Tracy Beatty during trial august 2004 tmt file photo.jpg

Tracy Beatty called his own death an “advantage.”

Beatty, 61, of Whitehouse, sat on death row for nearly two decades after murdering his mother two days before Thanksgiving in 2003. Although the final execution date was postponed multiple times, Beatty knew his death was coming since he landed in the state penitentiary in August 2004.

“I’ve got an advantage over most people in the world. I mean, you don’t know when you’re going to die,” Beatty told our news partners at CBS19 in an exclusive interview just weeks before his execution. “I know when I’m going to die, and I’ve known that I was going to die since I’ve been here.”

That moment finally came for Beatty on Wednesday night, as he took his final breath at 6:39 p.m. in an execution chamber at the Huntsville State Penitentiary, according to according to Texas Department of Criminal Justice records.

“Yes, I just want to thank … I don’t want to leave you, baby, see you when you get there. I love you,” Beatty said to his wife during his final words as he wept, according to a report from CBS19. He married the woman, who was a pen pal of his, on Oct. 25.

Beatty’s next words were directed to his fellow inmates.

“Thank you to all my brothers back on the unit for all the encouragement to help get my life right. Sunny, Blue, I love you, brothers. See you on the other side,’” CBS19 reported.

Two of his daughters, his wife, ex-wife and spiritual adviser were among some of the witnesses. The adviser prayed over him before his death.

His last days from this past Sunday through Wednesday morning were recorded by TDCJ officials. Some of his final actions included sleeping, sitting in his bunk, talking on the phone, having visitation, listening to music, reading and speaking to a field minister and life coach, according to CBS19.

In the weeks awaiting lethal injection, Beatty said he wasn’t worried about dying.

“I’ve already made my peace with the Man. So I know where I’m going,” Beatty told CBS19 from the Polunsky Unit in Livingston, where he spent most of his time in a cell besides two hours of recreation. “I’ll be in a lot better place than this.”

Beatty was the fourth inmate to be put to death in Texas and the 13th in the country this year, according to the Texas Department of Criminal Justice. The state’s last execution of the year is scheduled for Nov. 16 and, so far, six others are scheduled for 2023.

Beatty was sentenced in Smith County in 2004 after he was found guilty of strangling his 62-year-old mother Carolyn “Callie” Ruth Click on Nov. 25, 2003, and burying her in the backyard of her pale yellow mobile home on County Road 2323 in Whitehouse.

Killing his mother was an accident, Beatty said.

“That’s why I’ve made my peace with the Man upstairs. I know I’ll see her again,” he said. Beatty was baptized and also married during his time in prison.

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The murder

Beatty didn’t appear remorseful, not 18 years ago during his trial and sentencing as he doodled in a notebook and not in an interview weeks before his death as he reflected back on what happened that day.

Click had told Beatty, who was 43 at the time, he needed to move out of her home, where she’d willingly invited him to stay after he finished serving prison time for intentionally injuring his 18-month-old niece by shocking her with an exposed electrical cord, burning her with cigarettes, pulling her hair, biting her and hitting her in the face, according to court records. As he was during that incident, Beatty said he was also under the influence when he killed Click.

“I’d been drinking all day and I came in drunk,” Beatty recalled as he spoke to CBS19 on Oct. 12. “She just started talking trash and raising hell, telling me I wasn’t gonna be staying out and all.”

He said he tried to leave the room but Click grabbed him by the hair, and that’s when he lost control, strangled her, and threw her toward a recliner in the trailer his mother welcomed him into with hopes to repair their volatile relationship.

“What do you think was going through her mind?” Chief Felony Prosecutor April Sikes said during the trial, as reported by the Morning Telegraph in 2004. “‘Why, what have I done to make you hate me so much?’ How about, ‘I love you, how can you do this?’ What was her crime — loving him? Ms. Click loved him and it cost her her life.”

Beatty said he didn’t think she was dead in that moment, but rather just knocked out.

The next morning, he felt his mother’s cold body and realized he’d killed her. He took off her clothes and placed her body in the bathtub to rinse off the blood. He left her there for three days before he decided he “had to do something.”

“So I just dug a grave in the backyard and put her in it. She always said she wanted to be buried there on top of the hill anyways,” Beatty told CBS19.

Evidence proved Beatty brutally killed his mother by strangling her to death and badly beating her, breaking bones and causing trauma to her head, according to news reported by the Tyler Morning Telegraph in 2004. He then burned her personal items, stole her car, and drained all her bank accounts and credit cards to buy drugs and alcohol, according to court records.

Shortly after Click’s death, Beatty was jailed again, this time on auto and theft charges. He was housed in Henderson County when he began telling fellow inmates about murdering his mother. He also requested to speak to investigators so he could lead them to Click’s body to “get her out of the hole before Christmas,” according to the Morning Telegraph. On Dec. 23, 2003, cadaver dogs found her nude, contorted body in a small, shallow grave behind her home. Beatty buried her with mothballs and garlic, covered her with cat litter and lumber, and tied panty hose over her neck and face.

Too little, too late

Beatty’s lawyers made last-minute attempts to delay his execution, but both failed. The first try was a lawsuit filed last month against prison officials, arguing Beatty deserved an uncuffed mental evaluation to see if he had an intellectual disability, which would’ve made it unconstitutional for the state to execute him. The second 11th-hour attempt came last week when his lawyers said they found out one of the jurors knew Click through a similar social circle but didn’t fess up at the time. The Supreme Court of the United States on Wednesday morning declined that application for stay of execution.

Although evaluations in the last few months and nearly two decades ago both showed Beatty has signs of mental illness, nothing proved an intellectual disability.

During his trial, forensic psychiatrists Dr. Edward Gripon and Dr. Tynus McNeel testified that Beatty’s behavior was consistent with the “lifelong condition of anti-social personality disorder,” according to the Morning Telegraph. However, they concluded he was not mentally ill “to any significant degree” and had an IQ of 100, “which places him in the middle of the population.”

Two doctors, Dr. Bhushan Agharkar and Dr. Daniel Martell, evaluated Beatty on Sept. 19 and Sept. 22, respectively, but both returned incomplete results due to the TDCJ denying to uncuff Beatty. Still, Agharkar said Beatty was “clearly psychotic and has a complex paranoid delusional belief system.”

“While he appeared generally logical and linear, when questioning turned to his current incarceration, a complex delusional world revealed itself,” Agharkar said in a letter to Beatty’s attorneys. “He talked about a vast conspiracy of correctional officers who spread false rumors about him in order to turn people against him. They ‘torture’ him via a device in his ear so he can hear their menacing voices.”

Beatty believed his thoughts were being read and broadcast to others and that correctional officers were trying to turn inmates and others against him.