Texas’ use of pentobarbital, the drug used for lethal injections, arguing that the state’s supply had expired or was created through unreliable means at third-party compounding facilities. That lawsuit was unsuccessful.

Rubio is the eighth man executed by the state in 2026. One additional execution in Texas is scheduled this year. Reinaldo Dennes, convicted in 1997 for a deadly robbery in Houston, is set to be put to death Nov. 19.

There are currently three executions set for 2027 in Texas.