HUNTSVILLE — James Lee Clark Jr.’s life ended with a chuckle and a gurgle at 6:17 p.m. Wed­nesday, as he tried to make up his mind whe­ther he wanted to make a last statement.

James Lee Clark

Friends and relatives of Shari Catherine “Cari” Crews, Clark’s victim, and Jesus Gar­za, whom Clark was accused of killing, wat­ched from a narrow hallway with a glass wall looking into the small, green-brick death chamber, while Clark’s father-in-law and a spiritual adviser looked on from an identical hall nearby.

Clark, already strapped down to a gurney when the witnesses arrived, blink­ed and smiled when the prison warden, Charles O’Reilly, asked if he had a last statement to make.

“Uh, I don’t know,” he said with a nervous chuckle. “Um, I don’t know what to say. I don’t know …”

Clark then turned and appeared to see the witnesses behind the glass.

“I didn’t know anybody was there,” he said with another laugh. “Howdy.”

With that, he made a noise like a gurgle and was still. It had taken seven minutes for the three drugs administered in a lethal injection to take effect.

Garza’s mother, Linda Garza, an uncle and one of his sisters watched calmly as they stood close to the glass. Afterward, they were quickly led away by guards and did not comment on the execution.

Though Clark technically was executed for Crews’ rape and murder, and he never was tried for the killing of Jesus Garza, 16, the Garza family have said they wanted to feel the closure of seeing him face his punishment.

Clark was the 12th person to be executed so far this year in Texas.

Clark and his friend James Richard Brown found the teens at Clear Creek off FM428 north of Denton on June 7, 1993. They had a rifle and a shotgun they had stolen from vehicles, and they were looking for someone to rob that night, according to testimony at the trial.

DNA evidence showed Clark raped Crews, 17, several times before shooting her in the back of the head and pushing her body into the creek. He put the shotgun under Garza’s chin and fired, then tos­sed his body into the creek, according to court testimony.

The next afternoon a group of teens found Crews’ body floating in the creek, tangled in the branches of a fallen tree.

Brown, who was shot in the leg during the crimes, told police that another body lay under the water’s surface.

Brown was tried for capital murder but a jury convicted him of robbery and sentenced him to 20 years. He is incarcerated in the Wynn Unit in Huntsville, a few miles from the Walls Unit where Clark died.

Former Denton County District Attorney Bruce Isaacks and former prosecutor Vicki Foster, who tried Clark, witnessed the execution. Both said afterward that the death was too easy as penance for what Clark had done.

“I was surprised at how clean, sterile and humane that process was,” Isaacks said. “It was an easy way out for someone who committed such horrendous crimes.”

Foster said that after all these years, she was glad to be able to witness the final chapter in the ugly story that was Clark’s life.

“I wanted to have an end to it,” Foster said.

Isaacks said Crews’ parents didn’t witness the execution because they didn’t want to make her killer that important. He said the Garzas told him they were glad to see some resolution to the grief he caused them.

“I’m surprised that he didn’t have the decency to tell the mothers that he was sorry for all he put them through,” Isaacks said. “He is the poster child for the death penalty.”

DONNA FIELDER can be reached at 940-566-6885. Her e-mail address is dfielder@dentonrc.com  .