HARRIS COUNTY, Texas — A 61-year-old Houston man was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole after a jury found him guilty of capital murder.
The trial lasted seven days. David Spates was convicted Monday after the jury deliberated for only 19 minutes.
WARNING: Details of this crime, which are laid out below, are gruesome and could be disturbing for some readers.
"This was not just a vicious and cruel murder, it was a premeditated and planned-out capital murder," Harris County District Attorney Kim Ogg said. "The victim was tied up, with a garbage bag over her head, and then beaten with a hammer, stomped on and stabbed until she was dead."
What happened
Spates and 28-year-old Kayla Lary used drugs together with a group of people. Lary, a mother, found herself at a home in a rural area of northeast Harris County with Spates on June 24, 2020, when he accused her of talking to the police about another man who had been arrested earlier that year.
Spates tied her up by her wrists and ankles before beating her with a hammer and stabbing her. He covered her head with a trash bag as prosecutors said Lary begged for her life. A witness said they heard Lary screaming that she just wanted to go home to be with her child.
After she was killed, her car was ditched in the woods and her body was dumped in the San Jacinto River.
"No one deserves to die like that, and he threw her away like she was a piece of trash," Assistant District Attorney Kathryn Rogers said. "We are thankful to the jurors who listened to the facts of this horrible case and did the right thing."
Her decomposed remains were found 10 days later but investigators found it difficult to determine her exact cause of death.
