Texas executes ‘suitcase killer’

A San Antonio man who became known as the “suitcase killer” has been executed in Texas for the 2005 slaying of a 29-year-old Lubbock woman whose battered, naked body was stuffed into a new piece of luggage and tossed in the trash.

Rosendo Rodriguez III had also confessed to killing a 16-year-old Lubbock girl and similarly disposing of her body.

Rodriguez was the fourth convicted killer executed this year in Texas and the seventh nationally. His lethal injection was carried out Tuesday evening after the U.S. Supreme Court rejected a last-day appeal.

Workers at the Lubbock city landfill spotted a new suitcase, opened it and discovered inside the body of Summer Baldwin. Detectives tracked the luggage purchase to Rodriguez, a Marine reservist who was in Lubbock for training.

Rodriguez also admitted to the death of another woman, though no conviction was ever reached in that case.