JUST IN: Richard Lee Tabler Execution | Crime, Last Meal + Final Words | Death Row US Texas
On February 13th, 2025, after spending nearly 18 years on death row, Richard Tabler was executed by lethal injection at the Huntsville Unit in Texas. In this video, we’ll explore the chilling story behind his crimes, and reveal what his last meal was and what his final words were.
A Troubled Past and a Deadly Grudge
Born in California in 1979, Richard Lee Tabler’s childhood was marked by neglect and dysfunction. By his early 20s, he’d already racked up convictions for burglary and assault. Nothing about his troubled past suggested he was capable of what came next.
By his mid-20s, he drifted to Central Texas, taking a job at a strip club in Killeen. But when he clashed with the club’s manager and got himself banned, something dark began festering inside him. That grudge would soon turn a holiday weekend into a nightmare.
Thanksgiving 2004. While most Americans were carving turkey and giving thanks, 25-year-old Richard Tabler was setting a trap. On the night of November 26th, he and 18-year-old accomplice Timothy Payne lured two men to an isolated area outside Killeen. The bait: a fake deal involving stolen stereo equipment. The targets: 28-year-old Mohamed Amin Ramouni, Tabler’s former boss, and his 25-year-old friend, Hayam Zed.
Tabler’s motive was revenge, plain and simple. During an earlier confrontation, Ramouni had allegedly threatened Tabler’s family over a measly $10 dispute. That threat sealed both men’s fate. What unfolded in that darkness was pure evil. Tabler ambushed them with a 9mm handgun, opening fire without warning. But the horror didn’t stop with the shooting. Tabler ordered Payne to videotape the scene, capturing the violence as it happened, as if he wanted to preserve his vengeance.
After both men fell, Tabler dragged Ramouni’s wounded body from the vehicle and stood over him. Then, he fired one final shot point-blank, execution-style. Police would later learn this wasn’t a crime of passion; it was meticulously planned. Tabler had purchased a camcorder, the firearm, and even a pickup truck in the days leading up to the ambush. Every detail calculated, every move deliberate.
The Rampage Continues
But if you think that was the end of the bloodshed, you’d be wrong. Two days later, Tabler wasn’t done.
On November 28th, he turned his sights to two teenage girls who worked as dancers at the same club: 18-year-old Tiffany Lorraine Dodson and 16-year-old Amanda Benfield. Both girls were on what Tabler called his “hit list”—people he blamed for his troubles. Tiffany had trusted him; they’d been romantically involved, and he used that bond to get close to both girls. Then, in an act of calculated cruelty, he took their lives.
Why? To silence them. To make sure they couldn’t talk about what happened to the two men. Four lives, one weekend, one man’s warped sense of justice.
And here’s the part that still sends chills down my spine: after the first two victims, Tabler actually called the Bell County Sheriff’s Office—not to confess, but to brag. He taunted the deputies, telling them he would strike again. Days later, he made good on that promise.
Arrest and Trial
The manhunt ended quickly. Just days after the rampage, law enforcement had Richard Tabler in handcuffs. During questioning, he didn’t lawyer up or stay silent. He confessed, volunteering gruesome details about all four victims. His accomplice, Timothy Payne, the Fort Hood soldier who’d filmed the initial attack, was also arrested. Payne eventually received a life sentence for his role.
In 2007, Tabler stood trial for capital murder. Despite having confessed, he pleaded not guilty. The jury wasn’t buying it. The evidence, the videos, the confessions, and the premeditation painted an undeniable picture. They convicted him and sentenced him to death. Prosecutors chose not to pursue separate trials for Tiffany and Amanda’s cases; one death sentence covered everything.
Bell County Prosecutor Paul McQuilliam summed it up: the men’s deaths were cold-blooded, but the girls’ deaths were senseless, carried out purely to feed Tabler’s paranoia.
Life on Death Row and the Cell Phone Scandal
At 28, Richard Tabler walked onto Texas Death Row. He would remain there for nearly 18 more years. But even behind bars, Tabler couldn’t stay out of the headlines.
In 2008, he pulled off something that shocked the entire state. Somehow, he smuggled a cell phone onto death row, one of the most secure facilities in America. And what did he do with it? He called Texas State Senator John Whitmire and issued chilling threats. Tabler told the senator he knew his children’s names and he knew where they lived.
The breach sent shockwaves through the Texas prison system. Authorities immediately locked down every facility in the state—over 150,000 inmates—while they conducted massive sweeps for contraband phones. The scandal led to major security overhauls. And in a twist of irony, Senator Whitmire later became instrumental in ending Texas’s special “last meal” tradition. The very man Tabler threatened helped change the policy that would affect Tabler’s final hours.
Death row changed Tabler, or at least he claimed it did. He spent years going back and forth about whether he wanted to live or die. In letters to the court, he repeatedly asked judges to drop his appeals and fast-track his execution. “I’ve spent the last 20 years in the courts,” he wrote in 2024, “and see no point in wasting anyone else’s time.”
But then he’d waver. His lawyers fought back, arguing he wasn’t mentally stable enough to make that decision. The evidence seemed to support them: Tabler tried to take his own life twice while incarcerated. In 2010, he came within days of execution before receiving a stay over mental health concerns. Psychological evaluations revealed severe, untreated mental illness.
Yet somewhere in those dark years of isolation, Tabler found religion—or said he did. He immersed himself in faith-based prison programs, wrote books, and published a 2021 memoir where he finally owned up to all four deaths in detail. He spoke about remorse, about God, and about becoming a better person. People who visited him near the end described a man drowning in regret. Whether his transformation was real or just the desperate grasp of a condemned man, we’ll never truly know. But it would define how he faced his final day.
Execution Day: The Last Meal and Final Words
February 13th, 2025. Twenty years after that blood-soaked Thanksgiving weekend, Richard Tabler’s time ran out. Cold rain fell on Huntsville as the 46-year-old was led into the execution chamber. Behind a glass partition, victims’ families took their seats. The moment they’d waited two decades for had finally arrived.
In 2011, the state had abolished special last meal requests. Today, Texas inmates get whatever is on the regular prison menu that day. No exceptions, no choices. So when people ask what Richard Tabler’s last meal was, the answer is simple: he didn’t get one. Not a special one, anyway. Whatever generic prison food was served that Thursday, that’s what he got. Some reports claim he asked for two fish fillets, but Texas doesn’t take requests.
Food wasn’t on his mind that day. Something far heavier weighed on him. At 6:00 p.m., the process began. Strapped to the gurney, Tabler was asked if he had any final words. He turned his head toward the witnesses, toward the families of the people he destroyed. When he spoke, his voice cracked with emotion.
“There is not a day that goes by that I don’t regret my actions. I had no right to take your loved ones from you, and I ask and pray, hope and pray, that one day you find it in your hearts to forgive me.”
He continued his apologies, spilling out to the victims’ families, to his own family, and to the corrections officers who’d shown him dignity during his final days. He quoted scripture from Philippians, expressing his belief that his death wasn’t an ending, but a beginning—that he’d find peace in the afterlife. When he finished, he looked at the warden and said simply, “I am finished.”
At 6:23 p.m., the lethal drug pentobarbital began flowing into his veins. As his consciousness started to fade, Tabler made one last gesture. He mouthed two silent words toward the viewing window: “I’m sorry.” His eyes closed. His chest rose and fell in slowing rhythm. Then, nothing.
At 6:38 p.m., Richard Lee Tabler was pronounced dead.
The Aftermath
In the witness room, silence hung heavy. George Dodson, Tiffany’s father, sat motionless. When asked how he felt, he could barely speak. “I need time to process what I just saw,” he whispered. Then he added, “I couldn’t wait. It took me 20 years to get here. 20 years of pain, 20 years of waiting, 20 years of imagining this moment.”
Tiffany’s godfather put it more bluntly: “Today is for Tiffany, and this is justice.”
Richard Tabler became the second person executed in Texas in 2025. For some, his death represented justice finally served—proof that even when delayed, accountability arrives. For others, including those who witnessed his spiritual transformation, it was a tragedy: the end of a redemption story cut short by the very consequences he’d set in motion decades earlier.
In the end, Richard Tabler died the way he’d spent his final years: apologizing. His last words, “I’m sorry,” echo against the horror of what he did in 2004. Four innocent people lost their lives because one man couldn’t let go of his rage. Families were shattered, futures were stolen, and even 20 years later, even with his execution complete, the scars remain.
This case leaves us with haunting questions about justice, redemption, and whether someone who commits unspeakable evil can ever truly change. Can remorse erase the past? Can faith heal wounds that deep? Richard Tabler’s story doesn’t offer easy answers. It only reminds us that violence ripples outward, destroying everything in its path, and that some decisions cast shadows that never fade.
