The Mexican drifter suspected of eight grisly slayings along railroad tracks in three states eagerly confessed yesterday – twice – to a burglary at the bloody scene of one of the killings.
“Can all this be done very quickly so I can say I am guilty?” 39-year-old Angel Maturino Resendez, also known as Rafael Resendez-Ramirez, asked a Houston judge through a translator.
The suspect’s impatient admission before state District Judge William Harmon was the second time yesterday he tried to confess his guilt to the same burglary charge – the only charge he now faces in Texas.
But since the hearing before Harmon was arranged only to set bond and give Maturino Resendez a lawyer, his confession was not considered a plea.
Prosecutors said Maturino Resendez made a similar attempt earlier in the day to plead guilty. In the two brief court appearances, his request to plead guilty came after a prosecutor described the gory scene of the Dec. 17, 1998, killing of Dr. Claudia Benton in Houston, a case from which the burglary charge stems.
Assistant Harris County District Attorney Devon Anderson said Maturino Resendez’s fingerprints were found on Benton’s stolen car and that there was possibly DNA evidence linking him to the slaying.
Anderson said Maturino Resendez could be charged with capital murder.
Maturino Resendez surrendered Tuesday at a U.S.-Mexican border checkpoint.
He is charged with three killings in Illinois and Kentucky, and had been suspected in five more in Texas. Yesterday, Texas authorities also linked him to a sixth killing, in Hughes Springs.
Houston Police Lt. Ron Walker said a palm print found last October at the home of 87-year-old slaying victim Leffie Mason matches Maturino Resendez’s.