Lucky Ward

Lucky Ward (born November 1, 1964) is an African-American suspected serial killer, who was convicted of strangling two people in September 2010 in Houston, Texas.Verdict, State v. Ward, No. 1297205 (183rd Dist. Ct., Harris County, Tex. Mar. 2, 2020). He was accused of four other homicides, one dating back to 1985, none of which were ever prosecuted.Second Motion for Continuance at 1, State v. Ward, No. 1297205 (183rd Dist. Ct., Harris County, Tex. Jan. 21, 2020). He was convicted and sentenced to death on one count of capital murder based on the theory that two different individuals, Gypsy Rodriguez and Reita Long, were killed as part of the "same scheme or course of conduct." This conviction was obtained after a 10-year delay in his trial.Complaint, State v. Ward, No. 1297205 (183rd Dist. Ct., Harris County, Tex. Feb. 28, 2011). Since his arrest in 2010, he has consistently denied any knowledge of Rodriguez's death, but has admitted responsibility for Long's death, although he denied an intent to kill her.

He is on Texas's death row and is appealing his conviction and sentence.

Early life and crimes Lucky Ward was born on November 1, 1964, in Brazoria County, Texas. He grew up in an unstable home, where he was physically and mentally abused. His mother gave him to her brother, who was known to sexually abuse children, when Lucky was a baby; his uncle raised him until he was about seven.Revised Opening Brief of the Appellant at 1, Ward v. State, No. AP-77,098, 2022 WL 16855768 (Tex. App. Crim. Oct. 26, 2022) (citing Reporter’s Record vol. 50, pages 71, 218, 74). He later spent some time with his violent father who once dragged him behind a car to which he was chained.Revised Opening Brief of the Appellant at 1, Ward v. State, No. AP-77,098, 2022 WL 16855768 (Tex. App. Crim. Oct. 26, 2022) (citing Reporter’s Record vol. 50, pages 107-137). These experiences affected his mental health and led him to be diagnosed with schizoaffective disorder and bipolar disorder.Defendant’s Motion to Preclude the Death Penalty Due to Defendant’s Serious Mental Illness at 2, State v. Ward, No. 1297205 (183rd Dist. Ct., Harris County, Tex. Aug. 3, 2017). At age 14, he sexually assaulted an 83-year-old woman in Brazoria County. He was arrested and confessed the same day.

After spending two years in juvenile prison, he was released at age 16 and sent back to his abusive family despite a recommendation that he not be returned to his mother.Revised Opening Brief of the Appellant at 1, Ward v. State, No. AP-77,098, 2022 WL 16855768 (Tex. App. Crim. Oct. 26, 2022) (citing Reporter’s Record vol. 46, pages 22, 56-57). Soon thereafter, he was accused of assault, tried as an adult, and sent to adult prison at age 16.Revised Opening Brief of the Appellant at 1, Ward v. State, No. AP-77,098, 2022 WL 16855768 (Tex. App. Crim. Oct. 26, 2022) (citing Reporter’s Record vol. 46, pages 48-52). He was released from prison briefly in 1985.Revised Opening Brief of the Appellant at 2, Ward v. State, No. AP-77,098, 2022 WL 16855768 (Tex. App. Crim. Oct. 26, 2022) (citing Reporter’s Record vol. 50, page 182). After being sent back to prison in 1985, he was in the custody of the Texas prison system until 2006. Upon being released, Ward became homeless and addicted to drugs.Revised Opening Brief of the Appellant at 2, Ward v. State, No. AP-77,098, 2022 WL 16855768 (Tex. App. Crim. Oct. 26, 2022) (citing Clerk’s Record pages 65).

From 2006 until his arrest for the capital crime in November 2010, he was repeatedly arrested and served time in the Harris County jail for a variety of crimes, including soliciting prostitutes; possession and distribution of controlled substances; resisting arrest; theft; failure to identify himself to law enforcement and criminal mischief. He was housed in the section of the jail used for people with mental illness and given psychotropic medications.Revised Opening Brief of the Appellant at 108, Ward v. State, No. AP-77,098, 2022 WL 16855768 (Tex. App. Crim. Oct. 26, 2022) (citing Sealed Clerk’s Record pages 292-93). He was written up for numerous infractions and accused of assaulting another inmate. He showed jail staff how he had been able to unlock his cell; an educational video was made of him demonstrating the process. But he never attempted an escape.

Murders Ward is accused of targeting homeless women and trans women. At trial, the state's case was the murders of Long and Rodriquez were part of the “same scheme or course of conduct.” Ward is challenging this finding on appeal.Revised Opening Brief of the Appellant at 38-41, Ward v. State, No. AP-77,098, 2022 WL 16855768 (Tex. App. Crim. Oct. 26, 2022). Each victim was allegedly strangled, but none were sexually assaulted.

While Ward awaited trial for Long and Rodriguez's murder, law enforcement endeavored to link him to several other unsolved murders. One of these was the 1985 murder of Birdell Louis. Ward was not considered a suspect in Louis's death until 2013 and only because of law enforcements express intent to try to link him to other crimes; during trial, it was revealed that the Long investigation's lead detective directed a cold case detective to look for unsolved strangulation cases that police might be able to link to Ward.Revised Opening Brief of the Appellant at 224-25, Ward v. State, No. AP-77,098, 2022 WL 16855768 (Tex. App. Crim. Oct. 26, 2022) (citing Reporter’s Record vol. 47, pages 149-153). The cold case of a woman named Birdell Louis was identified because it had occurred when Ward was not in prison; her body had been found behind a gas station near downtown Houston.Revised Opening Brief of the Appellant at 273, Ward v. State, No. AP-77,098, 2022 WL 16855768 (Tex. App. Crim. Oct. 26, 2022) (citing Reporter’s Record vol. 47, pages 95-102). Initially, the primary suspect in Louis's murder was her abusive ex-boyfriend who had reportedly choked and threatened her shortly before her death; but that investigation was, for unknown reasons, abandoned.Revised Opening Brief of the Appellant at 275, Ward v. State, No. AP-77,098, 2022 WL 16855768 (Tex. App. Crim. Oct. 26, 2022) (citing Reporter’s Record vol. 47, pages 158-162). During Ward's trial, a latent print examiner testified that Ward's palm print could not be excluded as a match to a partial palm print lifted from a pair of glasses found near Louis's body.Revised Opening Brief of the Appellant at 275-76, Ward v. State, No. AP-77,098, 2022 WL 16855768 (Tex. App. Crim. Oct. 26, 2022) (citing Reporter’s Record vol. 47, pages 143-145). No other physical evidence linked Ward to the murder. Louis's ex-boyfriend's fingerprints were never obtained or compared to the prints found at the crime scene; not was his DNA collected or his profile compared to the many items from which Ward was excluded.Revised Opening Brief of the Appellant at 275, Ward v. State, No. AP-77,098, 2022 WL 16855768 (Tex. App. Crim. Oct. 26, 2022) (citing Reporter’s Record vol. 47, pages 170). Ward was not indicted for Louis's murder, but details of the crime were presented to his jury in 2020 as if he had been the perpetrator.Revised Opening Brief of the Appellant at 273, Ward v. State, No. AP-77,098, 2022 WL 16855768 (Tex. App. Crim. Oct. 26, 2022).

The second suspected victim was 51-year-old Myra "Chanel" Ical, a transgender woman. She was found dead in a grassy area near a highway on January 18, 2010.Revised Opening Brief of the Appellant at 267, Ward v. State, No. AP-77,098, 2022 WL 16855768 (Tex. App. Crim. Oct. 26, 2022) (citing Reporter’s Record vol. 48, pages 14-15, 81). Investigators spent ten years attempting to link Ward to Ical's murder. Right before his trial began, using a new probabilistic genotyping software known as “STRmix,”Motion for Continuance, State v. Ward, No. 1297205 (183rd Dist. Ct., Harris County, Tex. Jan. 16, 2020); Second Motion for Continuance, State v. Ward, No. 1297205 (183rd Dist. Ct., Harris County, Tex. Jan. 21, 2020). the State claimed that one swab from Ical's body contained a mixture of DNA from at least four different contributors. After assuming that the mixture contained only four contributors, an analyst claimed that Ward could not be excluded from one of the four.Revised Opening Brief of the Appellant at 248, Ward v. State, No. AP-77,098, 2022 WL 16855768 (Tex. App. Crim. Oct. 26, 2022) (citing Reporter’s Record vol. 48, page 143). This was the first time the Houston crime lab had ever used this software.Revised Opening Brief of the Appellant at 244, Ward v. State, No. AP-77,098, 2022 WL 16855768 (Tex. App. Crim. Oct. 26, 2022) (citing Reporter’s Record vol. 48, pages 131-132, 156). Ward was excluded as a contributor to the large quantity of more traditional DNA testing of materials gathered from that crime scene.Revised Opening Brief of the Appellant at 267, Ward v. State, No. AP-77,098, 2022 WL 16855768 (Tex. App. Crim. Oct. 26, 2022) (citing Reporter’s Record vol. 48, pages 139-143, 147, 151). The testimony regarding his possible inclusion in a mixture of four or more contributors to a single sample was the only evidence of any kind connecting Ward to Ical's murder. He was never charged with this crime but testimony about the murder was put before his jury during his 2020 trial.Revised Opening Brief of the Appellant at 276, Ward v. State, No. AP-77,098, 2022 WL 16855768 (Tex. App. Crim. Oct. 26, 2022) (citing Reporter’s Record vol. 48).

Houston law enforcement endeavored to attribute another unsolved murder to Ward that had occurred in 2010. On June 18, the partially decomposed body of 24-year-old Raquel Antoinette Mundy, a single mother with two children from Galveston, was found in a grassy field on 300 St. Charles, near some railroad tracks. While dropping off her mother and children at a Greyhound bus station, Mundy's car was towed, leaving her stranded. She was last seen entering the car of a Hispanic man in the downtown depot. Before her death, Mundy sent her mother a text message expressing fear that “this Mex” might hurt her. Ward, who is not Hispanic and did not own a car, was considered a suspect after his arrest for Long's death, but he was never charged with Mundy's murder.

One of the two murders he was convicted of, but denies committing, occurred on September 13, 2010. 46-year-old Gypsy Rodriguez, a transgender woman and hairdresser, was found dead in an apartment she shared with two men. Though she was found nude, there was no signs of sexual assault. One of Rodriguez's roommates reported that he had seen her engaged in consensual sex with a bald black man soon before she was found dead.Revised Opening Brief of the Appellant at 15, Ward v. State, No. AP-77,098, 2022 WL 16855768 (Tex. App. Crim. Oct. 26, 2022) (citing Reporter's Record vol. 37, pages 49, 216-218). Ward, who was not bald, admitted that he had met Rodriguez, whom he believed to be biologically female.Revised Opening Brief of the Appellant at 35-36, Ward v. State, No. AP-77,098, 2022 WL 16855768 (Tex. App. Crim. Oct. 26, 2022). He had agreed to watch her car while she went to clubs, and Rodriguez took a picture of Ward, which Ward himself later identified for the police.Revised Opening Brief of the Appellant at 18-19, Ward v. State, No. AP-77,098, 2022 WL 16855768 (Tex. App. Crim. Oct. 26, 2022) (citing Reporter’s Record vol. 38, pages 180-181; State’s Exhibit 234). But Ward has consistently denied knowing anything about Rodriguez's death, which occurred in her apartment in North Houston.Revised Opening Brief of the Appellant at 36, 48, Ward v. State, No. AP-77,098, 2022 WL 16855768 (Tex. App. Crim. Oct. 26, 2022) (citing State’s Exhibit 491).