The Kennedale Murders

John Hummel was a 34-year-old former Marine who worked overnight security at a hospital in Arlington, Texas, and lived in Kennedale, a small city southeast of Fort Worth. In October 2009 he began an affair with a convenience-store clerk. Not long after, he tried to kill his family with rat poison stirred into a spaghetti dinner. Joy threw the meal out because the meat had turned green.

On the night of December 17, 2009, Hummel stabbed his wife Joy, who was 34 and pregnant, dozens of times in her bed. She fought him hard enough to leave scratches down his back. He beat their five-year-old daughter Jodi and Joy’s father, Clyde “Eddie” Bedford, who used a wheelchair. Then he set the house on fire. Investigators found the blaze had been started in three separate places and established that all three victims were dead before the flames spread.

Hummel drove to California. Border officers stopped him at the San Diego crossing on December 20, as he returned on foot from Mexico, and he confessed to Texas investigators two days later. A Tarrant County jury convicted him of capital murder on June 23, 2011, and he was sentenced to death. A March 2020 execution date was stayed because of the pandemic. Texas executed him by lethal injection on June 30, 2021.