John David Battaglia Jr. was executed by the state of Texas on February 1, 2018, for the murders of his two young daughters. His final words, directed at his ex-wife watching from the witness room, were simply, “Well hello, Mary Jean. ”
Nearly 16 years after a jury sentenced him to death, Battaglia received a lethal injection at the Huntsville Unit.
He was pronounced dead at 9:40 p. m. Central Standard Time. Mary Jean Pearl, the mother of the two girls he killed, was present and walked away from the viewing window after saying, “I’ve seen enough of him.
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The crime that led to his execution took place on May 2, 2001. Battaglia had separated from Pearl in January 1999 following years of verbal abuse, and their divorce was finalized in August 2000. Pearl had allowed her daughters, 9-year-old Mary Faith and 6-year-old Liberty May, to spend time with their father despite her concerns about his behavior. On that day, Pearl left the girls with Battaglia for a planned dinner at a mall.
Instead, he took them to his apartment in Dallas’s Deep Ellum neighborhood. From there, he called Pearl and put their daughter Faith on the phone. The child asked her mother, “Why do you want Daddy to go to jail? ” before sobbing, “No Daddy, please don’t, don’t do it.
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Pearl heard the gunshots. Battaglia shot Faith three times and Liberty five times before telling Pearl, “Merry Christmas,” a reference to a violent incident in December 1999. He then left a message on the girls’ bedroom answering machine before going to a tattoo parlor, where he had two roses inked on his left biceps to represent his daughters. He was arrested shortly afterward.
Battaglia was convicted of capital murder in April 2002. Jurors deliberated for just 19 minutes before reaching a guilty verdict, and the same jury sentenced him to death on April 30 of that year. His defense attorneys argued he should not receive the death penalty because he suffered from bipolar disorder. The case was marked by a long history of domestic violence.
In 1987, Battaglia pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor after assaulting his first wife, Michelle Getty, outside their daughter Christy’s school. He was later convicted of assaulting Pearl in 1999 and sentenced to two years of probation. Pearl had been trying to have his probation revoked for harassing her in the months before the murders. During the execution process, Battaglia’s legal team fought for years to have his sentence reduced to life in prison without parole.
He received two stays of execution in 2016, both related to questions about his mental competency. A mental health expert testified that Battaglia was most likely faking symptoms of mental illness to delay his execution, and the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals agreed in September 2017. Battaglia’s first daughter from his earlier marriage, Christy, and his first wife Michelle both publicly supported his execution. His death warrant was signed on October 31, 2017, setting the new execution date.
Before his death, Battaglia spoke of nightmares, saying, “I fear that the thoughts build up until I can’t hear, that my mind fills up into a creature and it haunts me somewhere much deeper. ” No one was present in the witness room on the convict’s side of the death chamber.