Andre Thomas, Texas Death Row Inmate, Pulls Out Eye, Eats it

HOUSTON — A Texas death row inmate with a history of mental problems pulled out his only good eye and told authorities he ate it. Andre Thomas, 25, was arrested for the fatal stabbings of his estranged wife, their young son and her 13-month-old daughter in March 2004. Their hearts also had been ripped out. He was convicted and condemned for the infant's death.

While in the Grayson County Jail in Sherman, Thomas plucked out his right eye before his trial later in 2004. A judge subsequently ruled he was competent to stand trial.

A death-row officer at the Polunsky Unit of the Texas Department of Criminal Justice found Thomas in his cell with blood on his face and took him to the infirmary.

""Thomas said he pulled out his eye and subsequently ingested it," agency spokesman Jason Clark said Friday.

Thomas was treated at East Texas Medical Center in Tyler after the Dec. 9 incident. Then he was transferred and remains at the Jester Unit, a prison psychiatric facility near Richmond southwest of Houston.

"He will finally be able to receive the mental health care that we had wanted and begged for from day 1," Bobbie Peterson-Cate, Thomas' trial attorney, told the Sherman Herald Democrat. "He is insane and mentally ill. It is exactly the same reason he pulled out the last one."

At his trial, defense lawyers also argued he suffered from alcohol and drug abuse.

Thomas does not have an execution date.

The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals in October upheld his conviction and death sentence for the death of 13-month-old Leyha Marie Hughes. Also killed March 27, 2004, were his wife, Laura Christine Boren, 20, and their son, 4-year-old Andre Lee.

Thomas, from Texoma, walked into the Sherman Police Department and told a dispatcher he had just murdered the three and had stabbed himself in the chest.

Thomas told police how he put his victims' hearts in his pocket and left their apartment, took them home, put them in a plastic bag and threw them in the trash.

Court documents described the three victims as having "large, gaping wounds to their chests."

Comments

[durrati]

I came across this aritcle while researching mental health and the death penalty.
I live in the UK and can honestly say that I have never been more shocked at the comments made by what seems to be the majority of contributors.
The extreme lack of understanding about diagnostic criteria and the resulting attitudes that seems to accept that killing people who are clearly suffering from psychosis is ok reflects the same belief the Nazi's had towards mental illness.
They put people out of their misery as well for being ill.
Because of the extreme views I am using them to demonstrate the clear difference that exists between many people in Texas and the european culture.( I teach mental health in Sheffield England)
I am sure that many of you are proud of your views and that what makes it even more chilling to most people. To the detractors who stand against this Texas killing mentality you have my admiration.

[kth416]

If he would have been in prison already for getting her pregnant at 15 or 16 (pregnancy being nine months and she had the boy at 16) then he would not have been out to kill her. We should enforce the laws we have to avoid tragedies like this!

[shankenstein]

You make an excellent point, but in some places 16 is the legal age. If it's not in Texas, Andre Thomas still was only 17 when she was 16.

[tweedy54]

Why in the world is this article on HuffPost?????????????????
The New NATIONAL INQUIRER??????!!
Jeez......

[okiloki]

I have been watching this story since the beginning. I work in Sherman and have heard all the details about this young man. He has had mental health problems for most of his life but there was no proper treatment for him. He was hyper religious and quoted the Bible, common with the insane, before he killed the family and then turned himself in. Both times he plucked out an eye, he was reading the Bible.

This is a sad story of a young man that should have been getting treatment years before this happened but slipped through the cracks and there in no one willing to take responsibility for that. I'm ashamed that our community let it go this far. I pray for both families.

[JFaye]

Why is someone with mental illness on death row?

A greater question though is why would any response to this story present cause for jokes or laughter. The mentally ill in our country is a segment of the population who suffer greatly because treatment is not available and unfortunately in the absence of strong advocacy, the illness and patients go untreated. Poor treatment and lack of medical services results in desperate, impulsive acts and the aggression is usually levied against family members or others within close proximity.

To ignore this vulnerable segment of our overall population, places everyone else at risk. The humanitarian thing to do is seriously commit to making funds available and help those "suffering" with mental illness and their families. Perhaps if treating mental illness could evolve into a capital or profit venture, the help sorely needed would become available.

[Toker]

Is the food there that bad? Geeeez!

[adamsmith3]

He probably ate his eye to bolster an insanity plea. It certainly seemed to work for some of the posters on this thread who feel that he is too mentally ill to be put to death but should rather just be locked up for life. Sorry guy, what you did was horrific. If our justice system was more efficient, you would have been walked straight from your second appeals trial after the guilty verdict(yes, we'll still give you an appeal) to a sterilized room with a series of syringes waiting for you. At least we'll do it humanely and with reason. And this way you won't have time to kill eating your eyeball.

[TexasProgressive3]

Hey man, excuse me but ya got a little sumpin' dripping from the corner of your mouth there... Looks like blo.od...

[adamsmith3]

Why is this guy still alive anyway? Get a move on.

[1differentdrummer]

Capital punishment is inhumane and uncivilized.

[friscotxmom]

From the facts contained in the article, it is not clear that he is insane. Did he plan and plot this crime and tear out their hearts because she left him or did he do it on the fly because he was delusional? Are the eye-pluckings a calculated attempt to avoid a conviction and the death penalty or did he do it in the midst of psychosis? There are very crazy, but sane, people that would go to this extreme to try and manipulate their circumstances. There are no mention of motives or methodology of the crime and there are not enough facts to justify all the pleas of insanity that are being posted.

Having said that, Texas has a really outdated qualification for an insanity defense considering how much we now know about mental health. In Texas, to be allowed to claim insanity, a person has to not know that what they are doing is against the law at the time of the crime. This is why Andrea Yates was not able to mount this defense. She called 911 and told them what she had done, therefore demonstrating that she knew that it was wrong when she did it. A person's history of mental illness plays no part in determining the state of mind at the time of the crime; only the snapshot of what the state of mind was at that very moment counts. It is appalling and needs to be changed.

[SouthPrairie]

Uh, thanks for sharing?

[SouthPrairie]

uhhhhhhhhh.....thanks for sharing.

[Zengeist]

I dare him to do that again! God Almighty, the world is crazy these days.

[Toker]

He did.

[canadiansoccermom]

Our knowledge and treatment of mental illness has barely improved since the dark ages. If this man had proper treatment his family would still be alive.

[SinisterK9]

Yeah, I'm sure. I'm sure a few pills and a counselor would have helped stop him from the massacre he committed right before he still had the presence of mind to turn himself into the police.

What treatment is there for a psychopath like this guy other than death?

[canadiansoccermom]

That is what I am saying. If we had public awareness and the medical field on the ball, he would have been dealt with in what ever fashion neccessary so that he couldn't do this to anybody. What is so difficult to understand about that.

[smag]

This the one of the problems I have with the Death Penalty. The process moves like evolution. Go ahead and put this punk out of his misery. He never gave his wife and kid due process. The Justice system sucks. If they wait maybe he will just eat him self to death. He is not crazy just stupid and a sociapath. Why didn't he eat his eye befrore he kille his wife and kit.

[canadiansoccermom]

We haven't evolved at all where mental illness is concerned. If this guy had been treated or if doctors after all this time would know how to treat him, his family would still be alive. This is the real tragedy. It didn't have to happen. Nor would Andrea Yates have killed her five children. Many of the homeless people that we think are just drunk are actually suffering from mental illness.

[DeAnnaClaudette]

Unfortunately, few people care about the mentally ill. Not unless it touches their lives personally. Your wife, husband, daughter, son, mother, father, sister, brother ends up with schizophrenia or bipolar, you THEN wish that there was more compassion and more help available for them. But rarely before then.

[canadiansoccermom]

This is true and very often families can't do anything because the person with mental illness can't be treated unless they sign fot it themselves.
When you hear of adult children killing their parents, it is usually due to mental illness more often than not. Guaranteed those families dealt with family violence for years and recieved no help.

[DelvinMcGee]

If only someone had cared for him... Blah blah blah. What kind of bleeding heart liberal does it take to justify a sociopath who cuts out his own child's heart?

Earth to Canada. Some people are just bad. Those bad people do bad things, not because a slew of folks didn't intervene, but because they are bad.

Those bad people need to be punished, and punished quickly.

Does the concept of personal responsibility just not make it through your ears into your head?

[canadiansoccermom]

If you read my post properly you would realize I am not sympathizing with him but his murdered wife and children as well as Andrea Yates' children. It doesn't have to happen. A lot of crimes that are commited could have been prevented if we have proper mental health treatment and proper public information.

[canadiansoccermom]

So you believe he's a sociopath. He probably is that or schizophrenic. So then don't you think it would be better for society that he was properly diagnosed earlier in his life and put either on the right medication or if neccessary, institutionalized before he could do any damage. Look at the 20 year old Canadian guy traveling home on the bus to see his family. A man from another seat attacked him in his sleep stabbing him repeatedly. Everyone left the bus. When thaen police had him surrounded he decapitated the kid and was tearing him apart. Don't you think somebody should have intervened somewhere in this man's life. Guaranteed this wasn't the first time he displayed abnormal behavior. I also believe the sentence should be "guilty by reason of insanity".

BTW It wasn't neccessary to be insuting.

[canadiansoccermom]

So you think he's a sociopath. He probably is that or schizophrenic. So then don't you think it would have been better for society that someone had intervened before he did this.
Look at the 20 year old Canadian guy traveling home to his family by bus. A passenger from another seat attacked him in his sleep stabbing him repeatedly. The other passengers ran off the bus. When the police had him surrounded he decapitated the kid, tore him apart and ate pieces of him. Guaranteed both these men displayed abnormal behavior way before they did they. They needed to be properly medicated or taken out of society and institutionalized. We need better mental health awareness for the public and accessible treatment.

BTW it wasn't necessary to be insulting.

[kalerik]

Do you even have a clue how many people live in Texas, and how many of us are liberal democrats? The right wing fools who run this state will be dying/outvoted in a few years - it's a simple matter of demographics. Please do not dismiss this whole state. We will be blue very, very soon.

Having said that, as a blue Texan who is anti-death penalty, where is your sympathy for the poor woman and the two children who this guy sadistically murdered? Yes, the man is sick and insane, but there are plenty of people who are mentally ill/ insane who do not cut the hearts out of babies, eat their own eyeballs, etc. I really have no sympathy for this guy.

[friscotxmom]

Tell it! People don't understand that this state is full of yella-dogs. In fact, Texas has had 47 governors and only SIX of them were Republican; four of them only elected in the last 30 years. If you look at the election returns from this past presidential election, it'll show that every major city in Texas (voted blueexcept for those in Northwest Texas; you simply cannot convince cowboys that W is not one of them.) Yes, that INCLUDES Dallas and Houston. It makes me so mad when people equate W with Texas. Yeah, I saw the t-shirts about our viliage but people don't seem to understand that most of us weren't exactly "missing" him.