Larry Swearingen
48-year-old Larry Swearingen lived on death row for nearly two decades for the 1998 strangulation death of Melissa Trotter. Trotter was a 19-year-old community college student in Montgomery County. Over the years, multiple state courts had removed five execution dates from the calendar to investigate different issues surrounding Swearingen’s conviction, but prosecutors and Trotter’s family remained firmly convinced he was her killer.
After a late appeal was denied by the U.S. Supreme Court minutes before his scheduled execution time of 6 p.m., Swearingen was taken into the execution chamber in Huntsville, Texas, and connected to an IV.
At 6:35 p.m., Swearingen was injected with a lethal dose of pentobarbital, according to the Texas Department of Criminal Justice. Swearingen was pronounced dead at 6:47 p.m.
Trotter had been missing for weeks before her body was found by hunters in the Sam Houston National Forest on January 2, 1999, with a leg from a pair of pantyhose tied around her throat. Trotter was last seen with Swearingen on December 8, 1998.
Larry Swearingen is also a suspect in the murder of Melissa Witt from Fort Smith, Arkansas. On December 1, 1994, Melissa Witt was kidnapped from the parking lot of Bowling World in Fort Smith, Arkansas. Six weeks later, 60 miles away, her nude, lifeless body was found in the Ozark National Forest near Turner Bend. Melissa Witt, like Melissa Trotter, had been strangled.
According to Jay C. Rider, former lead investigator in the Melissa Witt murder, he tracked Swearingen's whereabouts in November 1994 to his grandparents' home in Clinton, Arkansas, where Swearingen purchased a vehicle part from an automotive store just days before Witt was abducted and murdered in Fort Smith.
Then, in 2002, when Rider was a police chief in Barling, he received a call from the Texas Attorney General's Office and learned that during a routine check of Swearingen's cell by prison personnel, they found Rider's name, Witt's name, and the date of December 1, 1994, written in Swearingen's own handwriting.
Efforts to talk to Swearingen about the murder of Melissa Witt were blocked by his legal team.
References
McCullough, Jolie (August 21, 2019). The Texas Tribune: Texas executed Larry Swearingen for a 1998 Texas slaying. His lawyer says bad science got him on death row.
Whokilledmissywitt.com
Convicted Murderer Larry Swearingen
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