ARLINGTON - Police Detective Tommy Le Noir remembers the alarm that gripped this city in 1996 after two young women were found strangled in the bathtubs of their east Arlington apartment complex.
"There was a lot of fear in the community and in the Police Department," Le Noir said. "The fear is that you don't want this to happen again. At that time there was some incredible panic in those apartment complexes. People moved out in masses. It was just an incredible time."
Tuesday night, almost 13 years after the crimes, the state plans to execute 35-year-old Dale Devon Scheanette for the so-called "bathtub murders" of Wendie Prescott and Christine Vu.
On Friday, the Texas Board of Pardon and Paroles voted unanimously against asking Gov. Rick Perry to commute Scheanette's death sentence.
Fort Worth attorney Richard Alley, who represented Scheanette on appeal, said he has not been his attorney for more than a year.
"I was withdrawn at his request," Alley said this week, adding that Scheanette has since handled his own appeals, which thus far have been unsuccessful. "I was the lawyer on deck. Then he took over from there."
4 years later
It took police four years to link Scheanette to the crimes - the result, Le Noir said, of strong criminal science.
A fingerprint was left at Prescott's apartment, but police could not immediately match it. Using advanced technology, investigators eventually linked it to Scheanette. They also matched his fingerprints to a print found in Vu's apartment.
"We strongly suspected it was the same person without the forensics," Le Noir said. "Eventually we did get a genetic link. We knew we had the same suspect. We also had, in both cases, some comparable latent fingerprints at both scenes."
Scheanette was also linked to sexual assaults in Lancaster and at the University of Texas at Arlington.
But it was the macabre slayings that drew the public's attention - and fear.
Prescott, 22, and Vu, 26, were neighbors of Scheanette's at the Peartree apartments. On Christmas Eve 1996, Prescott had planned a shopping trip with her sister. When her family didn't hear from her, an uncle went to her apartment.
There, he found Prescott naked in a partially filled bathtub. Her wrists and feet were tied with duct tape and she had been strangled and raped, police said.
Prescott's slaying came three months after Vu, an elementary school teacher, was found dead inside her apartment. She, too, had been raped and strangled and left in her bathtub.
Brenda Norwood, Prescott's aunt, said she hopes Scheanette has come to terms with his crimes and accepted responsibility for his actions.
"I hope he asks God to forgive him to save his soul," said Norwood, of Mansfield. "I had to forgive because I can't live with that. I can't hate him for what he did because that would not bring Wendie back. You have to move on."
Norwood said her niece worked as a teacher's aide at Erma Nash Elementary in Mansfield, but she also was enrolled in a beauty college. She loved to dress up and spend time with her family and friends, her aunt said.
"Wendie was a beautiful young lady," Norwood said. "She was always hugging people. She was very affectionate. She loved people, not things. She treated people the way she wanted to be treated."
Witnessing execution
Norwood said she and the rest of Prescott's family have no plans to attend Scheanette's execution.
"I have no desire to go down and witness that because that will not enhance my life at all," she said. "You have to let the law of the land prevail."
But Vu's family said that they will be there. Not for revenge against her killer, but to honor her life.
"Most of us, we have had closure," said Dr. Kim Kuo, Vu's sister who said she plans to witness the execution.
"We've accepted [Christine's death], but I will go mainly to bear witness for her."
Kuo said the family is proud that her sister was able to achieve her lifetime goal of becoming an educator. Vu was a third-grade teacher at Moore Elementary in Arlington. As a child, Kuo said, Vu frequently placed their younger siblings in front of a chalkboard, taking charge of their lessons.
"She loved children," Kuo said. "I wished she had had a chance to have her own kids."
