Anthony Allen Shore was convicted in 2004 of the capital murder of Maria del Carmen Estrada, a 21-year-old woman who accepted a ride from him as she walked to work in Houston on an April morning in 1992. Her killing went unsolved for more than a decade. In 2003, a DNA profile taken from Shore after a 1998 plea in an unrelated case was matched to a tiny particle found under her fingernail. Once arrested, he confessed to her killing and to the killings of three girls, Laurie Tremblay, Diana Rebollar and Dana Sanchez, between 1986 and 1995. He also admitted an attack on a 14-year-old girl in 1993, who survived. The Houston press called him the Tourniquet Killer.
Prosecutors charged him only with the Estrada killing, the case with the strongest physical evidence. The other killings were put before the jury at the punishment phase. Before that phase began, Shore told his lawyers he wanted to die, and they told the jury so. He spent more than 13 years on death row. A first execution date in October 2017 was called off hours before it was due, after prosecutors learned of an alleged plan involving another condemned man. He was executed at Huntsville on January 18, 2018, the first person put to death in the United States that year.
Shore was born on June 25, 1962, according to the Texas Department of Criminal Justice, which lists Pennington County, South Dakota, as his native county. He finished the twelfth grade. He had sisters, ABC13 Houston reported.
In Houston he worked as a tow truck driver and as a repairman for the telephone company, and he played music part time, the Associated Press reported. The prison system's records list his former occupations as wrecker driver, general construction worker, lineman and laborer. He had no prior prison record when he arrived on death row.
At the punishment phase of his 2004 trial, according to the Fifth Circuit's 2017 summary, one of his sisters testified that as a child he was cruel to animals and to her. Speaking to ABC13 in 2017, a sister said that the man who committed the murders was not the brother she had known growing up. A retired Houston homicide detective, DD Shirley, told ABC13 in 2024 that Shore did not look or act evil, while describing him as an example of it. One of his sisters, speaking in the same report, said he always knew the right thing to say and presented himself well.
Laurie Tremblay was the first girl Shore confessed to killing. The Associated Press, ABC13 in 2024 and KPRC in 2017 give her age as 15; the Texas Tribune, and ABC13 in 2018 citing court documents, give it as 14. She was found in Houston in 1986. According to court documents described by ABC13, Shore was 24 at the time, and he strangled her in his car after an argument.
The case went unsolved. Shore described it to detectives in 2003, and the account was presented to the jury at his trial in 2004.
Maria del Carmen Estrada was 21. At about 6:30 a.m. on April 16, 1992, she was walking to work in Houston when Shore offered her a ride, and she accepted, according to the Associated Press. Prosecutors described the same morning walk to work. Her body was found in Houston the same day, ABC13 reported.
Shore later told police that she grew frightened when he made advances. He confessed to attacking her and strangling her. In a taped interview played at his trial, he said he had not set out to kill her and that it had not been his intent, but that it "got out of hand." He blamed "voices in my head" that told him he would have her regardless and possess her in some way.
Kim Ogg, who later became Harris County District Attorney, worked on the unsolved Estrada case as an assistant prosecutor, the Associated Press reported. Investigators kept the evidence, including the particle recovered from under her fingernail. More than a decade later, that particle would identify the man who killed her.
In 1993, a 14-year-old girl was attacked in Houston by a masked intruder, ABC13 reported. She fought back and escaped. In his 2003 confession, Shore admitted the attack. According to the Fifth Circuit, he also threatened to kill the girl and her family if she reported what had happened.
Diana Rebollar was 9. In August 1994 she was walking to a neighborhood grocery store in Houston, less than a block from her home, when she was taken, ABC13 and the Associated Press reported. Shore later admitted abducting and strangling her. Her family was helped through the case by Andy Kahan, Houston's crime victims' advocate, who told ABC13 in 2017 that he remembered it "like it was yesterday."
Dana Sanchez was 16. In July 1995 she was at a pay phone in Houston, hitchhiking to her boyfriend's home, when Shore offered her a ride. A struggle followed in his vehicle. He admitted killing her.
Her body was found after a caller telephoned a Houston television station and gave directions to it. Police believe Shore made that call, the Associated Press reported. A former assignment manager at the station, who answered the tip line, told KPRC in 2017 that the caller said a serial killer was on the loose and gave clues to several killings. She said that for years afterward she found herself listening for his voice in crowds.
The Associated Press reported that all four victims were Hispanic. Each was strangled, and each was found in Houston. ABC13 reported in 2024 that police had connected some of the killings through a signature weapon, which gave the press its name for him.
Former Harris County prosecutor Terese Buess told ABC13 that for Shore, killing was not a single act but "a way of life." The cases stayed open but unsolved through the 1990s.
In 1998, Shore pleaded no contest to sexual offenses against two young relatives, the Texas Tribune and the Associated Press reported. He received eight years' probation and was placed on the sex offender registry. Under the terms of the plea, his DNA was entered into the state database.
At his 2004 trial, the clinical director of a sex offender program he attended for five years testified that he had superior reasoning ability, was narcissistic and manipulative, and scored high on a psychopathy measure, according to the Fifth Circuit.
In 2003, testing matched the profile from Shore's probation case to the particle under Maria del Carmen Estrada's fingernail, five years after his plea. ABC13 reported that new technology at a Dallas crime lab made the match possible. Shore was 41 and still on probation when he was arrested in Houston.
A Houston Police Department official told reporters at the time that Shore behaved as if he had expected it. "He was acting as if he knew what was up," the official said, as if finally something had happened, and added that he thought Shore had been waiting because he knew his DNA was in the system.
Shore first confessed only to the Estrada killing, ABC13 reported, citing the Harris County District Attorney's Office. Then, according to the office, he admitted all four killings and the 1993 attack. His recorded confession was later played in full to the jury. The Fifth Circuit's summary of it lists the killings of a woman and two girls besides Estrada, and the attack on a 14-year-old girl he did not kill.
He claimed more killings in October 2017, and those claims were later found to be untrue.
Prosecutors in Harris County charged Shore with a single count of capital murder: the killing of Maria del Carmen Estrada in the course of an aggravated sexual assault. ABC13 reported that they chose that case because the DNA evidence in it was strong. The other three killings were not charged.
The trial was held in Harris County in 2004. Shore's defense lawyers did not dispute that he had killed Maria del Carmen Estrada or that the sexual contact was not consensual, according to the Fifth Circuit. They asked the jury to find him guilty of murder, not capital murder. The jury convicted him of capital murder.
At the punishment phase the state set out the rest of his history. It played the full recorded confession and called 35 witnesses, according to the Fifth Circuit. Jurors heard four days of evidence about the other three killings, the Associated Press reported, and testimony from three women who said Shore had raped them. His wife and three former girlfriends testified about drugging, violence and choking, the court record shows, and two relatives testified that he had abused them. The clinical director of his treatment program described him as manipulative and narcissistic.
Defense counsel opened the punishment phase by telling the jury that Shore wanted to be sentenced to death. They said they were passing on that wish "against our advice, against our better judgment, against our 40 years of experience," the Fifth Circuit recorded. Counsel told the court that Shore had made it clear they were not to argue for any other result, and they waived closing argument.
The trial judge asked Shore whether his lawyers had stated his instructions accurately. He answered that it was "very accurate." The jury returned a death sentence. ABC13 gives the date of the jury's sentence as October 21, 2004; the Texas Department of Criminal Justice records his arrival on death row on November 15, 2004, at age 42, as inmate number 999488.
The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals affirmed the conviction and the death sentence on direct appeal on December 12, 2007. The state trial court denied his habeas corpus application without a hearing, and the Court of Criminal Appeals denied relief on January 16, 2013, according to the Fifth Circuit.
New lawyers then brought a federal habeas petition with seven exhibits that had never been put before the state courts, among them two reports describing brain damage. They argued that he had been denied the right to present mitigating evidence; that his trial lawyers had failed him by not investigating his background, not presenting the brain-damage evidence and not representing him at the punishment phase; and that executing a man with a brain injury would violate the Eighth Amendment. The federal district court in Houston denied relief on February 19, 2016.
On January 6, 2017, a panel of the Fifth Circuit (Judges Clement, Elrod and Southwick) denied him a certificate of appealability. The court held that the record supported a knowing waiver of mitigating evidence, that his lawyers could not be faulted for following his instructions, that the new evidence could not be considered because the state courts never saw it, and that the brain-injury claim was barred and foreclosed by circuit precedent. In its summary of his history, the court noted his record of violence.
A later application to the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals, based on the brain injury, was dismissed as an abuse of the writ without review of the merits, KPRC reported. The U.S. Supreme Court declined to review the case about two weeks before his first execution date, according to the Associated Press.
On death row Shore drew pictures and wrote letters, some of which were sold by dealers online. KPRC reported in 2017 that a handwritten letter was offered on one site for $105. In a letter dated August 2016 he wrote that he was running out of time and that "they gonna kill me 4 sure." Andy Kahan, the victims' advocate, bought a drawing and a letter years earlier to use in his talks about such sales. He called the trade "blood money."
Shore was scheduled to be executed on October 18, 2017. On the Monday before, the six members of the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles voted unanimously to reject his clemency petition, the Associated Press reported. His lawyer, Knox Nunnally, said Shore's demeanor was that of any condemned man and that, given the choice, he would rather live out his life on death row. The district attorney, Kim Ogg, called him "a true serial killer" whose victims were "the most vulnerable in society," and said the death penalty was appropriate.
In an ABC13 interview published October 17, 2017, given from her home in Washington State, one of his sisters said she believed there might be many other victims. "But he'll never tell and we'll never know," she said. She hoped the state would not grant a stay, and said that he had asked that no family members attend.
The October date fell four weeks before the scheduled execution of Larry Ray Swearingen, a death row prisoner convicted of the 1998 killing of Melissa Trotter, 19, in Montgomery County. Swearingen had repeatedly said he was innocent.
In July 2017, during an inquiry into Shore's mental health, staff searched his cell and found a folder of material about the Trotter case, including copies of court exhibits, crime-scene photographs and handwritten notes, ABC13 and the Texas Tribune reported. The Montgomery County District Attorney's Office learned of it in September. Prosecutors said the handwriting was unlike Shore's and similar to Swearingen's. A woman who visited Shore on death row told a Montgomery County investigator that Shore had said he killed Trotter and would not let Swearingen be executed for it. Nunnally said Shore would answer questions about other murders, but that the written answers would be released only after his execution.
The Montgomery County District Attorney, Brett Ligon, said his office had evidence that Shore had conspired with Swearingen. He said he remained certain of Swearingen's guilt and that a posthumous claim by Shore would leave a cloud over the case. He asked Governor Greg Abbott for a 30-day reprieve and asked Ogg to move the execution date so the matter could be investigated.
Investigators interviewed Shore on the Tuesday before the scheduled execution, the Associated Press reported. According to Ligon, Shore said that Swearingen had persuaded him to take the blame, but that he had decided to expose the plan rather than go through with it. Shore said Swearingen had given him the documents to make the confession convincing.
On October 18, 2017, hours before the execution, Ogg obtained a court order withdrawing the death warrant. The new date was January 18, 2018, the earliest available under the law. "It is always the first responsibility of prosecutors to see that justice is done," Ogg said, adding that Shore's execution was "inevitable." Ligon said the truth of Shore's statements could not be determined without the delay. A prison spokesman quoted Shore's reaction: if this was his day, he said, God's will be done, and God had given him another 90 days.
The Associated Press reported in January 2018 that Shore had also told authorities he was responsible for two other killings, and that an investigation by the Texas Rangers found the evidence did not support those claims. Ligon told the Texas Tribune that investigators, including the Rangers, had concluded that Shore was not responsible for Melissa Trotter's death or for any other open murder case. Nunnally said Shore had never confessed to the Trotter killing. Shore still maintained that Swearingen was innocent. Swearingen was executed on August 21, 2019.
By January 2018 Shore's appeals were exhausted, and his lawyers filed no last-minute challenges. Nunnally had hoped to seek a delay if the Supreme Court took up an Arizona case on the death penalty, but the justices had not acted. "We've made the best arguments we can," he said. Ogg, a Democrat who took office in 2017 and has said she does not consider the death penalty a deterrent, called Shore "the worst of the worst." She said she knew the case and his work, and that the sentence was appropriate.
On the evening of January 18, 2018, Shore was executed at the state's oldest prison, in Huntsville. In his final statement he apologized to the families of his victims. "No amount of words or apology could ever undo what I've done," he said, his voice breaking. "I wish I could undo the past, but it is what it is." According to the prison system's record of his statement, he also thanked those who had helped him and said he was ready. As the drug began to flow he said he could feel it.
The pentobarbital was administered at 6:15 p.m. He was pronounced dead at 6:28 p.m., 13 minutes later. He was 55. The prison system lists his as execution number 546. He was the first in the United States in 2018. Afterward Andy Kahan, speaking for the victims' families, said Shore's "reign of terror is officially over."
Shore was executed on January 18, 2018. His case is closed. The Texas Department of Criminal Justice lists him among executed offenders.
Laurie Tremblay's age: 14 in the Texas Tribune and in court documents cited by ABC13; 15 in Associated Press reports, ABC13 in 2024 and KPRC.
Sentencing date: ABC13 gives October 21, 2004 for the jury's sentence; the prison system records his arrival on death row on November 15, 2004.
Timing of the confessions: ABC13, citing the district attorney's office, says he first confessed only to the Estrada killing and later to all four; KPRC says he confessed in 2004. The Associated Press places the confession after his 2003 arrest.
The prison system's summary of his crimes differs from the court record and press in several points. It treats the 1993 victim as strangled, although the court record and the press say she escaped, and it describes the victims' races differently from the Associated Press, which reported that all four killed victims were Hispanic.
Other victims: one of his sisters told ABC13 in 2017 that there might be many others. No other killing has been tied to him. The two further killings he claimed in 2017 were found by the Texas Rangers not to be his, and investigators concluded he had no part in the Trotter case or any other open murder.
The 1993 attack and the three uncharged killings were proved only at the punishment phase and through his own confession; he was never tried for them.
June 25, 1962: Anthony Allen Shore born (TDCJ); native of Pennington County, South Dakota.
1986: Laurie Tremblay, 14 or 15, killed in Houston.
April 16, 1992: Maria del Carmen Estrada, 21, killed in Houston while walking to work.
1993: a 14-year-old girl attacked in her Houston home; she escapes.
August 1994: Diana Rebollar, 9, abducted and killed in Houston.
July 1995: Dana Sanchez, 16, killed; her body is found after an anonymous call to a Houston television station.
1998: Shore pleads no contest to sexual offenses against two young relatives; eight years' probation; DNA entered in the state database.
2003: DNA match to the Estrada evidence; arrest; confession to four killings and the 1993 attack.
2004: convicted of capital murder in Harris County; sentenced to death after asking for it.
November 15, 2004: received on death row (TDCJ).
December 12, 2007: conviction and sentence affirmed by the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals.
January 16, 2013: state habeas relief denied.
February 19, 2016: federal habeas relief denied in Houston.
January 6, 2017: Fifth Circuit denies a certificate of appealability.
July 2017: folder of Trotter case material found in his cell.
October 2017: Supreme Court declines review; clemency rejected; execution warrant withdrawn on October 18 hours before the scheduled time.
January 18, 2018: executed at Huntsville; pronounced dead at 6:28 p.m.
August 21, 2019: Larry Swearingen executed for the Trotter killing.