Summary:

On the afternoon of July 20, 1992, 14-year-old Jeremy Garza found the bloody bodies of his 10-year-old sister, Kristin Wiley, and her 7-year-old best friend, Kynara Carriero, in his bedroom.

Both girls were naked from the waist down and had been stabbed about 20 times. Autopsies revealed that both girls died of stab wounds to the neck and head. Though they also suffered vaginal trauma, no semen was found.

Mays, who lived next door, had been fired from his job earlier that same day.

After months of talking with investigators, Mays finally agreed to take a polygraph examination. When told that he had failed the test, Mays confessed to the murders.

Mays said he left his workplace on July 20, 1992, at about 2:45 p.m., feeling upset about losing his job and concerned about how he would convey the news to his wife. Though he drove home, he parked his car a few houses down the street from his own residence and walked to his neighbor's house.

Upon hearing loud music from within the home, Mays pushed open the unlocked front door and called for Kristin Wiley.

As he walked through the house, he saw Kristin and Kynara running away from him. Mays followed them and asked them to lower the volume on the stereo. Kynara answered, "No, we're not going to turn it down! Just get out of the house!" Then, Mays began stabbing both girls with a knife he took from the kitchen.

During the investigation, Mays sometimes performed as Uh-Oh the Clown.

Final Meal:

Six scrambled eggs with shredded cheese, cream gravy, hash browns, pan sausage, orange juice, and milk.

Final Words:

"Warden, just give me parole and let me go home to be with the lord."

ClarkProsecutor.org

Texas Attorney General

Media Advisory

Thursday, Sept. 19, 2002

Rex Warren Mays Scheduled to be Executed.

AUSTIN - Texas Attorney General John Cornyn offers the following information on Rex Warren Mays, who is scheduled to be executed after 6 p.m. on Tuesday, Sept. 24, 2002.

On Sept. 18, 1995, Rex Warren Mays was sentenced to die for the capital murders of Kristin Wiley and Kynara Carriero in Houston, Texas, on July 20, 1992. A summary of the evidence presented at trial follows:

FACTS OF THE CRIME

On the afternoon of July 20, 1992, 14-year-old Jeremy Garza found the bloody bodies of his 10-year-old sister, Kristin Wiley, and her 7-year-old best friend, Kynara Carriero, in his bedroom.

Both girls were naked from the waist down and had been stabbed about 20 times. Autopsies revealed that both girls died of stab wounds to the neck and head. Though they also suffered vaginal trauma, no semen was found.

Rex Warren Mays, who lived next door to Jeremy Garza and Kristin Wiley, had been fired from his job earlier that same day. One-and-a-half years later, Mays confessed to killing Kristin and Kynara, confirming investigators' suspicions.

As Mays related in his voluntary statement to the police, he left his workplace on July 20, 1992, at about 2:45 p.m., feeling upset about losing his job and concerned about how he would convey the news to his wife.

Though he drove home, he parked his car a few houses down the street from his own residence and walked to his neighbor's house. Upon hearing loud music from within the home, Mays pushed open the unlocked front door and called for Kristin Wiley.

As he walked through the house, he saw Kristin and Kynara running away from him. Mays followed them and asked them to lower the volume on the stereo. Kynara answered, "No, we're not going to turn it down! Just get out of the house!" Then, Mays began stabbing both girls with a knife he took from the kitchen.

When he was certain they were dead, Mays crawled out of the house through a window leading to the backyard, and was about to climb over the privacy fence when he remembered that he left his car parked down the street.

Mays re-entered the Wiley house through the same window, and walked out through the front door. Upon reaching his car, Mays placed the murder weapon and his bloody shirt in a duffle bag that he kept in his car. He then drove home, parked his car in his garage, told his wife that he had been fired, and showered to wash away the blood that had splattered onto his legs.

Shortly thereafter, when emergency personnel appeared on the scene, Mays observed the commotion, allowed the victim's mother to use his telephone, and invited several law enforcement officers into his house for refreshments.

The next day, he washed his bloody clothes, threw the knife into a nearby ravine, and placed the duffle bag in the garbage. Blood traces from Mays' laundered clothing revealed DNA that linked to the victims' DNA. Crime scene investigators also found blood on the privacy fence that separated Mays' backyard from the Wiley's.

PROCEDURAL HISTORY

On April 12, 1994, Mays was indicted for capital murder in the 176th District Court of Harris County, Texas. He pleaded "not guilty." Trial on the merits began Sept. 5, 1995, and on Sept. 12, 1995, the jury returned a verdict of "guilty." Following a separate punishment hearing, the same jury answered "yes" to the future dangerousness special issue and found that no mitigating circumstance warranted that Mays be sentenced to life imprisonment. Consequently, on Sept.18, 1995, the trial court assessed punishment at death.

In February 1997, the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals abated Mays' appeal and remanded the case to the trial court for factual findings and conclusions of law regarding the admissibility of Mays' written confession. After the trial court filed its findings of fact and conclusions of law on that issue, the Court of Criminal Appeals affirmed Mays' conviction and sentence in an unpublished opinion.

Mays then petitioned for a writ of certiorari in the United States Supreme Court, but was denied on Oct. 12, 1999. In that same year, the Court of Criminal Appeals denied his state petition for habeas relief.

On March 31, 2000, Mays filed his federal habeas petition. The federal district court denied both relief and a certificate of appealability on Feb. 22, 2001. On Jan. 3, 2002, the Fifth Circuit also denied Mays' request for a certificate of appealability. On or about July 2, 2002, Mays filed a petition for certiorari to the Fifth Circuit. The Supreme Court denied Mays' petition for certiorari review on Sept. 12, 2002.

PRIOR CRIMINAL HISTORY

No evidence was introduced at trial showing that Mays had been previously charged with any crime.

ProDeathPenalty.com

Rex Warren Mays confessed in 1994 to murdering his young neighbor and her friend after the girls refused to turn down their radio, but he argued in his appeal that he was interrogated in a situation that was "indistinguishable from a traditional arrest." The appeal stated that the interrogation room "was specially created to induce a confession from him."

The room was filled with photographs of the 2 victims and their homes as well as newspaper clippings about the murders. In a unanimous decision, the appeals court found that Mays voluntarily agreed to be interviewed and was not under arrest when he confessed to the murders. The court denied all of Mays' arguments for appeal, including that the death penalty was unconstitutional.

Mays told police in a 1994 six-page confession that he was upset about being fired from his job when he was confronted by the girls. He told police that he killed them using techniques learned in the Marines. Police said Kynara Carreiro, 7, and Kristin Wiley, 10, also were sexually assaulted, but Mays never confessed to those claims.

The killings took place in mid-afternoon on July 20, 1992 in the Wiley home. Three doors down and across the street, Kynara's mother Diane was at home, caring for her month-old son. Directly across from the Wiley house, a group of boys, ranging in age from 11 to 15 and including Kristin's 15-year-old brother Jeremy, had played outdoors for much of the day.

A few doors to the west, a house was being remodeled. And up and down the street, other adults also were at home. Two of the adults have told detectives they saw the girls in the Wileys' front yard about 3 p.m., less than 45 minutes before their bodies were discovered. A pizza delivery man saw them a few moments earlier.

At about 3 :30 p.m., four of the boys got bored playing Nintendo in the garage across from the Wiley house and wandered back outside. They tossed a football around for a few minutes, then Jeremy walked over to his house to make his regular check-in call to his parents. His friends waited on his porch.

As Jeremy walked through his living room, they heard him yell to his sister: "Kristin, y'all better get in here and clean this mess up." Both girls were found by Jeremy, lying face-down on a blood-soaked bed in his bedroom, dressed only in T-shirts.

Each child had been stabbed many times. A moment later, he bolted out of the house, yelling that his sister was dead and pleading with his friends to come inside to help him. One of them followed Jeremy into the house but ran back out when he saw the girls. Two other boys then went in, and the first one ran in once more, thinking wildly that he had forgotten to check the girls for signs of life.

He reached the door of the room, but couldn't go in. Jeremy turned Kynara over. Then, at the shouted urging of the other boys, he called 911 and then his mother. She arrived within minutes, following an ambulance down the street toward her home.

Diane Taylor says Kynara had spent the night with Kristin and then the two girls had played at the Taylor house for most of the day. Taylor said she gave Kynara permission to go home with Kristin to help her with her chores before returning to her own house again at 4 p.m.

Instead, a few minutes later, Becky Wiley knocked on the door. She remembers walking down the street, her baby in her arms, and seeing at least 10 police cars outside the Wiley home. After officials refused to let her enter, she waited outside, pleading with those who went in and out to tell her if her daughter was alive. Finally, a paramedic answered her. "No, ma'am. She's not."

The investigation into the murders was badly sidetracked in its first hours by the Wileys' next-door neighbor, who gave investigators descriptions of suspects who did not exist.

Three days later, after failing two polygraph tests, the neighbor, Rex Mays, admitted he had lied in telling them he had seen two men, one black and one Hispanic, climbing over his fence just before the girls' bodies were discovered.

Mays told detectives he did not get a good look at the Hispanic but helped a police artist come up with a composite of the black suspect, who became the focus of the probe. Soon after he was found to be lying, Mays, whose family had rented the house on Fair Forest just over a year, was asked by his landlord to move out.

Mays had held a number of jobs, including as a clown, had been fired the day of the killings from his job with a company under contract to Exxon, detectives said. Malcolm Herron, who lived across the street, said he probably had more contact with Mays than other neighbors because he often worked in his yard and Mays came over many times to borrow his lawnmower or other tools.

Herron was out of town at the time the girls were killed but said he discounted Mays ' story as soon as he heard it. For one thing, he said, Mays often had told him stories he didn't believe about seeing strange men on the street or in Herron's driveway. For another, Mays invariably told him the men were black but could give no further description, said Herron, who is black. "I just figured he probably would do anything for attention," he said.

In February of 1994, 19 months after the murders, Mays finally confessed. Since Christmas of 1993, Mays had been "dropping hints" to investigators that his conscience bothered him and that he might confess. Detectives who had been in regular contact with Mays have simply been "working with him at his pace," the Harris County sheriff said.

A person familiar with Mays said he thought the confession was less a matter of conscience than convenience. Mays "is unemployed, again, and his wife has left him, again," said the source, who asked not to be identified. "He's a loser. And he's running out of places and people to use."

After months of talking with investigators, Mays finally agreed to take a polygraph examination. When told that he had failed the test, detectives said, Mays confessed. Because the bodies were clad only in T-shirts, there had been speculation that the murders may have been sexually motivated. The sheriff said the only motive Mays gave was being upset over losing his job with an Exxon contractor.

After driving home that day, Mays , who then lived next door to the Wileys, told detectives he went into the Wiley house and told the girls to turn down their radio. When they refused, Mays told detectives, he found a knife and stabbed both girls repeatedly.

Sources familiar with the investigation implied there was considerably more to it than that. None of the sources would elaborate, except to say that Mays ' six-page statement was detailed, complete and left no doubt he was the killer.

From the beginning, detectives had said the murderer had to have been someone the two girls knew, because they were in Wiley's house at the time and were only unattended for an estimated 20 minutes, while Kristin's brother and his friends were playing across the street and Kynara's mother, Diane Taylor, was at home three doors down.

With Harris County detectives, Mays played the role of a helpful neighbor, describing two men he had seen jumping his fence just before the bodies were discovered.

Three days later, after failing two polygraph tests, he admitted to making up the story. From then on he was the prime suspect. A bloody handprint on the fence between Mays ' house and the Wiley house at first seemed to corroborate his story.

By the time it was learned he lied, the blood had been subjected to tests to determine its type, rendering it useless as a print. Dane Sever, who owned the house that Rex Mays rented, noticed a spot that looked like blood in the hallway near the bathroom after Mays had moved out. Detectives already had searched the house at least twice -- once with Mays ' consent before he moved out and once afterward -- but the spot apparently was missed.

Sever notified detectives, but no one came out to examine it for almost three weeks. Although an anonymous caller told investigators within days that the murder weapon could be found beside the deep drainage ditch that runs behind the houses on the north side of Fair Forest, the area was not searched by detectives.

After a suggestion from a detective two weeks later that "someone might want to look along the bayou," Kynara's father and step-father, Bob Carreiro and Pat Taylor, organized three searches and found a steak knife on the edge of the bayou near Taylor's house. Detectives said the knife may have been the murder weapon, but by the time it was found no blood or fingerprints could be found on it.

A source familiar with the investigation said Mays told detectives in his confession where the knife could be found. The location was accurate. The families of Kynara Carreiro and Kristin Wiley waited 19 months for the arrest that finally came.

His daughter's murder propelled Bob Carreiro into the spotlight, where he remained as a high-profile victims' advocate. He wants to think his visibility had something to do with Mays ' finally coming forward. "I hoped that every time that bastard saw my face on the front page or on the news it rattled his cage," Carreiro said. Kip Wiley, father of Kristin, said, "We felt all along it was him, and I knew it was only a matter of time. We always felt the case would be solved." After the arrest, the families realized that this was not the end of their quest for justice. "You feel like you have crossed the hill," Pat Taylor, Kynara's stepfather, said of May's arrest and confession. "You look back at the 19 months and you realize it's not over. You know you have another 10 years (of appeals)." Kip Wiley, Kristin's father, said he and his wife, Becky, would closely monitor the legal proceedings surrounding Mays' prosecution.

Bob Carreiro, Kynara's father, said he and other activists also would keep close tabs on the case. "I've just become so involved with victims' rights groups," Carreiro said. "You can bet we are going to be watching very, very close for any type of antics (by defense attorneys)." Because of his previous false statement to officers and other reasons, Carreiro had believed for some time that Mays was the suspect, and he and his friends had been following him for several months.

That, coupled with the constant news coverage, played heavily on Mays' conscience. "I have no doubt that whenever he got to see my face or (pictures of) the girls' faces on TV, it had an immense effect on him," Carreiro said, and that his monitoring of Mays ' moves caused him to confess. "I was told by people in law enforcement that this was laying heavy on his mind," Carreiro said. "I was told this guy was afraid of me." Carreiro said he and his friends followed Mays constantly and passed by his house while riding motorcycles.

They followed him to events where he performed as Uh-Oh the Clown, and Carreiro once approached a woman Mays was dating to tell her he believed the man was a suspect in the slaying of two children. The constant watch, Carreiro said, caused Mays to change his appearance several times and to start using his first name of Randy instead of Rex. "There is no way I could just sit back when there is a possibility of this happening again," Carreiro said of his reason for following Mays. "I could never be able to live with myself."

Rex Warren Mays

Txexecutions.org

Rex Warren Mays, 42, was executed by lethal injection on 24 September in Huntsville, Texas for the murder of two girls in their home.

On 20 July 1992, 14-year-old Jeremy Garza found the bodies of his sister, Kristin Michelle Wiley, 10, and her friend, Kynara Lorin Carreiro, 7, stabbed to death in his bedroom. Kristin was stabbed 18 times. Kynara was stabbed 23 times. Both were stabbed in the eyes. Both were also nude from the waist down.

Rex Mays, then 32, was Jeremy and Kristin's next-door neighbor. When emergency personnel arrived, Mays watched from his driveway, sitting on a lawn chair and drinking a soda. He allowed the children's mother to use his telephone.

He also invited some sheriff's deputies into his house for refreshments. He told them that he saw two men coming over the Wiley's fence. Investigators found blood on the fence that separated Mays' back yard from the Wiley's.

After failing a polygraph test, Mays recanted his account of what he saw. He became the prime suspect in the case, but insufficient evidence existed to put him under arrest at that time.

For the next year and a half, Detective Bob Valerio of the Harris County Sheriff's Department tried to solve the case. He befriended Mays, drank with him, went to topless bars with him, and even let Mays accompany him on official business, all in an effort to build a rapport that might lead to a confession. On 10 February 1994, these efforts paid off. Valerio asked Mays to come to his office to discuss the case, and Mays ended up talking for four hours.

In a written statement, Mays related how he had been fired from his job earlier that day. On the way home, he parked a few houses down the street from his own house and started walking home, thinking about what he would say to his wife about being fired from yet another job.

As he approached the Wiley's house, he heard loud music coming from the upstairs bedroom. He pushed open the unlocked front door and called for Kristin. As he walked through the house, he saw Kristin and Kynara running away from him.

Mays followed them and asked them to lower the volume on the stereo. Kynara answered, "No, we're not going to turn it down! Just get out of the house!" Mays said that he was suddenly overcome with anger. "Here I had just gotten fired and some kid's telling me no," he said. He began stabbing the girls with a knife he took from the kitchen.

Continuing his confession, Mays wrote that he exited the house by crawling through a window. He was about to climb the fence into his back yard when he remembered that he had parked down the street. He re-entered the Wiley house through the window and walked out the front door.

Upon reaching his car, he placed the knife and his bloody shirt in a duffle bag. He drove home, told his wife that he had been fired, and showered to wash away the blood that had splattered onto his legs. When emergency personnel arrived, he behaved like a concerned neighbor.

The next day, he washed his bloody clothes, threw the knife into a nearby ravine, and placed his duffle bag in the garage. Blood traces from Mays' laundered clothing revealed DNA that linked to the victims.

Mays had no prior criminal history, but an FBI behavioral analyst, Alan Brantley, testified that Mays was a continuing threat to society. Mays said that children evoked strong emotional responses of anger and sexuality in Mays, which made him a continuing threat to society. Mays sometimes performed for children as Uh-Oh the Clown.

A jury convicted Mays of capital murder in September 1995 and sentenced him to death. In February 1997, the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals remanded the case back to the trial court for a finding regarding the admissibility of Mays' written confession. After the trial court filed its findings, the Court of Criminal Appeals affirmed the conviction and death sentence in October 1998. All of Mays' subsequent appeals in state and federal court were denied. He did not file any appeals in the days prior to his execution.

On death row, Mays declined requests for interviews. On a web site that seeks pen pals for death row inmates, Mays listed "clowning" as one of his hobbies. Under "Dislikes," he listed "disrespectful people." "I'm ready to go," Mays said in his last statement. "I'm going to a better place. I'm just mad for one reason: I'm going to a better place, and y'all have to go through this hell on earth." Mays also uttered a long prayer. As the lethal injection flowed into his body, he coughed once and let out a long sputter. He was pronounced dead at 6:19 p.m.

Man Executed for Double Murder

By Mark Passwaters - The Huntsville Item

September 24, 2002

Rex Mays, a Harris county man who stabbed two girls, aged 7 and 10, to death a decade ago was executed Tuesday evening in the death chamber in the Huntsville "Walls" Unit.

Mays, who had worked part-time as "Uh-Oh the Clown" at children's birthday parties, had said he killed the girls on July 20, 1992 because he was having "a bad day." Tuesday evening, he refused to acknowledge the presence of the families of Kristin Wiley and Kynara Carreiro, both of whom witnessed the execution.

During his final statement, which came in the form of a prayer, Mays requested "forgiveness for the ones that need to be forgiven." "Dear Lord, I ask you right now to be with each of (his personal witnesses) and lift them up and be on solid ground," he said. "I am going to go see Jesus tonight and reserve a special place for each one of you." "Just remember the good things and not the bad," he said. Mays gasped and sputtered twice as the lethal dose of drugs took effect at 6:11 p.m. He was pronounced dead eight minutes later.

Mays was the focus of a 19-month investigation by the Harris County Sheriff's Department after the bodies of the two girls were found in the Wiley home on the afternoon of July 20. Mays had come home early because he had been fired from his job and was upset by loud noise coming from the Wiley house. He entered his neighbor's house and demanded the girls turn the music down, which they refused to do. "Here I had just gotten fired, and some kid's telling me no," he said in his confession.

Mays then grabbed a knife and slit the girls throats, cutting their carotid arteries and causing them to drown in their own blood. He also stabbed them in the eyes to prevent them from looking at him. By the time Mays had finished his gruesome work, he had stabbed Wiley 18 times and Carreiro 23 times.

In a press conference after the execution, Carreiro's father Bob called Mays' execution "much, much too easy." "I asked one time for five minutes in a cell with him, but I was turned down," he said. Carreiro said he had prepared himself for the possibility that Mays would not express remorse. "I had already decided what he said was irrelevant," he said. "I had nothing to say to him and I'm sure that he had nothing to say to me. To murder two little girls ... what could I have to say that could be relevant?" Carreiro said his wife had decided not to attend the execution but that he had never considered missing it. "I would go to the end of the earth to see this end," he said. "He was nothing but a child predator. He needed to be removed." The Wiley family declined to make a statement.

As the families left the "Walls" Unit at 6:47 p.m., about 20 members of the pro-death penalty group Justice For All released 17 pink and two Barbie balloons into the sky. The group far outnumbered the approximately half-dozen anti-death penalty protesters at the opposing end of the unit. "It was a wonderful gesture for the girls," Carreiro said. "I think the girls would have liked it."

Mays Put to Death for Killing Two Girls

By Mike Tolson - Houston Chronicle

Sept. 25, 2002

HUNTSVILLE -- Rex Warren Mays, a part-time clown and full-time loser whose killing of two young girls shocked Harris County a decade ago, was executed Tuesday night. As the families walked out of the Walls Unit, members of the victims advocacy group Justice For All released 17 pink balloons and two Barbie balloons in the girls' memory. "A big burden has been lifted off my shoulders," said Robert Carreiro, whose 7-year-old daughter, Kynara, and her 10-year-old playmate, Kristin Wiley, were butchered on a midsummer day in 1992. "I don't have to deal with him anymore, not in the same thought as my little girl."

Carreiro said it did not bother him that Mays did not apologize or accept responsibility for his action. "To murder two little girls -- what could he say that would even be relevant," Carreiro said. "He could have cursed at me and it wouldn't have mattered. He could have been apologetic and it wouldn't have mattered."

Mays, whose personal history included excessive drinking and failed jobs and relationships, was a suspect almost from the beginning. He escaped arrest initially because no physical evidence tied him to the crime, which occurred in a northwest Harris County subdivision.

But 19 months after the killings, he confessed after a painstaking pursuit by sheriff's investigators. He explained that he came home early after being fired from his job and went next door to ask the girls to turn down their stereo. When they refused and told him to leave, he said, he snapped and got a knife from the kitchen. Prosecutors theorized Mays was sexually attracted to children -- thus explaining his interest in working as a clown -- and may have originally planned to sexually assault the girls, though autopsies showed that neither was.