Suzanne Basso Executed in Texas For 1998 Murder

Suzanne Basso’s life came to a quiet end today, standing in stark contrast against the atrocities the woman and a few other people dealt to a mentally disabled man by the name of Louis “Bu...
Suzanne Basso Executed in Texas For 1998 Murder
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Suzanne Basso’s life came to a quiet end today, standing in stark contrast against the atrocities the woman and a few other people dealt to a mentally disabled man by the name of Louis “Buddy” Musso.

Basso convinced Musso to live with her and then proceeded to take over his social security benefits. She then took out insurance policies for him, making herself the beneficiary. After all this, Basso and five other people brutally tortured Musso for days before finally killing him and dumping his body. Basso filed a missing person’s report shortly after the terrible incident, attempting to separate herself from the crime. Thankfully, this attempt was futile, and Basso was arrested, convicted, and sentenced to death.

Since her arrest and incarceration in 1998, Basso has proved an interesting, if not disturbing case for the officials overseeing her punishment. Just a month ago, a Texas state judge upheld findings that Basso had a tendency to lie to authority figures and manipulate results on psychological tests. Basso’s court appearances often included her acting out in strange ways to garner attention and sympathy, such as speaking in the voice of a little girl or pretending to be deaf, blind, or otherwise disabled.

Colleen Barnett, the former Harris County assistant district attorney who prosecuted Basso, was quoted on the topic as saying,”It was challenging, but I saw her for who she was. I was determined I was not going to let her get away with it.”

After a last day appeal to the Supreme Court where Basso’s lawyers claimed that she was mentally unfit for execution ended in failure, with the judges rejecting the appeal just an hour before Basso was sentenced to die. As such, today, at 7:26 PM, Basso was declared dead, with the cause being lethal injection by the state. This makes Basso the 14th woman to ever be executed by the state in American history.

Basso went quietly enough. When asked for a final statement, she said “No, sir,” with a tearful look in her eyes. She reportedly looked to a couple of friends positioned behind a window and “mouthed a brief word to them and nodded.” As the drug began to take hold, she began to snore deeply; the snoring slowed and eventually halted and, eleven minutes after the injection, she was declared dead.

Image via this YouTube clip.

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