A Texas death row inmate’s last words before his execution were an apology to the victim’s family.
Convicted rapist and killer Moises Sandoval Mendoza, 40, was executed by lethal injection Wednesday after spending five years on death row. He was pronounced dead at 6:40 p.m. CT, becoming the third inmate executed in Texas this year and the 13th in the nation.
Mendoza was sentenced to death row for the murder of 20-year-old Rachelle O’Neil Tolleson on March 18, 2004, in Farmersville. Tolleson lived in the small town, about 40 miles northeast of Dallas, with her 6-month-old daughter, Avery.
Here’s what we know about Mendoza’s final moments.
‘I want you to know I am sincere. I apologize’
Mendoza used his last words to apologize to Tolleson’s family, according to the Texas Department of Criminal Justice.
“I am sorry for having robbed you of Rachelle’s life,” he said. “To Avery … I robbed you of a mother. I’m sorry for that. I know nothing that I could ever say or do would ever make up for that. I want you to know I am sincere. I apologize.”
He also addressed family members by telling them he loves them and is with them.
“I’m well and at peace. You know that I’m well and everything is love.”
Texas Death Row inmate Moises Mendoza, 40, is set to be executed by lethal injection on Wednesday, April 23, 2025. In 2005, Mendoza was convicted of capital murder of 20-year-old Rachelle O’Neil Tolleson in Farmersville, Texas.
Mendoza’s case gained a sort of notoriety in the years since the murder. In 2006, it was featured in the 10th season of “Forensic Files,” and in 2008, the Investigation Discovery series “Solved” highlighted the case.
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In the early hours of March 18, 2004, Rachelle O’Neil Tolleson was at home with her infant daughter Avery. Tolleson and Avery lived alone, as Tolleson was in the middle of a divorce.
Mendoza told police he let himself inside Tolleson’s house through a back door that night, per court documents. The two left to get a pack of cigarettes, leaving baby Avery at home.
Mendoza drove a little while before he began to choke Tolleson in his vehicle “for no reason,” he said, according to court documents. He then drove the two to a field near his house, where he raped her before choking her again, court documents say.
Mendoza then dragged Tolleson out of his truck and choked her again until he thought she was dead, Mendoza told police. To make sure, he “poked her throat” with a knife. Mendoza left her body in the field, where it remained for a few days before he was interviewed by police about Tolleson’s disappearance, court records say.
Mendoza wrapped Tolleson’s body in a tarp and moved it to his cousin’s land in a more remote area, just a few miles east of Farmersville. He then dumped the body in a “dug-out pit” and set it on fire to “destroy the fingerprints,” he told police, The Courier Gazette reports.
A few days later, a man searching for arrowheads found Tolleson’s charred body, according to The Courier-Gazette.
Mendoza was convicted of murder and sentenced to death.
David Leonard Wood, known as the “Desert Killer,” who is incarcerated at the Allan B. Polunksy Unit in Livingston, Texas, is scheduled to be executed on Thursday, March 13, 2025, at the Texas Department of Criminal Justice’s Huntsville Unit prison in Huntsville, Texas.
Before his conviction and sentencing, Mendoza wrote to his parents, telling them he didn’t have a reason for what he did. “I don’t know what happened to me at that moment. I turned into the devil and after I did something that I thought was in a dream,” Mendoza wrote, The Courier-Gazette reports.
On April 2, Mendoza’s lawyers asked for the opportunity to challenge Mendoza’s conviction in federal court.
Victim’s baby daughter was ‘her life’
At the time of her death, Tolleson was a new mother to her daughter Avery. Tolleson enjoyed activities like scrapbooking and shopping, but her mother Pam O’Neil said it was Avery who was “her oxygen.”
“Avery was her life and I was so proud of her when she became a mommy. Everything just came so naturally to her,” O’Neil told The Courier-Gazette about a year after Tolleson’s death. “I hate that Avery won’t have memories of her.”
O’Neil said that she and Avery frequently watched home videos of Tolleson, including Avery’s first and only Christmas with her mother, and looked through scrapbooks that Tolleson and O’Neil made together.
“She wanted more than anything in life to watch her baby take her first steps, say her first word, and she’ll never get to hear her daughter call her Mommy,” O’Neil said shortly after Tolleson’s death.
“I don’t think we’ll ever heal. I don’t think a mother ever truly heals from the loss of a child,” she told The Courier-Gazette in 2005. “I can’t believe my grandbaby will grow up without a mother.”
Pam O’Neil and Tolleson’s father, Mark O’Neil, did not immediately respond to USA TODAY’s requests to speak about their late daughter, but Mark has recognized Tolleson in several public Facebook posts over the years.
In 2021, Mark shared a photo of Tolleson from her wedding day on Facebook.
“Happy birthday to my beautiful daughter in heaven,” he wrote. “I love you and miss you every day, baby girl.”
Moises Mendoza ‘one of the most violent, sadistic men I’ve ever prosecuted,’ attorney says
Neighbors described Mendoza as “hard-working” but said he changed as he got older, recounting a “violent argument” when he pinned down his mother and sister in their front yard once, as previously reported by The Courier-Gazette.
Mendoza graduated from high school, where he did “fairly well,” court documents state. He received a few high school scholarships and completed about nine months of heating and air-conditioning training upon graduating.
In 2003, Mendoza was arrested for his involvement in two aggravated robberies on the Dallas College Richland Campus, according to The Courier-Gazette. It was while he was out on bail for one of these robberies that Tolleson went missing, the 2006 “Forensic Files” episode explains.
For much of their upbringing in north Texas, Mendoza and Tolleson were actually in the same grade school classes, Tolleson’s mother, Pam O’Neil, explained in a 2006 “Forensic Files” episode that outlines Mendoza’s case. And the Friday before Tolleson’s murder, Mendoza had been at Tolleson’s house for a party of about 15 people, court documents say.
Clinical psychologist Mark Vigen described Mendoza during his trial as “immature” and “psychologically under-developed,” claiming that Mendoza enjoyed getting away with “being sneaky” and got angry when others criticized him, as stated in court documents.
During Mendoza’s sentencing, former Collin County First Assistant District Attorney Greg Davis described Mendoza as “one of the most violent, sadistic men” he’d ever prosecuted.
— USA TODAY’s Greta Cross contributed to this report.
This article originally appeared on Austin American-Statesman: Moises Mendoza executed Wednesday: Texas death row inmate’s last words
