HUNTSVILLE, Texas—Condemned killer William Murray said he’d been looking for another chance to prove himself.

“I’ve been praying every day that the good Lord will let me out,” he said recently from death row. “They don’t have to worry about me messing up any more.”

Freed on probation after serving just three months of a 10-year term for burglaries, he forfeited his chance, raping and strangling an elderly woman nearly a decade ago while committing another burglary just three months after he was released.

Wednesday evening, he was executed for the slaying of 93-year-old Rena Ratliff at her home in Kaufman County, just east of Dallas.

“I’m sorry for what I did,” he told two nephews of his victim who watched him through a window in the death chamber. “I hope you can find it in your heart to forgive me. The Lord has forgiven me.”

Murray then looked through an adjacent window where his mother and two brothers were among the witnesses.

“I’ll be there waiting for y’all, all right?” he told them.

“God Bless.”

Eight minutes later he was pronounced dead.

Scattered power outages in the Huntsville area, the result of

last weekend’s Hurricane Ike, had no effect on the execution.  Officials said the procedures were not dependent on electricity and the Huntsville Unit of the Texas Department of Criminal Justice, where executions are carried out, had normal electric service Wednesday.

Murray, 39, became the ninth prisoner executed this year in the nation’s busiest capital punishment state.

Appeals were exhausted and Murray’s lawyer filed no last-ditch efforts in the courts to try to stop the punishment. The U.S.  Supreme Court refused to review his case earlier this year and a clemency bid to the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles was turned down this week.

In a recent death row interview with The Associated Press, Murray acknowledged the slaying, blaming it on a drug problem.

“I’m not trying to blame this on somebody else,” he said. “I want people to know I’m sorry for the crime. I pray to the Lord to forgive me and I’m asking them to forgive me. That’s all I can do.”

Murray was linked to at least a dozen burglaries in his home area of Kaufman County, just east of Dallas. In February 1998, he awakened Ratcliff while he rummaged through her bedroom. The widow hit him with her cane or walker, surprising him, and he said after that he “went crazy.”

“I killed her,” he said. “I feel bad.”

He took about $10 worth of change from a jar and a knife. He

swapped the knife for drugs.

The night of the killing, he said he drank 18 beers and took some PCP and crack cocaine. He’d hoped to steal a television but it was too heavy for the 5-foot-3 Murray, known on death row as “Scooter.”

Besides the burglaries, his record showed he escaped from jail while awaiting trial, sexually assaulted two other inmates while he was locked up and also was seen smoking marijuana in jail. At one point, he was employed as a city worker in Kaufman but got fired for marijuana possession.

Another inmate, Joseph Ries, had been scheduled to die on Thursday but the judge who set the execution date moved it a few weeks ago to October. Ries is among four convicted killers set to die next month and among at least 15 with execution dates into early next year.

Scheduled to die next is Kevin Watts, set for execution Oct. 16 for a triple slaying during the robbery of a San Antonio restaurant in 2002.