John Joseph Cannon ended up in Texas's death chamber for the murder of a San Antonio attorney in 1977, which happened when he was just 17 years old. He was born in Houston on September 13, 1960 and his problems began before he started school. John was struck by a car at age 4 which left him with a head injury and permanent mental and emotional issues. He spent a few months hospitalized and was not able to speak coherently until he was 8--he was also reportedly molested by male relatives. John's mother ignored repeated entreaties by doctors to have him institutionalized and he was expelled from school repeatedly due to his disruptive behavior. He broke a girl's arm and drowned a boy by throwing him into a swamp. At age 14, John was arrested for burglary and larceny six times and psychologists determined that he needed the controlled environment of an institution at all times. At 15 he attempted suicide. John was functionally illiterate, although he could sign his name--he only learned to read and write in prison.Needless to say, John Cannon was a powder keg waiting to go off. John Carabin, the public defender who recommended that John be institutionalized, had a sister named Anne Walsh, who was also an attorney and mother of eight children, and he suggested she take in the troubled youth which she accepted--she had four children close in age to Cannon and they tried to befriend him, help him get a job, and take him out to social events. Cannon moved in with the Walshes just after his 17th birthday.
On Friday, September 30, 1977, Cannon was involved in an automobile accident in downtown San Antonio. He had been driving a white '73 Maverick belonging to Stephani Walsh, one of Anne's daughters, when he wrecked the car (Stephani had driven her mother's station wagon to work that day and didn't take the Maverick). Cannon was seen taking off from the Walsh home by a constable named Bob Wentzel. Wentzel saw him drive down the street erratically and flagged him to stop. Instead, Cannon kept going until he crashed into a chain link fence next to a restaurant. A bartender at the restaurant, Ken Kizer, saw Cannon run from the wrecked Ford and toss his shirt in some bushes. He called police. A short time later, Cannon walked into the restaurant shirtless and bought a soft drink (as he was underage and couldn't purchase alcohol). He sat at the bar for 20 minutes until police arrived--when the cops showed up, Cannon began to walk outside but Wentzel and Kizer held him in place until they came in.SAPD patrol officer Shelton Spears responded to the accident and found that the Maverick was registered to Ms. Walsh. Spears suspected it had been stolen, so he decided to go to the Walsh home to make sure Cannon had permission to drive the car. Once he stepped inside, he realized that a lot more than just a teenager taking a car for a joyride was going on.
Instead, Spears found the body of Anne Walsh laying dead in the living room. The 45 year old attorney was laying in a pool of blood, shot seven times in the chest, head, abdomen, and arms. It was clear that the gunman had stood over top of her and fired. There was a smear trail of blood, suggesting the body was dragged from under a pool table where Anne had crawled to try and get into cover. Her clothes were also ripped off.Taken into custody, Cannon confessed to the horrific murder. He said he'd been living with the Walshes for about a week. Cannon was working outside in the yard when Anne pulled up to the house in the Maverick. For no known reason, something snapped in his head and he went inside and grabbed a gun belonging to one of her sons and began shooting. Anne pleaded for her life but he kept shooting. Cannon dragged her from under a pool table where she was hiding and proceeded to remove her clothing. He tried to rape her, but she was bleeding and not moving by then and he believed she was probably dead so he got unnerved, put his pants back on, and went to the kitchen where he grabbed two travelers' checks from Anne's purse before taking her car and driving off. After Bob Wentzel started chasing him, he floored it and then crashed into the fence, ran into a grassy field, and discarded his shirt and the travelers' checks.
He said that Anne's oldest son had a large collection of firearms and a few nights ago voices in his head were telling him to kill everyone in the house. Cannon added that he'd had issues ever since the accident when he was a small child and he had nothing against Anne and no reason to want to kill her; she had been nice to him and tried to help him out.Anne Walsh was laid to rest in Saint Stanislaus Catholic Cemetery in Bandera.Tried and convicted of first degree murder, Cannon was sentenced to death and executed April 22, 1998 after 21 years on Texas's death row. His attorneys unsuccessfully appealed to the Supreme Court as he was underage when the offense took place and argued that the UN Human Rights Council banned capital punishment for persons under 18 and Pope John Paul II urged Texas governor George W. Bush to spare him. Cannon was one of 27 death row prisoners in Texas who committed a murder when they were under 18. It took two tries to execute him; the initial lethal injection failed when a vein in his arm collapsed and they had to re-start the attempt
>>16534633He's white, we don't care. If he was black this thread would get 120 replies.
>>16534634>>16534640should have been institutionalized. you don't let a rabid pitbull in your house.
>>16534633>mother of eight childrenuse a condom, you fucking animals>>16534645>Anne Walsh was laid to rest in Saint Stanislaus Catholic Cemetery in Bandera.oh that explains everything
>>16534633Poor guy never had a chance at life almost from when he was old enough to walk and talk.
look i've known people who got a raw deal out of life like this guy but they didn't fill a woman with gunshots and try to rape her
