Daniel Lee Corwin

Daniel Lee Corwin
Born	(1958-09-13)September 13, 1958 Orange County, California, U.S.
Died	December 7, 1998(1998-12-07) (aged 40) Huntsville Unit, Huntsville, Texas, U.S.
Cause of death	Execution by lethal injection
Criminal status	Executed
Conviction(s)	Capital murder
Criminal penalty	Death
Details
Victims	3 murders, 3 rapes and attempted murders
Span of crimes	1975 – October 1988
Country	United States
State(s)	Texas

Daniel Lee Corwin (September 13, 1958 – December 7, 1998) was an American serial killer who was sentenced to death and executed for murdering three women.

Early life

Corwin was born in Orange County, California.

Crimes

1975 Incident

In 1975, Corwin abducted a classmate at knife point in their high school parking lot while she was getting into her car. He drove her to a remote location in her own car and raped her. He then dragged her out of the car, knocked her down, slit her throat, and stabbed her in the stomach and heart. As she lay in a dirt pit bleeding, he covered her head with a board and covered it with dirt and leaves. She survived and managed to reach the road where she was eventually seen and saved. Corwin was sentenced to forty years in prison for kidnapping, rape, and attempted murder. However, due to a statewide act to alleviate the amount of Texas's prisoners, Corwin was released early after only serving nine years.

1987-1988 Sprees

In February 1987, he abducted 72-year-old Alice Martin, who was walking to her home in Normangee, Texas. He drove her to a field in Robertson County where he raped her before binding her, gagging her, and stabbing her to death.

In July 1987, he met 26-year-old Debra Lynn Ewing at her workplace in Conroe, where Corwin, a door repairman, had been called out to inspect and repair a faulty cabinet that would not close properly. That night, Corwin returned to her workplace and kidnapped her as she was leaving work. He drove Ewing to a remote wooded area of north Montgomery County and raped and killed her.

On October 31, 1987, Corwin sprung on 36-year-old Mary Carrell Risinger and her 3-year-old daughter at a car wash in Huntsville, Texas and attempted to drag her to his truck. Risinger fought back by scratching Corwin and screamed for help, which resulted in Corwin slitting her throat in front of her daughter. Though officers were quick to respond, Corwin escaped with no available evidence of his involvement, and the case went cold.

In October 1988, he abducted college student Wendy Gant in a parking lot of Kyle Field at Texas A&M University, using her car to drive them to an isolated rural area, where he bound, raped, beat, and stabbed Gant several times. Corwin then tied her upright to a tree and slit her throat. Gant pretended to be dead to fool Corwin into leaving, where she managed to untie her bound wrists and crawl to her rescue on the side of State Road 30.

Corwin was tracked down using an artist's sketch from Gant, whose throat was cut so deeply that she could not speak to describe the assailant, but described him in writing to the artist and nodded yes or no to the artist's questions about the attacker's features. A corrections officer who knew Corwin from prison immediately recognized the sketch and reported Corwin's name to the police. Police subsequently found a fingerprint from Corwin on the driver's side door of Gant's vehicle.

During his trial, Corwin confessed that he additionally raped a 13-year-old girl in Temple, Texas, in 1972. The police were notified at the time, but the victim couldn't identify her attacker.

Trial and Execution

In 1990, Corwin was convicted of capital murder. The capital conviction was obtained under a recently implemented state law which permits capital convictions for murders committed "during different criminal transactions but committed pursuant to the same scheme or course of conduct.” He was sentenced to death by a Montgomery Court.

Corwin was executed by lethal injection at the Huntsville Unit on December 7, 1998. In his final statement, Corwin apologized to the families of the victims, saying "I guess the first thing I want to do is thank some very special people, Sara and Sabrina, and for affording me the opportunity that y’all did. It made a real big difference in my life. I thank you. Thank you again from the deepest part of my heart. I’m sorry. The biggest thing I wanted to say was to you and family, and I know I haven’t had a chance to talk with y’all in any form or fashion or way or manner, and I regret what happened and I want you to know that I’m sorry. I just ask and hope that sometime down the line that you can forgive me. I think in a lot of ways that without that it becomes very empty and hollow and the only thing we have is hatred and anger. I guess the only thing I have to say about the death penalty is that a lot of times people think of it as one-sided, but it’s not. It’s two-sided. There's pain on both sides and it’s not an issue that people just sit there and voice off and say, well, this is a good thing, or this is a bad thing. But it’s something that’s, you know, needs to be looked at and desired in each heart. I just hope that all of you can understand that and someday forgive me. I want to thank y’all for affording me the opportunity to talk and meet with y'all. It meant so much. Thank you so much for being with me and my family. Thank you. I love you."

In media

His case was shown on Forensic Files II. The episode, titled "Portrait of a Serial Killer," originally aired on HLN on March 15, 2020.

See also

• Capital punishment in Texas
• Capital punishment in the United States
• List of people executed in Texas, 1990–1999
• List of serial killers in the United States