2003-01-29

On Wednesday, 29 January 2003, Runnels was incarcerated at the Clements Unit of the Texas Department of Criminal Justice in Potter County, serving in the eighth year of his 70-year sentence. He was assigned as a janitor at the prison boot factory and, according to trial testimony, was angry that his request to transfer to being a barber had not been granted.

He told fellow inmate Bud Williams that morning that he was going to be "shipped one way or another" and that "he was going to kill someone."

He said he would kill the supervisor, Stanley Wiley, if he said anything to him that morning. He told another inmate, William Gilchrist, that he planned to hold the factory manager hostage in the office after the other correctional officers left.

After Runnels arrived at the boot factory, he told inmate Phillip Yow that he was going to do something.

During the first shift, Runnels, then 30, approached Wiley, raised a knife, tilted his head back, and cut his throat. He then wiped the knife with a white rag and walked back toward the trimming tables.

When Yow asked Runnels why he attacked Wiley, he stated that it could have been anyone "as long as they was white." When Yow stated that Runnels could get the death penalty if Wiley died, Runnels answered, "A dead man can't talk."