Texas has executed Sandoval Mendoza, a rapist and killer described by one prosecutor as one of the most “violent, sadistic men” he’d ever encountered.”
Mendoza, 40, was executed by lethal injection for the murder of 20-year-old Rachelle O’Neil Tolleson on March 18, 2004, in Farmersville, Texas, just northeast of Dallas. Mendoza is the third inmate executed in Texas this year and the 13th in the nation. He was pronounced dead at 6:40 p.m. CT.
At the time of her death, Tolleson was a new mother to her 6-month-old daughter Avery.
Mendoza used his last words to apologize to Tolleson’s family.
“I am sorry for having robbed you of Rachelle’s life,” he said. “To Avery … I robbed you of a mother. I’m sorry for that. I know nothing that I could ever say or do would ever make up for that. I want you to know I am sincere. I apologize.”
Mendoza’s case gained a sort of notoriety in the years since the murder. In 2006, it was featured in the 10th season of “Forensic Files” and in 2008, the Investigation Discovery series “Solved” highlighted the case.
Here’s what to know about Mendoza’s execution, including more about who his victim was.
‘I turned into the devil’: More about Texas death row inmate Moises Mendoza
What was Moises Mendoza convicted of?
In the early hours of March 18, 2004, Rachelle O’Neil Tolleson was at home with her 6-month-old daughter Avery in Farmersville, a small town about 40 miles northeast of Dallas. Tolleson and Avery lived there alone, as Rachelle was in the middle of a divorce with her then-husband Andrew Tolleson.
Mendoza told police he let himself inside Tolleson’s house through a back door that night, per court documents. The two left to get a pack of cigarettes, leaving baby Avery at home.
Mendoza drove a little while before he began to choke Tolleson in his vehicle “for no reason,” he said, according to court documents. He then drove the two to a field near his house, where he raped her before choking her again, court documents say.
Mendoza then dragged Tolleson out of his truck and choked her again until he thought she was dead, Mendoza told police. To make sure, he “poked her throat” with a knife. Mendoza left her body in the field, where it remained for a few days before he was interviewed by police about Tolleson’s disappearance, court records say.
Paranoid, Mendoza wrapped Tolleson’s body in a tarp and moved it to his cousin’s land in a more remote area, just a few miles east of Farmersville. He then dumped the body in a “dug-out pit” and set it on fire to “destroy the fingerprints,” he told police, The Courier Gazette reports.
“I don’t know what happened to me at that moment. I turned into the devil and after I did something that I thought was in a dream,” Mendoza wrote in a letter to his parents, as published by The Courier-Gazette.
A man searching for arrowheads found Tolleson’s charred body a few days after Mendoza moved it, the newspaper reported.
Mendoza was convicted of murder and sentenced to death.
Who was Rachelle O’Neil Tolleson?
Pam and Mark O’Neil, Tolleson’s parents, described their daughter as a doting mother to Avery, according to court proceedings and archived stories.
“She wanted more than anything in life to watch her baby take her first steps, say her first word, and she’ll never get to hear her daughter call her Mommy,” Pam O’Neil told Mendoza during his sentencing, per The Courier-Gazette. She later said in the 2006 “Forensic Files” episode that Avery was Tolleson’s “oxygen.”
O’Neil said that she and Avery frequently watched home videos of Tolleson, including Avery’s first and only Christmas with her mother, and looked through scrapbooks that Tolleson and O’Neil made together.
“I don’t think we’ll ever heal. I don’t think a mother ever truly heals from the loss of a child,” she told The Courier-Gazette in 2005. “I can’t believe my grandbaby will grow up without a mother.”
The O’Neils did not immediately respond to requests to speak about their late daughter, but Mark has recognized Tolleson in several public Facebook posts over the years.
In 2021, Mark shared a photo of Tolleson from her wedding day on Facebook.
“Happy birthday to my beautiful daughter in heaven,” he wrote. “I love you and miss you every day, baby girl.”
Who was Moises Mendoza?
Neighbors described Mendoza as “hard-working” but said he changed as he got older, recounting a “violent argument” when he pinned down his mother and sister in their front yard, as previously reported by The Courier-Gazette.
Mendoza graduated high school, where he did “fairly well,” court documents state. He received a few high school scholarships and completed about nine months of heating and air-conditioning training upon graduating.
In 2003, Mendoza was arrested for his involvement in two aggravated robberies on the Dallas College Richland Campus, according to The Courier-Gazette reporting. It was while he was out on bail for one of these robberies that Tolleson went missing, the 2006 “Forensic Files” episode explains.
For much of their upbringing in northern Texas, Mendoza and Tolleson were actually in the same grade school classes, Tolleson’s mother explained in “Forensic Files.” And the Friday before Tolleson’s murder, Mendoza had been at Tolleson’s house for a party of about 15 people, court documents say.
Clinical psychologist Mark Vigen described Mendoza as “immature” and “psychologically under-developed,” claiming that Mendoza enjoyed getting away with “being sneaky” and got angry when others criticized him, court documents say.
During Mendoza’s sentencing, former Collin County First Assistant District Attorney Greg Davis described Mendoza as “one of the most violent, sadistic men” he’d ever helped convict.
Contributing: Amanda Lee Myers, USA TODAY
Greta Cross is a national trending reporter at USA TODAY. Story idea? Email her at [email protected].
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Moises Mendoza, a ‘sadistic killer,’ executed in Texas
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