A convicted killer known as "Spiderman" because he once was able to slither through jail bars and escape to freedom was executed Wednesday for fatally beating a man during a carjacking in San Antonio almost 20 years ago.
George Cordova, 39, was pronounced dead at 6:30 p.m., 6 minutes after the dose of lethal drugs was released into his arms.
Cordova delivered a rambling and repetitive 9-minute statement in which he apologized for the murder and urged his family and fellow death-row inmates to remain strong.
"If I could die a hundred times to bring him back I would do it," he said while looking toward his victim's brother, Alfred Hernandez, who watched through glass a few feet away.
"I just don't know what to say to relieve your pain.  I'm embarrassed to see your face because I feel your pain...I hope you all can take this bad experience and turn it into something positive."
He continued: "If I see your brother I'm going to hug him.  I don't think I'm worth (sic) to be anywhere near where he's at.  If he will allow me to be his servant, I'll tie his shoes.  I'll do anything.   I'm just sorry," he told Hernandez.  The brother, his eyes watering, returned the nod.
Cordova told his family: "I am strong, but I did wrong and I have to face up to it. I want to suffer and suffer hard."
He then began speaking in Spanish in apparent prayer before the drugs were administered.
Cordova, whose appeal was rejected earlier this week by the U.S. Supreme Court, was the 4th condemned murderer to receive lethal injection in Texas this year and the 1st of 2 scheduled to die this week.
He was 19 and already had a long criminal record when he was arrested for the Aug. 4, 1979, murder of Jose Hernandez, 19, at San Antonio's Espada Park.  Hernandez's girlfriend was beaten and gang-raped during the attack, but survived and testified against Cordova.
"I am not guilty of this crime, of the charges brought against me," Cordova contended in an interview several years ago.  "I know in my heart I did not kill Hernandez."
Cordova, who completed the 6th grade and worked as a laborer, had other convictions for burglary, robbery, illegal weapons possession and sexual battery.  His 1st arrest came at age 11 for tormenting a police dog.
In 1980, while being held at the Bexar County Jail awaiting trial for the Hernandez murder, he slipped through a gap in the bars and climbed out of a 4th-floor window by using a rope made of sheets.
5 months later, he was arrested in Okeechobee County, Fla., and sentenced to 30 years for raping a teacher.  The day before his rape trial, he was caught trying to saw his way out of jail.  He also
participated in a 1981 riot at the Sumter Correctional Institution in Florida.
"He's a continuing danger, obviously, if you're awaiting trial on capital murder and have the guts to commit a sexual assault," Mary Kay Delavan, one of the Bexar County district attorneys who prosecuted Cordova, said this week.
During his murder trial in San Antonio, bailiffs discovered Cordova had a key to his handcuffs.  And while on death row, he was questioned about involvement in the stabbing of a fellow inmate, was found passing a knife to another inmate, had 11 marijuana cigarettes found in his cell and was caught scaling a wall that separates two recreation yards.
Cordova's original conviction was thrown out in 1988 when a federal appeals court ruled his jury was given improper instructions.  He was retried in 1989 and again was convicted and sentenced to death.
Cordova's attorneys insisted an accomplice, Manuel Villanueva, who was 18 at the time of the killing, actually committed the murder by stabbing Hernandez in the neck, severing his spinal cord.  Cordova was identified as beating the victim with a tire iron.
Villanueva pleaded guilty to a lesser charge of murder and received a life prison term.  2 others believed involved in the crime never were charged.
Cordova, Villanueva and their companions approached Hernandez and his girlfriend as they sat in a car and asked for a ride to a gas station.  When Hernandez balked, he was pulled from the car and beaten and stabbed in the neck.  The woman was taken to a nearby wooded area where she was gang-raped.  The attackers then drove away in the victims' car.
"It's going to be 20 years since the crime," Ms. Delavan said.  "It's frustrating.  I just hate to have victims hanging around this long, waiting."
On Thursday, Danny Lee Barber, a California man spared from execution by an 11th-hour Supreme Court reprieve in December, was scheduled to die for the 1979 beating death of a Dallas County woman.

(source:  Associated Press)

HUNTSVILLE (AP) -- The U.S. Supreme Court rejected Monday an emergency request and
formal appeal filed on behalf of condemned killer George Cordova, clearing the way for the San
Antonio man’s execution scheduled for later this week.
"To be honest, I don’t have much hope," Cordova’s attorney, Steven Harkiewicz, said.
Only Justices John Paul Stevens and Ruth Bader Ginsburg voted to postpone the lethal injection, set
for Wednesday evening.
Cordova, 39, is known as "Spiderman" because he once was able to slip through a 6-inch-wide gap
in the bars at the Bexar County jail and flee to freedom.