Rosendo Rodriguez
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Rosendo Rodriguez III (26 March 1980 - 27 March 2018) was an American double murderer and rapist executed for the 2005 rape and murder of Summer Baldwin in Lubbock, Texas. He was also linked to the murder of Joanna Rogers the previous year.
Biography edit
Rodriguez was born in Wichita Falls, Texas, in March 1980. He was abused by his father, Rosendo Rodriguez Jr. He attended the Texas Tech University and worked as an office clerk.
On 13 September 2005, the body of sex worker Summer Baldwin, who had disappeared two days earlier, was found curled in the fetal position in a suitcase in a landfill in Lubbock. She had been strangled and had suffered a severe beating, but had actually died from positional asphyxia caused when she was shoved into the suitcase. She also had injuries indicating she had been raped. The Universal Product Code on the suitcase was used to trace the Walmart where the killer had bought it. CCTV footage from the Walmart found that two people had bought identical suitcases, a woman and a man. The woman was excluded due to the evidence that the killer had raped Summer Baldwin, so police focused on the male suspect, whose debit card details identified him as Rosendo Rodriguez III.
The hotel room Rodriguez had been staying in at the time was searched and found to contain a tag from the suitcase, several Walmart bags, a condom wrapper, blood spatter from Summer Baldwin and latex gloves with Baldwin and Rodriguez's DNA on them. A witness told police he had seen Summer Baldwin entering the hotel with a Hispanic man resembling Rodriguez. A warrant was issued for Rodriguez's arrest, and Rodriguez was arrested on 15 September. After Rodriguez's arrest, he was found to have searched for information about Baldwin's murder multiple times.
Rodriguez made a partial confession to the murder, admitting he had killed Baldwin but claiming that they had had consensual sex before she attacked him with a knife and he had placed her in a chokehold, killing her. He was unable to explain the up to 50 blunt force trauma injuries on Baldwin's body or why her blood was all over the room. Police and prosecutors also suspected that Rodriguez had been involved in the disappearence of Joanna Rogers in May 2004 and offered Rodriguez a deal; if he had any knowledge of Rogers's disappearence and helped police to find her, he would be spared the death penalty. Rodriguez initially accepted the deal, confessing to police that he had killed Rogers (like Baldwin, he claimed she had attacked him after they had consensual sex and been killed in self-defence) and leading them to her body, which was also stuffed in a suitcase buried in the landfill. However, Rodriguez still pleaded not guilty to murder, invalidating his deal and allowing the prosecution to seek the death penalty. He was only charged with Baldwin's murder because his confession to Rogers's murder was rendered inadmissible by a legal technicality.
Rodriguez maintained at trial that he had killed Summer Baldwin in self-defence. The prosecution rejected this argument, pointing to the extensive injuries and evidence of sexual violence that Rodriguez failed to explain. He was convicted and sentenced to death. An appeal to the Supreme Court alleging prosecutorial misconduct was rejected and Rodriguez was executed by lethal injection on 27 March 2018.