Man Executed in 1996 Tyler Slaying

HUNTSVILLE (AP/Staff) – 57-year-old Robert Ladd was executed Thursday night in Huntsville after the U.S. Supreme Court refused to stop the execution. Ladd was convicted of strangling and beating Vickie Ann Garner, 38, before setting her body on fire in her Tyler apartment in 1996. Lawyers claimed he was mentally impaired. Ladd had pleaded guilty in 1980 to a similar slaying in Dallas, where a woman’s body was burned in a blaze that also killed her two children. Although he received a 40-year prison term, he was paroled after serving only about a third of his sentence. Ladd’s attorneys said juvenile records show that a psychiatrist determined a 13-year-old Ladd had an IQ of only 67 and that he couldn’t fully function on his own.