Image: from Attika X@Attika_t
By Open Chronicle News Desk
HUNTSVILLE, TX – The state of Texas carried out its first execution of the year on Wednesday, putting to death 55-year-old Charles Victor Thompson for a double murder committed nearly 28 years ago. Thompson, whose case gained national notoriety after a daring jailbreak in 2005, was pronounced dead at 6:50 p.m. at the state penitentiary in Huntsville.
The execution by lethal injection followed decades of legal battles stemming from the April 1998 shooting deaths of Thompson’s former girlfriend, Glenda Dennise Hayslip, 39, and her partner, Darren Keith Cain, 30. The killings occurred at Hayslip’s apartment in Tomball, a suburb of Houston, after Thompson reportedly returned to the scene hours after being escorted away by police during a domestic dispute.
Tonight Texas executed Charles Thompson. These were his last words: pic.twitter.com/6t6MOfrEoz
— Keri Blakinger (@keribla) January 29, 2026
In his final moments, Thompson offered a somber apology to the families of his victims. “I’m sorry for what I did. I’m sorry for what happened,” he stated, while also remarking that his execution would only “create more victims and traumatize more people.”
Thompson’s journey through the justice system was anything but conventional. In 2005, shortly after being resentenced to death, he famously escaped from the Harris County Jail. By shedding his orange jumpsuit for civilian clothes and using a forged ID badge to bluff his way past guards, he walked out the front door and remained at large for three days. He was eventually captured outside a liquor store in Shreveport, Louisiana.
Up until the final hours, Thompson’s defense team sought a stay from the U.S. Supreme Court, arguing that medical negligence, rather than the gunshot wound itself, was the true cause of Hayslip’s death, who died in a hospital a week after the shooting. The high court rejected the appeal without comment, siding with prosecutors who maintained that Thompson’s actions were the primary catalyst for the tragedy.
As the gurney was rolled away, Harris County District Attorney Sean Teare addressed the press, stating simply, “This chapter is closed.” The execution marks a continuation of Texas’s position as the most active state for capital punishment in the nation.