JUST IN: John Allen Rubio Scheduled For Execution (11/12/26) – He Killed His Own 3 Children

“Since this all happened, I’d always wanted to get my side of the story out there. Nobody ever wanted to listen to me. Right? Everybody was seeing me as a monster that I’m not. If you listen to the people that actually knew me, they would say that this is totally out of character for me. I was more of the protector of the family. If God can spare me this, uh, that would be great.”

On the night of March 11th, 2003, a Tuesday, three children went to sleep in their home. None of them woke up. Their names were Julissa, John, and Mary Jane. Julissa was 3 years old. John was just over a year old. And Mary Jane—Mary Jane was 2 months old. By the time the sun rose on March 12th, all three were gone. Taken not by a stranger, not by a natural disaster, not by some cruel twist of fate, but by the very people who were supposed to protect them: their parents.

This is the story of John Allen Rubio, a man currently sitting on death row in Texas, scheduled to be executed on November 12th, 2026. A man who has spent over two decades fighting that sentence, and a case that has raised questions about justice, mental illness, and what the law actually owes to victims who can no longer speak for themselves. Stay with me. This one matters.

Let’s start with where things stand right now. John Allen Rubio is 45 years old. He is currently housed at the Allan B. Polunsky Unit, a maximum-security facility in Livingston, Texas, north of Houston. It is the facility that holds Texas’s death row population. He has been there since November 2003. That means he has spent nearly half of his entire life in that building, in that unit, waiting. His scheduled execution date is November 12th, 2026, set to take place at the Walls Unit in Huntsville, Texas. The facility where Texas carries out all of its executions at 6:00 p.m. or anytime after.

Now, as of the time this video was made, that date has not yet arrived. There are still active legal proceedings. A competency challenge has been filed by his attorneys, and the courts are still working through those motions. But as things stand today, the state of Texas intends to execute John Allen Rubio on November 12th, 2026. That’s the timeline.

Now, let’s go back to the beginning, because to understand where this story ends, you have to understand how it started. John Allen Rubio was born on August 12th, 1980, in Brownsville, Texas. He is not someone with a dramatic criminal history leading up to this case. He’s not someone the system had been tracking for years as a violent offender. By all outward appearances before 2003, he was a young man in a struggling household living paycheck to paycheck or less in one of the poorest regions of the United States.

He met a woman named Angela Camacho sometime around 2000 or 2001 when they were both living in the same apartment complex. Camacho had a young daughter, Julissa, from a previous relationship. That relationship had been abusive, and she left it. She moved in with Rubio. Rubio took in Julissa as his own. Camacho later had a son, John E. Rubio, who took Rubio’s last name, even though his biological paternity was uncertain. Again, Rubio treated the boy as his own. And in January 2003, Camacho gave birth to their biological daughter, Mary Jane Rubio.

Now, they were a family of five—two adults, three children under the age of four—living in a cramped home in Brownsville with almost no financial stability and no clear road forward. Rubio had struggled with substance abuse, specifically inhalant abuse. At one point, Child Protective Services removed the two older children from the home because of it. They were returned three to four months later after Rubio found employment. That job lasted until December 2002, one month before Mary Jane was born. From that point on, Rubio was supporting his family through odd jobs. Court documents state he also resorted to prostitution to bring in money.

By early 2003, the walls were closing in. By March 2003, the family had fallen so far behind financially that they could not pay their rent, which was due on March 11th. Rubio reached out to his brother for help, to borrow money or to let the family temporarily move in. His brother said no. His brother’s girlfriend also declined to help. Around the same time, approximately $175 in cash was stolen from Rubio—money the family desperately needed. Their food stamp benefits had been suspended due to a paperwork issue with the children’s records.

On the night of March 10th, the evening before what would become one of the most haunting crimes in Brownsville’s history, Rubio and Camacho made a plan. They decided they would take the children to a homeless shelter the following day. They had no other options. That was the plan, but that plan never happened.

According to the statements that both Rubio and Camacho would later give to investigators, what unfolded in the early hours of March 11th, 2003, began with something Rubio said he witnessed in his oldest child. Julissa, he claimed, was behaving in a way that frightened him. Speaking strangely, acting unlike herself. In his own words, years later, on camera for the first time, Rubio described it like this: “She was telling me that she was my grandmother. So, she was acting weird. She was screaming in a weird voice, and she was not herself.”

His grandmother, who had reportedly practiced folk spiritualism—a belief system he had grown up around—had recently passed away. Rubio became convinced that Julissa was possessed. He called Camacho. He told her what he believed. And rather than seeking help, rather than calling someone, going anywhere, doing anything else, the two of them made a decision together.

What followed that decision ended the lives of all three children. Julissa was first, then John, then Mary Jane, just 2 months old. All three were killed in their home. All three with a knife. I’m going to stop there on those details, not because the truth shouldn’t be told, but because the dignity of these three children deserves more than clinical description. What happened to them was devastating. The court records, the testimonies, the evidence—all of it confirmed the worst.

After it was over, Rubio and Camacho placed the children’s bodies in plastic bags and left them beside the bed. They stayed in the home. The next day, March 12th, Rubio’s brother came to the house. He discovered what had happened. He walked outside. He flagged down a passing police car. And just like that, it was over.

John Allen Rubio and Angela Camacho were arrested on March 12th, 2003. Two days later, on March 13th, they were both formally charged with three counts of capital murder. On April 17th, 2003, a grand jury returned a formal indictment. Three capital murder counts for each of the three children, plus a fourth count of capital murder involving multiple victims in a single transaction. Under Texas law, capital murder carries either the death penalty or life imprisonment without the possibility of parole for 40 years.

In May 2003, a judge granted the defense’s request for separate trials for Rubio and Camacho. They would each face the legal system alone. John Allen Rubio went first. Jury selection began in September 2003. The trial itself started in October. On November 7th, 2003, the jury returned their verdict: guilty on all three counts of capital murder.

What happened next is something you don’t hear often in death penalty cases. Before the jury deliberated on punishment, Rubio, through his attorney, reportedly requested the death penalty for himself. The prosecution was already seeking it. They described him as a continuing threat to society. On November 8th, 2003, all 12 members of the jury voted unanimously to recommend death. State District Judge Robert Garza sentenced John Allen Rubio to death. He was 23 years old.

Angela Camacho’s case moved slower. A mental competency hearing was held to determine whether she was fit to stand trial. In May 2004, she was found competent. But before her trial went to a jury, something significant happened. In June 2005, Camacho entered a plea agreement with prosecutors. She pleaded guilty to three counts of capital murder. In exchange, the death penalty was taken off the table. She was sentenced to three concurrent life sentences with the possibility of parole after 40 years.

If the death penalty had been imposed in her case, Angela Camacho would have become the first woman with Mexican citizenship ever condemned to death row in Texas. Part of the reason the plea deal happened was because the Mexican government formally opposed the death penalty for Camacho and signaled it would appeal if one were imposed. The Cameron County District Attorney at the time called removing the death penalty option the most agonizing decision he had made since taking office, but said it was better than risking a sentence that might later be reduced anyway and potentially saving the county up to $6 million in prosecution costs. As of 2026, Angela Camacho remains incarcerated at the Christina Melton Crain Unit. Her earliest parole hearing is not until March 12th, 2043.

Here is where this case gets complicated. In September 2007, 4 years after his conviction, the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals made a stunning ruling. By a vote of 5 to 4, the court overturned John Allen Rubio’s conviction and death sentence and ordered a brand new trial. Why? Because during Rubio’s first trial, statements that Angela Camacho had made to investigators were admitted into evidence and used against Rubio. But Camacho refused to testify at trial. That meant Rubio’s defense team never had the opportunity to cross-examine her, challenge her account, or question the credibility of what she said. The court ruled that this violated Rubio’s constitutional rights under the Confrontation Clause. In a 5-4 decision, as close as it gets, John Allen Rubio walked off death row temporarily.

Because Texas was not done with him. Rubio’s retrial began in June 2010, 7 years after the original crime. A completely different jury was assembled. New proceedings, new arguments, same evidence, same crime, same outcome. On July 26th, 2010, the jury found John Allen Rubio guilty of capital murder for the second time. Three days later, July 29th, 2010, District Judge Noe Gonzalez sentenced Rubio to death. Before closing, Judge Gonzalez personally addressed the man standing before him. He said, “If you want forgiveness, you’re going to have to get it from a much higher source.” Cameron County Assistant District Attorney Charles Mattingly, after the verdict, stated on record that there was a special place in hell for John Allen Rubio. The state had spoken, twice.

What followed the 2010 death sentence was a long, exhausting legal process that stretched across three US presidents, multiple courts, and 15 years of filings. Here’s the compressed version:

• 2012: The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals dismisses Rubio’s direct appeal against his second death sentence.

• 2013: His legal team takes the case all the way to the US Supreme Court. The court declines to hear it.

• 2018: The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals denies two more of Rubio’s appeals.

• 2022: His petition for a writ of habeas corpus, a legal challenge arguing he was being unlawfully imprisoned, is denied by both the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals and later reviewed in federal district court.

• May 2025: The US Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit rejects his appeal entirely.

• January 12th, 2026: The United States Supreme Court declines to hear his case one final time. Every door closed.

The Cameron County District Attorney, Luis Saenz, summarized years of legal maneuvering in one sentence: “The argument was basically, he’s incompetent to stand trial, that he was insane, that he was possessed, the devil made me do it, just about anything you can think of. Those were rejected, not once, but twice.”

That brought us to February 2026, when a judge signed the warrant setting the execution date: November 12th, 2026. But this story doesn’t end with a signed warrant, because on April 30th, 2026, just hours before a filing deadline, Rubio’s legal team submitted a 44-page motion to the court. Their argument: John Allen Rubio is not mentally competent to be executed.

Under US law, specifically the Supreme Court’s ruling in Ford v. Wainwright, a person cannot be executed if they do not have a rational understanding of why they are being put to death. The legal bar is not “was he mentally ill when the crime happened.” The bar is “does he right now understand that he is going to die, and does he understand why?” Rubio’s attorneys argue the answer is no. A 44-page court filing argues that Rubio has a long history of severe mental illness dating back to childhood, including hallucinations, psychotic episodes, and diagnoses within the schizophrenia spectrum. His attorneys say he now lives in a delusional state, believing that God and Satan are engaged in a literal battle and that his execution is part of Satan’s effort to destroy him. The defense contends these beliefs prevent him from rationally understanding the connection between his crime and his punishment. And two psychiatric experts have concluded there is sufficient evidence of incompetency to warrant a full court hearing.

The prosecution disagrees firmly. District Attorney Luis Saenz has been blunt about his position: “He was competent. He is competent, and he engaged in conduct deliberately and consciously, intentionally, knowingly and should be executed for what he did.” The state has until June 30th, 2026, to file its formal response to the competency motion. A hearing is expected to be scheduled sometime after July 1st, 2026. What happens at that hearing could determine whether the November 12th date holds, or whether this case extends into 2027 and beyond.

In May 2026, for the first time in 23 years on death row, John Allen Rubio agreed to speak on camera. He sat down with a local Texas news outlet for what was described as a world exclusive interview featured in a documentary called Echoes from Brownsville: The Rubio Murders. He said he feels remorse. He said, “I miss them so much. Every day I miss them.” He spoke about his daughter, Julissa, about how hours before her death, she was saying things that didn’t make sense, speaking in a voice he didn’t recognize. He said he believed something was wrong with her, something beyond his understanding. He talked about the night of March 10th, the day before, when a stranger on a bus gave his son a piece of candy. He said he became convinced, through a series of signs he interpreted, that something had been done to his children. He never wavered from that account. He still believes what he believed in 2003. Whether that is the delusion of a mentally ill man or the rationalization of someone avoiding accountability is something the courts are now being asked to decide.

What is not in dispute is this: Three children—Julissa, John, and Mary Jane—died in that home on March 11th, 2003. They had no say. They had no choice. They were entirely dependent on the two adults in that home. And those two adults failed them in the most irreversible way possible.

If the execution proceeds as scheduled, here is what that day will look like. John Allen Rubio will be transported from the Allan B. Polunsky Unit in Livingston to the Walls Unit in Huntsville, Texas, the facility where the state carries out all executions. He will be given the opportunity to request a final meal. Texas inmates on death row are permitted to request a last meal from a set menu. In the chamber, he will be asked if he has any final words. He has not spoken publicly about what, if anything, he intends to say. Cameron County District Attorney Luis Saenz has formally requested to be present as a witness to the execution, one of the allowed observers permitted by the state. He said, “I want to witness it. I want to come back and tell the community it’s done. Justice has been served.”

If the execution is carried out, John Allen Rubio will be pronounced dead by lethal injection. He will have been on death row for 23 years. Julissa Casada would have been 26 years old. John E. Rubio would have been 24. Mary Jane Rubio would have been 23. Three people who never had the chance to grow up.

Texas has one of the most active execution schedules in the country. And the case of John Allen Rubio—with his two trials, its overturned conviction, its Supreme Court appeals, its competency filings—has tested that system in nearly every direction. Whether you believe justice will be served on November 12th, or whether you believe something about this case is still unresolved, what you cannot argue is that this case should be forgotten. Because at the center of it, before the trials, before the lawyers, before the motions and the appeals and the filing deadlines, there were three children: Julissa, John, Mary Jane. And whatever you believe about what should happen next, their names deserve to be said.

The execution of John Allen Rubio is scheduled for November 12th, 2026. The question I’ll leave you with is this: When a crime this unthinkable is committed, and the person who committed it has spent 23 years in a cell, has spoken the victims’ names, says he misses them every single day, what does justice actually look like? Is it a date on a calendar? A final sentence carried out? Or is it something the legal system was never built to fully provide? Leave your thoughts in the comments.