A Texas inmate who tortured and drowned his female roommate is scheduled to die on Wednesday at 6 p.m. for her murder, officials confirmed.
FOX News reports that 51-year-old Troy Clark jeered at a Smith County jury during his 2000 trial and dared them to sentence him to death. The jury did just that. Clark is the ninth person this year to face death by lethal injection in Texas.
According to court documents, Clark was a drug user and dealer who became paranoid that his former roommate, Christina Muse, 20, would turn him in. During Clark’s trial, his ex-girlfriend, Tory Gene Bush, testified that Muse came over to her Tyler home that she shared with Clark May 19, 1998, and he immediately subdued her with a stun gun.
Clark then tied the victim up with duct tape and forced into a closet while he played video games in another room.
After several hours, Clark returned to the closet, dragged Muse to a bathtub and beat her with a wood board. Bush helped him drown her, according to prosecutors. Clark later stuffed Muse into a barrel and hid her. Authorities found her badly decomposed body months later on the property of Clark’s landlord.
“Clark yelled for Bush to come to the bathroom where she found Muse in the bathtub, blood on the back wall of the tub, and Clark filling the tub with water. Clark told Bush to help him hold Muse’s head under water and threatened her when she hesitated,” court records read. “After drowning Muse, Clark told Bush to go buy some lime. Bush then went . . . to get a ride to the store.”
At the time of her death, Muse, who was once roommates with Clark, had moved out and was trying to move on with her life when the incident occurred. Family described her as a “loving mother, and a loving daughter,” according to East Texas Matters. Muse went to Clark’s house the day she died to collect money he owed her, according to her family.
Clark was well-known in the area as a bad-tempered meth user and drug dealer that “you didn’t want to cross.”
Bobby Mims, a trial attorney for Clark, said that his own relatives showed up at the punishment hearting and asked that Clark get the death penalty.
“At the punishment hearing, the prosecutors actually had one or two of (Clark’s) own relatives show up and they had indicated they wanted him to get the death penalty. It was crazy.”
“I hope he’s made peace with his maker.”
[Feature Photo: Troy Clark/
