Former bricklayer and cook Guadalupe Esparza already was a convicted sex offender when he was charged with snatching 7-year-old Alyssa Maria Vasquez from her San Antonio apartment.
The girl was raped, sodomized and strangled, and her body was dumped in some weeds behind a convenience store near the complex where she lived with her mother and two brothers.
On Wednesday, the 46-year-old Esparza is set for lethal injection in Huntsville for the child's slaying more than a decade ago.
His execution would be the 13th this year in Texas.
Copyright AP - Associated Press
