Sister of notorious Houston serial killer: 'He should be killed'

This photo provided by the Texas Department of Criminal Justice shows Anthony Shore. The U.S. Supreme Court has refused an appeal from convicted killer Shore, facing execution in Texas this month. The high court, without comment, declined to review appeal from the death row inmate. The 55-year-old Shore is set for lethal injection Oct. 18 for the 1992 slaying of a 20-year-old woman in Houston. He has confessed to that killing and three others. (Texas Department of Criminal Justice via AP) less This photo provided by the Texas Department of Criminal Justice shows Anthony Shore. The U.S. Supreme Court has refused an appeal from convicted killer Shore, facing execution in Texas this month. The high ... more Photo: HOGP Photo: HOGP Image 1 of / 23 Caption Close Sister of notorious Houston serial killer: 'He should be killed' 1 / 23 Back to Gallery

Gina Shore feels it in her bones: There must have been more.

Sure as the tick-tick of the clock winding down her brother's final hours. Certain as the needle the state of Texas will slip into his arm. Fixed as the gruesome fates of the four girls he raped and murdered.

"I know in my heart without a doubt that there are more," she said. "There had to have been other girls."

But if there are, the world may never know.

Anthony Shore, the notorious Tourniquet Killer who terrorized the Bayou City in the 1980s and 1990s, is set to meet his fate Wednesday in Huntsville's death chamber.

APPEAL: Houston serial killer loses appeal one week before scheduled execution

"I think it will give closure," Gina said. "Then when people ask what about him, we can just say he's dead."

The 55-year-old former telephone technician was sent to death row in 2004, after confessing to the rapes and murders then begging the court for capital punishment.

He'd escaped detection for nearly two decades, but ultimately it was DNA — put on file after he was convicted of molesting his daughters and forced to register as a sex offender — that brought police to his door.

Since arriving on death row, he's waged a war against the state's harshest punishment, filing appeals blaming everything from ineffective lawyers to previously unrealized brain damage.

As of Monday, courts had slapped down all his last-ditch bids for life and the state's Board of Pardons and Paroles had turned down his request for clemency, according to Shore's attorney, Knox Nunnally.

Yet Shore's youngest sister, Laurel Scheel, holds a creeping fear of a darker chance for a stay — a last-minute slew of confessions. Houston police and the Harris County Sheriff's Office both confirmed he is not considered a suspect in any open cases.

But his family members — who spoke extensively to the Chronicle — have their doubts.

"He's good at keeping things hidden," Laurel said.

Since his sentencing, Shore has been tight-lipped with the media, even as he fired off a regular string of upbeat and neatly penned missives to his family.

"I will likely get a stay, but ya' just never know," he wrote his father in July, the same day a judge greenlit prosecutors' request for an October execution. "I'd prefer to live a bit longer but am ready if it's God's will."



Decades before his name became synonymous with a trail of bodies, Anthony Shore was a little boy with promise.

Smart as a whip and talented at any instrument set before him, he was "a musical prodigy who never realized his potential," as author Corey Mitchell wrote in his 2007 true-crime tale of the case.

"All my girlfriends were in love with him because he was so charismatic and cute," Laurel, now 47, said of her older brother, who taught her how to fight.

Their father's work with NASA forced the family to move cross-country repeatedly, but otherwise it was a normal upbringing.

"The only messed up part of my childhood was that my mom and dad split up," Gina, now 53, recalled.

But there were early signs something was amiss. Tony killed a neighbor's cat when he was 5 or 6, "because he didn't want it to run away," Gina said.

DATE WITH DEATH: Houston's 'Tourniquet Killer' set for October execution

And as he grew older, his pastimes grew more sinister. He used his sister as bait to lure young girls outside. He once boasted that he and some friends had beaten a homeless man to death behind a grocery store.

Some actions, though, seemed off-kilter only in retrospect, like the time he told his mom his favorite thing about his girlfriend was "the nape of her neck."

It seemed innocent enough at the time.

"But then he turned out to be a strangler," Laurel said.

After spending the later part of his childhood in California, Tony moved back to Texas as a young adult.

He settled down and got married. He had two daughters.

He got a job. He joined a band.

And he became a serial killer.

In 1986, he slaughtered 14-year-old Laurie Tremblay, snatching the girl up on her way to the bus stop. Six years later, he raped and murdered 21-year-old Maria del Carmen Estrada before leaving her naked body in the drive-through of a Spring Branch Dairy Queen.

In 1994, he killed 9-year-old Diana Rebollar. When her battered body was found, she was wearing only a black Halloween T-shirt — and a ligature twisted around her neck.

Less than a year later, he murdered 16-year-old Dana Sanchez, then reportedly called a local TV station to report a serial killer on the loose.

All of the victims were raped and tortured before he strangled them with handmade tourniquets.

When he finally confessed to the four murders and another rape, his family was shocked. But they believed it right away.

"There wasn't a doubt in my mind," Laurel said. "Because of what he did to his daughters."

For years, Gina suspected something was amiss in her brother's household. Five times, she says, she reported her concerns to child-welfare authorities in Texas.

During a visit to Texas in 1995, one of Gina's friends reported Tony for child endangerment after noticing the windows nailed shut.

"They were locked in the house, they had no running water and no power," Gina said.

But it wasn't until the girls visited family on the West Coast in 1997 — during Tony's honeymoon following marriage to a woman 14 years his junior — that the truth came out.

Even after his conviction forced him on the sex offender registry in 1998, it took another five years before authorities finally tested cold-case evidence and matched a murder to Shore.

"I think he knew he was going to get caught," Laurel said.

Even as he waits out his last days behind bars, his family still describes him as a master manipulator. A control freak. A man always seeking to control the narrative.

But he confessed when it suited him. He asked for death when it suited him. And he argued for life when that suited him instead.

Years ago, Laurel said, she predicted an end-of-the-line appeal hinging on medical issues.

"And sure as s***, that was his last plea," she said, referencing the claims of brain damage from a 1981 car wreck that left him with mangled hands and a wire in his jaw.

"I think it's a load of crap," said his younger daughter, Tiffany Hall, now 32 and living in Arizona.

Gina simply snorted in derision.

"The only reason I can see him wanting a stay is so he can torture his victims and his family by being alive."

But whenever death comes calling for Anthony Shore, his family won't be there to watch.

His father, Rob Shore, plans to stay home. Gina and her mother, who now live together in Washington, may stop to remember him — but not fondly.

"I would have never been for the death penalty if it had not been for my brother," Gina said.

Laurel agrees. "He should be killed," she said. "He was a good brother, but he's not a good person."

Now living in Oklahoma, she drove down to the Houston area a few days before the execution. But she's not heading to Huntsville to watch.

"We'll probably go to the beach or something," she said.

Amber Shore — the killer's older daughter — hasn't been heard from in years, but her sister deemed it unlikely she'd attend.

"The final slap in the face for him would be to pretend that he's not important enough," Tiffany, his youngest daughter, said Monday. "His own children think he's insignificant."

For Tiffany, it'll be an almost normal day. Formerly a sheriff's deputy and now in the Air National Guard, the single mother is working her way through college for a second time. She's got a three-year-old to raise and forensic science classes to complete.

"Honestly, I have a biology lab and calculus that day. So I'm going to go to school," she said. "Maybe I'll see a movie later if I have free time."