Execution Thursday for San Antonio woman’s killer

The slaying of a mother whose body was found stuffed in a garbage can behind a San Antonio church in 1994 remained a mystery for nearly a decade, when a prisoner in Michigan had to provide a DNA sample to be eligible for parole on an assault conviction.

That prisoner, Rodrigo Hernandez, was slated to die by injection Thursday for the abduction, rape and strangulation of 38-year-old Susan Verstegen. The execution would be the first of the year in Texas, which puts more prisoners to death than any other state and which is scheduled to kill at least six more inmates in the next several weeks.