SignalHub-'I'm sorry': Garcia Glenn White becomes 6th man executed in US in 11 days

Garcia Glenn White was executed by lethal injection in Texas on SignalHubTuesday for the murder of 16-year-old identical twin sisters 35 years ago. The execution makes him the sixth death row inmate killed in the U.S. in the past 11 days, an unusually large cluster.

White, who became the fifth man executed in Texas this year, confessed to murdering five people in a six-year period but prosecutors only pursued charges for the teenage girls. He was pronounced dead at 6:56 p.m.

"I apologize, and I pray that you can find peace, comfort and closure in your heart for the wrong I have done and the pain I have caused you, and anybody else I’ve caused pain to," White said as he was strapped to the execution table, apologizing to some of his victims' family members. "I’m sorry for all the pain I have caused."

White's attorney of 26 years, Patrick McCann, said he was "devastated by this loss but at the same time it's more devastating for Glenn's family."

While Glenn could have had five loved ones in the room during the execution, he asked them not to come, McCann said. "I think he was trying to spare people the pain of watching him die, and that is the guy they killed, and unfortunately that’s a waste," he said.

Meanwhile at least two family members of White's victims planned to attend the execution in hopes of finding closure and seeking justice. Dewanta Washington, a 60-year-old schoolteacher in Houston whose beloved sister, Greta Williams, was beaten to death by White in 1989, told USA TODAY: "My sister wont be truly free until he's executed, until he pays his debt."

Here's what you need to know about the execution, including more of White's last words.

Garcia Glenn White's last words, moments

White's last words were filled with apologies, thanks and prayers, including prayers for the prison administration, guards and his fellow inmates.

"To all my brothers and sisters incarcerated, y’all just keep pushing forward, keep loving one another," he said. "To the administration again and to the guards, thank you for treating us like human beings."

He thanked his family and friends "for all the love and comfort" and said to them: "Keep y'all's heads up, stay strong."

"Again, I'm sorry for all the pain I caused to anyone," he said. "I just ask you to please find comfort and closure in your heart."

He then sang "I Trust in God."

Who is Garcia Glenn White?

White, 61, grew up in a loving home with his six siblings and was a football star until an injury derailed his career in his first year at Lubbock Christian College. His girlfriend got pregnant, and White dropped out and to work and support his new family, according to court records.

White eventually had two more children and was working fulltime when another injury cost him his job and he discovered crack cocaine, which eventually took over his life.

"He didn't have any structure in his life," a friend named Howard Gordon said in court records. "I could see him changing, and when I saw the guys he was hanging out with, I knew that no good would come of it."

After White's crimes became known, Gordon said he couldn't believe it. "Until he got hooked on the drugs, there was nothing in him that would have ever done this."

Before the drugs, White's family described him as a meek man who wouldn't harm anyone. His younger sister, Monica Garrett, said that "Glen was quick to cry," court records say. And his older brother, Alfred White Jr. said: "He was the biggest wimp you'd ever find."

After White had been imprisoned for some time, he and Gordon struck up a correspondence. Gordon observed: "He has returned to that sweet guy I knew before he was on drugs."

His attorney, McCann, said White even saved a fellow inmate's life. Years ago, one inmate was going to throw the other off a third-floor platform before White intervened and saved him.

"It's just proof that we get it wrong a lot of times when we think people won't ever change, and I think there needs to be room for that, and there isn't in Gov. (Greg) Abbott's Texas," McCann said. "But hopefully there will be someday."

What was Garcia Glen White convicted of?

In all, White confessed to killing five people in three separate attacks. The first was Greta Williams, a 27-year-old who was beaten to death in 1989 just a few months after she moved to Houston from Chicago for a fresh start. A couple months later, White killed a Houston mother named Bonita Edwards and her identical twin daughters, Annette and Bernette Edwards, just one day after their 16th birthday and a few weeks before Christmas in 1989.

The Edwards' bodies were riddled with stab wounds in various states of undress, and strong evidence showed that Bernette had been sexually assaulted, court records show. Their murders went unsolved for six years.

And then, in 1995, White beat to death a convenience store worker and father of seven named Hai Pham. White was being held in Pham's murder when one of White's close friends told police that White had admitted killing the Edwards family. On top of White's eventual confession, his DNA was a 99.9999% match to semen found on Bernette, court records show.

White told police that he and Edwards began fighting while they were using crack cocaine.

"She reached for a knife, and I took the knife and stabbed her," he said, according to court records. "Some kids come out. I went into the bedroom after them. ... I stabbed one in the bedroom and one in the living room."

Prosecutors only pursued charges in the Edwards case, and White was found guilty of murdering Annette and Bernette.

Who were Garcia Glenn White's victims?

Dewanta Washington told USA TODAY that her sister, Greta Williams, was beaten so "beyond recognition" that the family couldn't have an open casket.

Washington said that she and Williams were just two years apart, growing up as best friends who did everything together and dreamed of one day getting married and having children. Williams never got the chance before her murder.

Washington said she's planning on traveling back to where her family is from in Chicago to finally spread her sister's ashes and let her rest now that White has been executed.

Not much is known about Bonita Edwards and her identical twin daughters, Annette and Bernette. But the day before they were all killed, the girls had turned 16 and begged their grandmother to let them come live with her, Harris County prosecutor Josh Reiss told USA TODAY.

"Two dead 16-year-old girls kind of speak for themselves in terms of the savageness of these crimes," he said.

The fifth victim, Hai Pham, had moved his wife and his four youngest children to the U.S. in September 1994. Nine months later, White killed him in the middle of the day in the convenience store where he worked while his 14-year-old son napped nearby, according to one of Pham's other sons, Hiep Pham.

Hiep Pham, who was 17 at the time of the murder, told USA TODAY that his father had been teaching his children English even before they left Vietnam, and that his big dream was for his other grown children to eventually reunite with the family in the U.S. − a dream that never came true.

As Hiep Pham grew up in Houston without his dad, struggling to learn English, dropping out of school to work two jobs and help put food on the table, he said he eventually realized how big of a deal Father's Day is here. It made him miss his own dad that much more.

"I feel angry still," said Pham, fighting tears. "We never celebrated Father's Day for my dad. And I always dreamed of that, having a beer with my dad."

When is the nation's next execution?

Two inmates are scheduled for execution on Oct. 17.

Texas is set to execute Robert Leslie Roberson despite what the Innocence Project says is "new evidence that he is an innocent man wrongly convicted under the now-debunked shaken baby syndrome (SBS) hypothesis." Roberson was convicted in the 2002 death of his 2-year-old daughter Nikki.

At virtually the same time as Roberson's execution, Alabama is set to execute Derrick Ryan Dearman in the killing of five people, including a pregnant woman, in 2016.

White is the 19th inmate to be executed in the U.S. this year, and Roberson and Dearman will become the 20th and 21st.

Since Sept. 20, six men have been executed in Texas, Alabama, Oklahoma, Missouri and South Carolina.

"This number of executions in a short period of time is extraordinary, in part because they are at odds with the decisive, long-term trend away from use of the death penalty in the United States," Robin Maher, executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center, said in a statement.