Edward Busby Jr. was pronounced dead at 8:11 p.m. just a few hours after a divided Supreme Court lifted a stay of execution over his disability claims.  On May 14th, 2026, the state of Texas carried out its 600th execution since 1982. Inside a prison chamber in Huntsville, this 53-year-old man named Edward Lee Busby Jr. is strapped to a gurney.

 His arms are outstretched. Witnesses sit behind the glass. Among them, the family of his victim. He looks directly at them. 22 years earlier, a 77-year-old woman named Laura Lee Crane drove to her local grocery store on an ordinary Friday morning. She never made it home. What happened to her over the next 36 to 48 hours is something quite unimaginable.

And what she said to the man who took her in those very first minutes, you will not believe it. But to understand that execution gurney on May 14th, 2026, we have to go back, way back. This is Red Mark Files. If you are new here, this channel covers true crime cases with real facts, real consequences, and real people.

 Hit the like button, subscribe to this channel, and turn on the notification bell, so you never miss a case. Now, let’s get into it. Before we talk about what happened in that parking lot, you need to know who Laura Lee Crane was. Laura was born and raised right there in Fort Worth, Texas. She attended Pascal High School, graduated, and then left Texas to earn her Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from Sweet Briar College in Virginia.

 She came back home to TCU, Texas Christian University, and earned her Master of Arts degree there. And then she gave her life to a cause that most people would never even think twice about. She joined the founding faculty of the Starpoint School at TCU, a school built entirely for children with learning disabilities.

 Children who sat in regular classrooms and were told, in so many ways, that they just were not good enough. Laura saw those children differently. She believed in them. She did not just teach there, she led it. For over 20 years, she served as the school’s director. She wrote a reading program for students with learning differences, a program that became nationally recognized.

 She was also a member of the Assembly Fort Worth Women’s Club and the Fort Worth Junior League. TCU’s provost at the time, William Koehler, said her impact on the university was profound, that she was beloved, that her students loved her. One of those students was historian Brian Mark Rigg. Decades later, he would stand as a witness at her killer’s execution, representing her family.

 He said that a woman who had spent her entire life helping struggling children was discarded in a field like a piece of trash. This was not a woman who had enemies. She was not in a dangerous situation. She was not involved in anything that put her at risk. She was 77 years old. Friday was simply her regular grocery day.

 She knew the Tom Thumb store on Hulen and Bellaire Drive. She had been there dozens of times. It was familiar. It was safe. It was the last morning of her life, and the first thing she did when a stranger forced his way into her car, she tried to connect with him as a human being. Let that detail sit with you for a while.

 Now, let’s talk about Edward Lee Busby Jr. At the time of the crime, Busby was in his early 30s. He lived in the Fort Worth, Texas area. He did not have a prominent job. He was not a public figure. On the surface, there was nothing about him that would make you look twice. But beneath that surface was a world built around crack cocaine.

Court records show that Busby was not a long-term planner. He did not sit down and map out a crime. What the record shows instead is a man who made impulsive, opportunistic decisions, someone who acted on what was in front of him, in the moment, based on immediate need. That pattern of thinking is exactly what put Laura Crane in danger.

Now, there is one more thing about Busby that would become the center of a 20-year legal battle. His attorneys argued that he was intellectually disabled. IQ tests taken over the years came back with different results. Both a defense expert and an expert hired by the Tarrant County District Attorney’s Office reportedly found that he met the criteria for intellectual disability.

At one point, the District Attorney’s own office recommended reducing his sentence from death to life in prison. That argument would follow this case all the way to the United States Supreme Court. But Kitty Latimer, speaking from prison years later, had no patience for it. When asked about the intellectual disability claims, her answer was short and sharp. He was not mentally impaired.

He was plain mean. Here is what was happening in the days leading up to January 30th, 2004. Kitty owed drug money in Fort Worth. That kind of debt does not stay quiet for long. She and Busby needed to get out of town. And to do that, they needed two things. A car and cash. There was no master plan. No detailed preparation.

 Court records make that clear. This was not a kidnapping that had been plotted over weeks. Busby and Kitty were simply moving through Fort Worth looking for an opportunity. Looking for the right moment. Looking for someone vulnerable. That morning, they ended up in the parking lot of the Tom Thumb grocery store on Hulen and Bellaire Drive.

 A man named Steve Humble worked next door at a men’s clothing store called The Squire Shop. He would later testify about what he witnessed just moments before the abduction. He saw a man moving through that parking lot pulling on car door handles, testing them one by one, checking for an unlocked car. Looking for a way in.

 About 30 yards behind him, a very blonde woman was walking fast trying to keep up. That man was Busby. That woman was Kitty. Then Busby saw Laura Lee Crane, 77 years old, sitting alone in her car in a busy parking lot on a bright Friday morning. He stopped. He made his decision, and he walked straight to her driver’s side door.

 What he did next, in broad daylight, in front of a store full of shoppers, and what she said back to him, is something that has never left the people who heard it. This was not a large operation. There was no group, no network, no layers of planning. It was just two people, Busby and Kitty. One stolen car, and a series of decisions that kept getting worse.

 When investigators later sat both of them down separately, they told completely different stories. Kitty told Fort Worth detectives that Busby was in control from the very first moment. She said he directed everything. She said that when she asked what he was doing, testing car door handles in that parking lot, he told her to shut up.

 According to her, she was following him, not leading him. Busby told investigators the exact opposite. He said Kitty was the one running the show, that he was just going along with her instructions, that it was Kitty who told him to tape Laura’s head. Two people, two completely opposite stories.

 So, how do you figure out the truth? You look at the evidence. Court records show that at one of the stops along Interstate 35 heading north toward Oklahoma, Kitty walked into a store and bought a roll of duct tape. Busby was outside in the parking lot, honking the horn, rushing her to hurry up. The tape was purchased. They got back in the car.

 Meanwhile, Laura Crane was still locked in the trunk. They checked into a motel along the highway. They drove around looking for crack cocaine. And at some point during those 36 to 48 hours, that duct tape was used. When forensic investigators later tested the tape recovered from Laura’s face, they found fingerprints.

 Just one set, not Kitty’s. Edward Lee Busby’s. Whatever either of them said inside those interrogation rooms, the physical evidence had already told its own story and it pointed in one direction only. If you are finding this one hard to look away from, same. Hit subscribe if you have not already. New cases every week. >> [music] >> Now, back to what happened on that highway. January 30th, 2004.

Afternoon. Fort Worth, Texas. Busby walks up to Laura’s car in the Tom Thumb parking lot. He pulls open the driver’s side door. He looks at her and says two words, “Slide over.” Kitty climbs in from the rear. The car pulls out of the parking lot and then Laura Crane does something that says everything about who she was.

 She does not scream. She does not beg. She turns to Kitty in the backseat and says, “Hi, darling.” Then she looks over at Busby behind the wheel and asks him a question that has stayed with this case ever since. “What would your mother say if she knew you were doing this?” A 77-year-old woman just carjacked and her first instinct is to speak to her kidnappers like they are human beings.

Not out of weakness, out of character. That was Laura Crane. Busby drove to a gas station first. They used Laura’s ATM card to pull out cash. Then, according to court records, he drove to the back of a vacant property near Airport Freeway and Beach Street in Fort Worth. He got Laura out of the front seat.

 He walked her around to the back of the car. He lifted the trunk open and he told her to get in. Laura got in. Busby shut the trunk. He got back behind the wheel and he pointed the car north toward Oklahoma on Interstate 35. For the next 36 to 48 hours, Laura was sealed in that trunk while Busby and Kitty made stops along the highway, stores, a motel, driving around searching for crack cocaine.

 At some point during those hours, Busby took that roll of duct tape and pressed it against Laura’s face. He wrapped it around her nose, around her mouth, layer after layer after layer, over everything. At trial, the Tarrant County Medical Examiner took the stand and testified to what the autopsy revealed. Approximately 23 ft of duct tape had been wrapped around Laura Crane’s face, applied with enough force to physically push her nose sideways, completely out of its natural position.

 She could not breathe through her nose. She could not breathe through her mouth. Every airway was sealed shut. Laura Lee Crane suffocated slowly, alone, in the dark, inside the locked trunk of her own car, while Busby drove through rural Oklahoma looking for drugs. When Busby and Kitty discovered she had died, they wrapped her body in a motel bedsheet.

 They drove to an embankment off an Interstate 35 service road near Davis, Oklahoma, just north of the Texas border. >> [music] >> They rolled her body down the slope, and they kept driving north. Two days later, a routine traffic stop in Oklahoma City would crack the entire case open, and what investigators found in that car would leave no room for doubt.

 After they left Laura’s body on that Oklahoma embankment, Busby and Kitty did not run. They did not ditch the car. They kept driving north in Laura’s car, using Laura’s money. Court records show that Busby and Kitty used her credit cards and a blank check to spend more than 775 dollars. They checked into motels. They continued searching for crack cocaine.

 Life for them appeared to go on as normal. Two full days after the abduction, on February 1st, 2004, Busby was still behind the wheel of Laura Crane’s vehicle, still driving it through Oklahoma City, making no effort to abandon it, making no effort to hide. There was no visible guilt, no documented panic, no sense, based on their behavior during those 36 to 48 hours that anything in that trunk had shaken them.

 Back in Fort Worth, the picture was completely different. Laura Crane had not come home from her Friday morning grocery run. The woman who had given over 20 years of her life to children with learning disabilities, who was loved by her students, respected by her colleagues, and known throughout the TCU community, was simply gone.

 Her family had no answers. No phone call, no explanation, nothing. And here is what makes this case so deeply painful to sit with. This was not a crime with a financial motive that had been planned out over time. It was a drug debt, a stolen car, and a string of decisions made by two people who treated a 77-year-old woman’s life as a minor inconvenience.

That is the truth of it. February 1st, 2004, Oklahoma City. An Oklahoma City police officer pulls over a vehicle for multiple traffic violations. He runs the plates. The car does not belong to the man behind the wheel. It belongs to Laura Lee Crane of Fort Worth, Texas. The man behind the wheel is Edward Lee Busby Jr. He is arrested on the spot.

Over the following days, Busby is questioned by the FBI, Oklahoma authorities, and Fort Worth homicide detectives. And from the very beginning, his stories do not hold up. His first account goes like this. He and Kitty did not take the car. A man named J.D., back in Fort Worth, gave it to them. And Laura’s body? Already in the trunk when they received it.

 They simply got rid of it along the highway. Investigators listened. Then they pushed back. There is no J.D. No one can confirm this story. Not a single piece of evidence supports it. The ATM withdrawals made on Laura’s card, the duct tape, the fingerprints, none of it fits a story about a car received from a stranger. The story falls apart completely.

 Then, on February 3rd, 2004, something significant happens. Busby does not wait to be taken there. He leads investigators himself to the embankment near Davis, Oklahoma, the spot where Laura’s body had been left off the Interstate 35 service road. Standing at that embankment, Busby gives a tape-recorded statement.

 He abandons the JD story entirely. He admits that he and Kitty took Laura from the Tom Thumb parking lot, robbed her, and that she died in the trunk. But then, he points the finger directly at Kitty. Standing at that embankment in Davis, Oklahoma, on February 3rd, 2004, Busby gives his tape-recorded statement. He admits the abduction.

 He admits the robbery. He admits that Laura died in that trunk. But he is not done talking. He tells investigators that Kitty was the one running everything, that he was simply following her lead from start to finish, that when it came to the duct tape, it was Kitty who gave the order. He says several times that he never meant for Laura to die.

 He even claims that before it happened, he prayed with her. Fort Worth detectives then sit down with Kitty separately. Her account is the complete opposite. She tells detectives that Busby was in control from the moment they stepped into that parking lot, that he was the one checking car doors, that when she questioned what he was doing, he told her to shut up.

 She says he directed every step of what happened, from the abduction to the drive north. Two people, two completely different stories. One of them is lying. The crime lab settles it. When forensic investigators process the duct tape recovered from Laura Crane’s face, the results leave no room for argument. Only one set of fingerprints is found on that tape. Not Kitty’s fingerprints.

 Edward Lee Busby’s. Every piece of physical evidence now lines up. The fingerprints on the duct tape, the tape recorded confession at the Oklahoma embankment, Laura’s ATM withdrawals made on her stolen card, Steve Humbles eyewitness account from the Tom Thumb parking lot. Together, they form a case that Busby cannot talk his way out of.

 In February 2006, Kathleen Latimer pleads guilty to murder. She is sentenced to life in prison and sent to the Mountain View Unit in Gatesville, Texas. Behind those walls, she earns her first Braille certification. Other inmates come to know her as Mama Kitty. Her parole eligibility date is 2034. She is currently 61 years old.

 Busby does not plead, he goes to trial. November 2005, Tarrant County Courthouse, downtown Fort Worth. Edward Lee Busby Jr. stands trial for capital murder. His defense attorneys build their case around his own recorded statements. The argument is straightforward. Busby did not plan to kill anyone.

 He was following Kitty’s instructions. This was a robbery and a carjacking that went wrong, not a deliberate murder. There was no intention to end Laura Crane’s life. Then the prosecution calls the Tarrant County Medical Examiner to the stand. The testimony stops the courtroom. 23 ft of duct tape wrapped around the face of a 77-year-old woman with enough force to physically push her nose out of its natural position.

 She could not breathe through her nose. She could not breathe through her mouth. She was completely sealed inside the trunk of her own car. She did not die quickly. She did not die painlessly. She suffocated slowly while Busby drove through rural Oklahoma. On November 11th, 2005, the jury returns its verdict, guilty of capital murder, sentenced to death.

 The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals later affirms both the conviction and the sentence, but Busby’s legal team is not finished. They begin a fight that will stretch across two decades built around one central argument that Busby is intellectually disabled. In 2002, the United States Supreme Court ruled in Atkins versus Virginia that executing an intellectually disabled person is unconstitutional.

Busby’s lawyers argue he qualifies. IQ tests taken over the years come back with different numbers, making the picture unclear. Then comes the extraordinary twist. Both the defense expert and an expert hired by the Tarrant County District Attorney’s Office reportedly conclude that Busby meets the criteria.

 The District Attorney’s own office recommends reducing his sentence to life in prison. The trial judge disagrees. In 2023, he reviews all the findings and upholds the death sentence. And Kitty, from her prison cell in Gatesville, has three words for the intellectual disability argument. He was playing mean. After the verdict on November 11th, 2005, Edward Lee Busby Jr. was sent to death row.

 He would spend over 20 years there. In that time, his legal team fought his sentence through every court they could reach, and his execution was scheduled and stopped not once, not twice, but three times. The first date was May 6th, 2020. It was stayed because of the COVID-19 pandemic.

 The second date was set in 2021. The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals stayed that one, too, ordering a further review of the intellectual disability claims. A third date was set, May 14th, 2026. Six days before that date, on May 8th, 2026, the Fifth United States Circuit Court of Appeals issued another temporary stay. Judge Stephen Higginson wrote that in a matter of life and death, the court must be certain it applies the proper constitutional rule before a state can execute someone.

 For what looked like the third time, the execution was not going to happen. But, Texas was not finished. Attorney General Ken Paxton’s office filed an emergency application directly with the United States Supreme Court. Their argument was clear. Busby’s claims were meritless and had already been argued and rejected for years.

 On the afternoon of May 14th, 2026, the Supreme Court issued its ruling, 6-3 in favor of Texas. The stay was vacated. The execution would proceed that evening. All three liberal justices dissented. Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, joined by Justice Sonia Sotomayor, wrote that the court finds itself unable to tolerate even a brief delay.

 She wrote that in capital cases, the court rarely steps in to preserve life, and that she could not understand the rush to end it. Busby’s attorneys filed one final emergency motion with the fifth circuit that same evening. It was denied within the hour. Every door was closed. Inside the Huntsville unit, Busby was led into the execution chamber and strapped to the gurney.

Laura’s family members watched through the witness room glass. So did Brian Mark Rig, her former student, now representing her family. Texas had abolished the special last meal program in 2011. Busby ate what everyone else in the prison ate that evening. When the warden asked for his final statement, Busby looked toward Laura’s family and spoke directly to them.

“Miss Crane was a lovely woman. I never meant anything bad to happen to her. I had no right to even get in that car. I’m so sorry. Please forgive me.” He spoke to his sister watching through the glass. He urged her to find a church, to surrender her life to God. His last words were, “I’m here because this is the will of God.

” The lethal dose of pentobarbital began flowing. Busby took a sharp breath. He closed his eyes. He gasped. Snoring sounds filled the chamber, growing quieter and quieter. Within 40 seconds, all movement stopped. Edward Lee Busby Jr. was pronounced dead at 8:11 in the evening on May 14th, 2026. He was 53 years old.

 He became the 600th person executed in the state of Texas since 1982. Kathleen Latimer remains at the Mountain View Unit in Gatesville, Texas. Her earliest parole eligibility date is 2034. What moment in this case hit you hardest? Drop it in the comments. I read every single one. And if this is your first time here, subscribe right now.

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