David Leonard Wood

In the end, the results of the test proved inconclusive, resulting in the dismissal of Wood's appeal. As of March 2022, he remains on Texas' death row at the Allan B. Polunsky Unit in West Livingston, awaiting execution.

On March 17, 2022, Texas attorney general Ken Paxton filed a motion requesting an execution date of March 15, 2023 be set for Wood.

In subsequent years, no new execution date has been set, as Wood's lawyers filed another appeal in 2016 to have his sentence overturned and a new trial scheduled. They have also petitioned for a DNA test, claiming that this would prove their client's innocence. In addition, they demanded that documents concerning two acquaintances of Wood, Salvador Martinez and Edward Dean Barton, be unsealed, as both men had been considered as alternative suspects in the killings.

Since his conviction, Wood has continued to insist on his innocence, and with the help of his attorneys, he has filed several appeals, all of which have been denied thus far. His original execution date was scheduled for August 20, 2009, but the day prior to that, it was postponed thanks to yet another legal appeal filed by his lawyers, who claimed that their client showed signs of a mental illness. The execution of mentally-ill offenders was deemed illegal following the ruling of Atkins v. Virginia by the Supreme Court in 2002.

In November 1992, based on the testimony of Kelling, the inmates at the county jail, and on the results from the examination of the lint found in the vacuum cleaner, Wood was convicted of the six murders by jury verdict and was officially sentenced to death on January 14, 1993.

Since the announcement of the charges, Wood and his attorneys attempted to delay the start of the trial using every legal avenue they could. Their first attempt was to have a change of venue to Dallas, as the attorneys claimed that the intense publicity surrounding the killings would prejudice the jury against their client. Eventually, after a series of pretrial hearings, the motion was granted, with the trial date being set for September 1992.

On March 14, 1988, a couple searching for aluminum cans in the desert stumbled upon the partially buried remains of a woman, located only a few hundred meters away from where the other victims had been found. Based on a comparison of X-rays and jaws, the woman was identified as 23-year-old Ivy Susanna Williams, a Colorado native who had moved to El Paso after getting married. Williams, who had a criminal record for prostitution and drug possession, was last seen on May 30, but her disappearance was not reported by either family or friends. During interviews with acquaintances, police determined that she had worked as a dancer at a club and was affiliated with members of the biker subculture. The coroner's report also found that Williams had been stabbed multiple times, including to the face. As she was found in an area that had previously been searched, the El Paso Police Department resumed an operation to locate more potential burial sites, which turned up nothing new.

On June 16, 1988, Wood was found guilty of kidnapping and raping Kelli, as this violated the conditions of his parole, it was considered an aggravating factor which resulted in a total of 50 years imprisonment.

After serving only six years of his sentence, Wood was again granted parole and released on January 14, 1987, whereupon he returned to El Paso. Shortly afterwards, he found a job at a furniture store, but occasionally moonlighted as a laborer and auto mechanic. In his spare time, Wood frequented various bars and nightclubs, favoring those with topless dancers. In addition, he was acquainted and even became a member of a motorcycle club, as this activity had become a keen interest of his during his imprisonment. With his charismatic personality, long hair, and many tattoos, Wood proved popular amongst teenage girls and young adult women, allowing him to have many admirers and multiple girlfriends, one of whom even became his permanent roommate.

Between February and August 1987, nine girls aged between 13 and 24 went missing in the El Paso area. The first of them was 14-year-old Marjorie Knox, who disappeared on February 14. She lived in Chaparral, New Mexico, a suburb of El Paso, but on that day, she had gone to the city to attend a Valentine's Day party in Veterans Park with friends. Three weeks later, on March 7, 13-year-old Melissa Alaniz also went missing. Both girls' parents knew each other, as they worked at the Rockwell Company. Alaniz's parents told police that in the months prior to her disappearance, their daughter had been going through puberty and had become acquainted with a group of young men with criminal records.

In September 1987, 14-year-old Dawn Marie Smith, a student at Parkland High School, was reported missing. She had gotten into an argument with her parents in June before running away from home, saying that she would never return. She remained in contact with some of her family members until August 28, when all contact ceased. Local informants told police officers that Smith had been shot and killed by a biker on a property in Chaparral, but this has never been conclusively verified.

After re-interviewing witnesses to the girls' disappearances, investigators learned that Casio had been seen in the company of Wood shortly before she vanished. Charles Lloyd, a witness in the Baker case, told them that Wood knew the victim and often gave her rides on his motorcycle, and on the day of her disappearance, Baker had gotten into a beige pickup truck that closely matched Wood's own vehicle. Friends and acquaintances of Smith also testified that she knew Wood, as they had repeatedly suggested that she got out with him. Based on these facts, Wood was arrested on charges of kidnapping and raping Kelling on October 23, 1987, to which he pleaded not guilty.

After Wood's conviction, police obtained a search warrant for his car, personal items, and apartment based on testimony from friends and acquaintances of the murdered girls and women, all of whom claimed that they had last seen him in each of the victim's company. Wood's roommate told police that in the fall of 1987, shortly before his arrest, he had carefully cleaned the interior of his car of various debris with a vacuum cleaner. Because Kelling claimed that before committing the rape, Wood had taken a shovel and a blanket out of his truck, police concentrated their efforts on finding the blanket.

In March 1980, he committed two rapes eight days apart: in the first incident, he raped a 19-year-old female acquaintance, and in the second, he raped a 13-year-old girl whom he did not know. He was soon after found guilty and given a 20-year sentence, and during his incarceration, Wood developed a reputation as a model inmate and underwent several sex offender rehabilitation programs.

In August 1976, Wood was arrested on charges of indecent exposure and sexual harassment of an underage girl, for which he was convicted the following year and given a 5-year prison sentence. After serving approximately two years, he was granted parole and released on December 28, 1978.

Wood's attorneys provided the court with evidence that their client had taken six IQ tests from 1977 to 2011, with his scores being in the following chronological order: 111, 64, 71, 101, 67, and 57. However, because the tests were categorized by age group and showed a person's development appropriate to his age, the records did not provide details about which versions of the tests Wood took when he was younger, leading to the dismissal of his appeal in 2014. After reviewing the legal document, the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals ruled that the forensic psychiatric findings were questionable and the psychologists' methods for assessing Wood's adaptive functioning were not thorough or reliable. Thusly, the court ruled that Wood and his attorneys had failed to produce clear evidence of his alleged intellectual impairment.

A month later, on August 20, the parents of 24-year-old Rosa Maria Casio contacted the police. They claimed that she had been visiting her sister in Ciudad Juárez on August 12, and in the evening, she went to El Paso by car to buy postage stamps, but then vanished. On the following morning, her 1974 Ford Gran Torino was found abandoned at a street, with Casio's belongings still inside it. Interviews with local residents provided no useful information relating to her vanishing. Casio worked as a topless dancer in a bar in El Paso, but according to her parents, she was not involved in prostitution and planned to enroll in Dallas College Brookhaven Campus to complete her education.

In the early 1970s, Wood began spending most of his free time outdoors, during which he developed an addiction to alcohol and drugs. In 1974, at the age of 17, he quit Parkland High School after the ninth grade and attempted to enlist in the Army, but was rejected. Because of this, Wood resorted to doing manual labor and odd jobs to make a living for a few years.

In the mid-1960s, Betty Wood was committed to a psychiatric hospital for six months, where she was treated via electroconvulsive therapy. While she was allowed to return home after her release, she was prescribed drugs that she later began abusing, further deteriorating her mental health. Due to the numerous problems between them, Wood's parents paid little to no attention to their children, due to which David and his siblings were sent off to live with relatives in Chaparral, New Mexico, and even spent time in foster homes.

David Leonard Wood (born June 20, 1957), known as The Desert Killer, is an American serial killer and rapist who killed at least six women in El Paso, Texas between May and August 1987, burying their bodies in the desert. While he has denied culpability for the crimes, he was nonetheless convicted and sentenced to death.

David Leonard Wood was born on June 20, 1957, in San Angelo, Texas, the second of four children. In the 1960s, his father, Leo, moved the family to a luxurious neighborhood in El Paso, where he held an executive position with the El Paso Electric Company. While the family was considered well off, their private life was troublesome, as Wood's mother Betty, who had started showing signs of mental illness, began to frequently argue with his father. In turn, his father would beat him with a paddle whenever he misbehaved.