A man convicted in the 1998 double murder of his ex-girlfriend and her new love interest at a north Houston home died by lethal injection on Wednesday night.
Charles Victor Thompson, 55, had been on Texas Death Row for almost three decades. His execution was the first in the state this year and he was the first Harris County inmate put to death since District Attorney Sean Teare took office in January 2025.
Witnesses included Thompson’s father and the family members of murder victims Darren Cain and Dennise Hayslip. The victims’ families and the loved ones of the person being executed are placed in separate rooms facing the execution chamber, where they can watch the procedure through glass.
Dennise Hayslip’s only child Wade was 13 years old when the crime occurred. He told the Houston Press after the execution that he was glad it was over.
“I was the first one into the viewing chamber. We locked eyes and I nodded at him; I acknowledged him,” Wade Hayslip said. “I sincerely hope that he’s made it right with God and that he’s not somewhere burning in hell.”
Teare served as a spokesman for the Cains after Thompson was pronounced dead around 6:50 p.m.
“When Thompson made the choice to devastate two families, Dennise’s child was forced to grow up without a mother,” Teare said. “Darren’s parents buried their own son — something no mother or father should face. Thompson’s hatred and spite further manifested when he took steps attempting to have witnesses killed while he was in custody awaiting trial.”
“Today, Thompson has finally been held accountable for the suffering and pain he has caused,” Teare added.
Texas has, since 1982, performed executions by lethal injection, although the chemicals in the cocktail have changed over time. Today, the state uses Pentobarbital, a barbiturate used to induce a coma.
Thompson’s final words were: “I would like to say that I hope the victim’s family, their extended family, and their loved ones can find forgiveness in their heart and that you can begin to heal and move past this. There is no winners in this situation, it creates more victims and traumatizes more people 28 years later. I’m sorry for what I did, I’m sorry for what happened, and I want to tell all of y’all, I love you and that keep Jesus in your life, keep Jesus first. To my children, get to know the Lord, and I love you all. That’s it Warden.”
Wade Hayslip said Thompson’s final words weren’t particularly satisfying. “It didn’t matter what he said or didn’t say,” Hayslip said. “At the end, I was looking for accountability. All he had to offer was that moment. I did not want him to die with malice in my heart so I was fighting staying strong and trying to not emotionally break down in front of everybody.”
The details of Thompson’s crime vary, depending on who’s answering the question.
In an October interview with the Press, one of the few Thompson granted after his death date was set, the prisoner maintained that he shot Cain in self-defense, and that Dennise Hayslip got in the way of an argument between the two men and died due to negligence by Memorial Hermann Hospital. A civil suit found that the doctors were not at fault.
The official description of the crime for which Thompson was convicted, as posted on the Texas Department of Criminal Justice website, reads: “On 04/30/98 in Houston, Thompson got into an argument with a white male and white female in her apartment. The night before, officers had been called to the same address and had escorted Thompson away from the residence. Thompson returned early the next morning and kicked the door in. Thompson shot the male, causing his death, and injuring the female severely enough to require life flight to the hospital. She died one week later, as a result of the shooting.”
During a resentencing hearing in 2005, Thompson escaped from the Harris County Jail and went on the run for four days, making it to Louisiana, where he posed as a Hurricane Katrina survivor until a female penpal turned him in when he called to ask for money.
In Thompson’s October interview with the Press, he said he hoped for a stay but added that the matter was in God’s hands.
“It’s tragic what happened,” he said at the time. “I regret it. I have remorse. I want people to be able to heal and move past it. I pray for them and I’ve asked them to forgive me.”
The prisoner’s final plea for a stay was denied by the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals late Tuesday night.
Thompson’s friends and a group of anti-death penalty advocates stood outside the Walls Unit in Huntsville on Wednesday night protesting what they call “state-sanctioned murder.”
A petition issued by the Texas Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty urged Gov. Greg Abbott to “do everything in your power to stop this execution and work toward allocating resources to effective public safety programs, not capital punishment.”
TCADP Executive Director Kristin Houlé Cuellar pointed out in an interview following the release of the coalition’s 2025 annual report that Harris County appears to be backsliding after more than a decade of sending one or fewer people to death row each year. Last year, Harris County juries handed down death sentences for two men, Oscar Rosales and Xavier Davis.
“This comes nowhere near the 1990s, when juries in Harris County were sentencing a dozen or more people to death every year, but the fact that Harris County, which is often considered the [hub] of capital punishment in the United States, had so many years with one sentence or no death sentences, it was disappointing to see.”
If Harris County were its own state, it would rank second only to Texas in the number of people executed. Sixty-four people, or about one-third of the current death row population, were convicted in Harris County.
Since Thompson arrived on death row in 1999, taxpayers have spent about $601,000 housing him. Prisoners remain incarcerated for decades because they have the right to exhaust all appeals before an execution. Thompson’s appeals were exhausted in 2021, and prosecutors said they requested the death date because of that fact and that there’s “zero question as to his culpability in this case.”
Teare noted that a Harris County jury “delivered justice by sentencing Thompson to death, reflecting the will of our community. “
“Now, he can never harm another person again,” he said.
Wade Hayslip said it’s too soon to say whether he feels at peace or forgives the man who is responsible for his mother’s death. “We’re going to start the grieving process all over again,” he said. “Maybe we’ll have a head start on it this time. I’ve had somebody to oppose my whole adult life and now I’m more or less cheering for him. I hope he meant what he said. I hope he’s right with God.”
This article appears in Private: Jan 1 – Dec 31, 2026.