Elroy Chester

Elroy Chester (June 14, 1969 – June 12, 2013) was an American serial killer, rapist, and burglar who committed five murders in Port Arthur, Texas, between 1997 and 1998. During the six-month span of the killings, Chester was also responsible for a string of home invasions and sexual assaults in the same area.

Chester was convicted and sentenced to death for one of the murders, and was executed in 2013. The execution was controversial as Chester's family and his defense argued that Chester was intellectually disabled, and should have been ineligible for the death penalty after Atkins v. Virginia.

Early life Chester was born in Port Arthur, Texas, and attended Abraham Lincoln High School. He was enrolled in special education classes until age 16, never progressing past a third-grade level of education. On four out of five IQ tests, including one he took at age seven, Chester scored 70 or lower, the lowest of which was 57 on a Vineland Adaptive Behavior Survey, taken in October 1987, when he was 18 years old. As an adult, he worked on-and-off as a general laborer and was briefly employed as a service worker at a Luby's cafeteria.

Prior criminal record On February 20, 1987, Chester robbed a home and was arrested five days later. On April 8, after his trial was set for August that same year, Chester paid bail, during which time he graduated high school. On May 9, Chester again burglarized a residence, leading to another arrest on May 17 and being held in Jefferson County jail without bail. On August 3, he was sentenced to 10 years probation and was imprisoned in a Texas Department of Corrections facility for six months as shock probation. Chester confessed to the killing of five people and four non-fatal shootings during this timeframe. In every case but one, the victims died in their homes during the night. Between October 25 and November 8, Chester committed three more burglaries.

On November 15, Chester fatally shot 87-year-old Etta Mae Stallings and stole a .22 caliber gun belonging to Stallings' husband from their house. The same evening, Chester used the gun to fire several shots through the open bedroom window of a nearby house, injuring Peggy Johnson and Debra Ferguson as they slept, also fatally striking a pet dog. On December 7, Chester ambushed Lorenzo Coronado outside his house, shot him in the head, and took his wallet before leaving. Coronado survived the shooting.

On February 6, 1998, Chester broke into the residence of the Ryman DeLeon family (no relation to Cheryl DeLeon), which he had previously burglarized and stolen items from without incident. This time, he had seen 17-year-old Erin and her one-year-old son while casing the building and decided to attack Erin at gunpoint. During the burglary, Erin's 14-year-old sister Claire and her boyfriend arrived at the house and also were taken hostage. After Chester forced all three teenage victims to undress, he blindfolded and tied them up with duct tape. Chester then raped Erin and forced both girls to perform oral sex on him at gunpoint. During the rape, 38-year-old Willie "Billy" Ryman III, the maternal uncle of the DeLeon sisters, arrived outside the home by car, accompanied by his fiancée Marcia Sharp. Ryman, a city firefighter who worked alongside his sister, was worried about his nieces due to the recent burglaries in the city. As Ryman walked through the back door, Chester fatally shot him in the chest. At the request of Claire, Chester ran outside to check if there were more people besides Ryman, at which point the sisters locked the door, then went to retrieve a handgun kept for self-protection from upstairs. Outside, realizing he was locked out, Chester attempted to steal Ryman's pickup truck. He unsuccessfully attempted to shoot open the lock and upon spotting Sharp inside, Chester fired two gunshots at her, but missed. Chester tried to find another way back inside the house, but was scared off by a stray shot fired by his former hostages and fled down the street.

Arrest On February 8, thirty hours after the rape of the DeLeon sisters and the murder of Willie Ryman, Chester was arrested for an unrelated violation of city ordinance. While in custody, police charged him with the non-fatal burglaries. The next day, a search warrant was obtained for Chester's residence, as well as an order for hair and blood samples. Before the samples were taken at the district attorney's office, Chester admitted without prompting that he had "killed the fireman", but did not elaborate further. The search of Chester's house found stolen jewelry and various masks that were connected to the break-ins and sexual assaults, after which Chester volunteered to accompany officers to the place where he had hidden the gun used in the majority of the burglaries. He directed police to the home of his father, and offered to grab the gun in place of the officers, claiming it was in a "hard to reach place" within a hollow ceiling space. Chester was kept in handcuffs and held under close watch before being restrained when he appeared to reach towards something. Officers recovered the weapon which, contrary to Chester's assurances, was fully loaded. The DNA samples matched with those found at the DeLeon crime scene further connected Chester to three additional rapes. The victims of the murders, rapes, and burglaries were mostly white, albeit some were black and Latino.

Trial Chester's trial began in August 1998. Chester entered a guilty plea, and during the trial, he made multiple outbursts, as well as threatening the lives of police officers, prison guards, court officials, and the families of jurors, and at one point declared, "If I hadn't shot my brother-in-law, I'd still be out there shooting white folks." He voiced no regret for the murders, describing the crimes as "a whole lot of fun". despite scoring 69 points on a court-ordered IQ test and being placed in the Texas Department of Criminal Justice's Mentally Retarded Offenders Program during previous prison stints. In the prosecution's closing arguments, it was argued that his disability was not a sufficient reason to stay his execution.

Execution Chester was originally scheduled for execution on April 24, 2013, but, due to an error in the execution warrant, the date was pushed back.

He was pronounced dead at 7:04 p.m. He is buried at Captain Joe Byrd Cemetery.

In media In 2013 a full-length documentary titled Killing Time was made about him and his execution.

In 2018 the case was covered by the Investigation Discovery show Murder by Numbers, in an episode named "Clown Mask Murders".