07:01 PM CST on Tuesday, November 9, 2004

From 11 News Staff Reports

HUNTSVILLE -- Convicted killer Demarco McCullum, who traded a promising athletic future for a cell on Texas death row, was executed Tuesday evening for the abduction, robbery, beating and fatal shooting of a Houston man 10 years ago.

In a brief final statement, McCullum expressed appreciation and love "to all those who supported me over the years. And I want to let my mom know I love her and will see her in heaven."

Seven minutes later, McCullum was pronounced dead at 6:17 p.m. CST.

His victim's mother was among four witnesses to watch McCullum die, but he did not acknowledge their presence.

McCullum, 30, was arrested the day in 1994 he was supposed to leave for Tyler Junior College, where he had an athletic scholarship after a standout football career as quarterback at Aldine High School in north Houston.

That summer, however, authorities linked him and several football-player companions to a series of robberies and assaults around Houston, culminating in the slaying of 29-year-old Michael Burzinski.

McCullum was the 21st Texas inmate executed this year and the first of two on consecutive nights.

Legal appeals were exhausted. Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles refused to commute his sentence to life or grant a reprieve. The U.S. Supreme Court earlier this year decided not to review his case.

"He seemed to be two different people," said Tommy LeFon, the assistant Harris County district attorney who prosecuted McCullum. "When he was around people at church and at school, he was a good kid. When away from those kinds of influences, he wasn't."

"He engaged in some very bad behavior, according to the jury that convicted him, but that doesn't necessarily mean he will be dangerous the rest of his life," McCullum's lawyer, David Schulman, said, noting that McCullum had been a model inmate with no disciplinary infractions.

"None of us benefit by his execution. All of us benefit by him being sentenced to prison for the rest of his life."

McCullum, who was 19 when he was arrested, blamed his actions on a lack of maturity.

"I wasn't one of those that had goals," he said recently from death row. "I was one of those that whatever the wind was blowing."

Prosecutors said Burzinski, who had moved to Houston from Toledo, Ohio, was approached by McCullum and three of his buddies outside a Houston gay club the night of July 30, 1994. Authorities believed the four were looking for easy money and figured a homosexual made a good target, a contention McCullum disputed.

"That wasn't the case at all," he said. "This guy approached us. The dude was drunk and high."

Burzinski was beaten and taken away in his own car, was forced to withdraw $400 from an automated bank machine, then was shot in the back of the head. His body was dumped in north Harris County, miles from where he was abducted, and the car was abandoned and torched three blocks from where one of his attackers lived.

A reward posted for information in the case prompted a tip to a Crime Stoppers phone line that led to McCullum's arrest.

Also arrested were Terrance Perro, Decedrick Gainous and Christopher Lewis. Gainous, who also was to have played football with McCullum at Tyler Junior College, and Perro received life prison terms.

Lewis testified against McCullum and got a 15-year sentence.

In a statement defense attorneys argued was coerced by police, McCullum said he shot Burzinski "because that is what everybody said I should do."

"Things just happened," McCullum said from death row. McCullum, who grew up in Seminary, Miss., a town of 400 north of Hattiesburg, and moved to Houston in 1990, said he wasn't frightened by the prospect of death.

"There's life after here," he said.

Another inmate, Frederick McWilliams, convicted of fatally shooting a man in Houston while stealing a car, was set to die Wednesday evening.

He will be the sixth Harris County inmate to be put to death this year.