He has asked in writing that all appeals in his behalf be suspended. He says he is prepared to have a needle slipped into his arm to deliver a deadly cocktail.

“Man, that is going to be one rush I am not going to come back from,” Tabler said with a hearty laugh during an interview Wednesday on death row.

Tabler, 29, has even selected a song he would like played during the execution. It’s Phil Collins’ “In the Air Tonight.”

The song begins with a drumbeat that seems to mimic a beating heart. The beat grows in intensity before Collins belts out the words: “I can feel it coming in the air tonight . . . I’ve been waiting for this moment for all my life.”

A Bell County jury found Tabler guilty of capital murder in March 2007 for killing Haitham Frank Zayed and Mohammed Amine Rahmouni on Nov. 26, 2004. The men were lured to a remote location under the guise that Tabler and his co-defendant, Timothy Payne, had stolen stereo equipment for sale.

When the men pulled up to Tabler’s truck, he reached for a gun under his thigh and shot and killed them.

Rahmouni, manager at Killeen strip club TeaZers, had banned Tabler from the club 10 days earlier.

Within two days, two more people were shot dead: Tiffany Dotson and Amanda Benefield. They were both dancers at the club that had been vocal about their belief Tabler was the killer.

Tabler was never put on trial for killing the dancers but prosecutors used a statement from him and other evidence from that case to help secure his death penalty conviction.

From death row, Tabler - who never attended church as a boy but embraced Islam seven months ago - said he wanted to set the record straight about his crimes and his motivation for committing them.

“I’m more honest with myself and with others than I was before,” he said. “I feel like this is my one opportunity before I’m executed to tell my side, to tell what really happened. I take full responsibility for it.”

When Tabler speaks of taking full responsibility for his crimes, he is speaking about shooting the men. He now denies he killed the two women.

“The two females, I bragged about them but if you look into evidence and dig deep you’ll see that the time those females got killed, I was already being arrested and handcuffed,” he said. “As the law is my witness, I didn’t murder those females.”

“As far as Amine and Frank, oh yeah, I’m 120 percent guilty of that, but they threatened to kill my mother and sister and the threat is what drove me over the edge.”

Tabler said he was first threatened by Rahmouni during a cell phone call while he was on the way back from San Antonio with a security guard and stripper from the club.

He didn’t say what caused the dispute but said, “Amine told me ‘I’ll kill you.’”

After he hung up on Rahmouni, Tabler said the security guard’s cell phone rang.

“The next thing I know, I’ve got a gun pointed at me while I’m driving down the interstate,” Tabler said. “I shake it off. It’s no big deal. You think I’m going to do something with a witness right there? Hell, no. But this dude just pulled a gun on me.”

More than a week later, Tabler, who had never frequented strip joints before, said he tried to go back to the club.

“Amine finally told me, ‘I could kill you. I’ll kill you, your mother and your sister for 10 bucks,’” Tabler said. “It was one thing to threaten me, but you just brought my family into it. That’s when I started thinking homicidal thoughts. And that’s when I did take action.”

Tabler spent a quiet Thanksgiving Day with family. Late the following evening or early Saturday morning, he said he used a syringe to shoot himself up with methamphetamine. It was his first time using the drug intravenously and he said he shot it into his neck.

He then killed the two men, shooting one in the head and the other twice in the neck.

Even now, after all that has taken place, the trial and months in a solitary cell on death row, Tabler says he feels no remorse and doesn’t regret the killings.

“I deserve to be here,” he says about death row.

He makes a point of saying he deserves it for killing the men and again affirms he did not kill the women, who were found shot to death near Belton Lake.

Tabler is a man capable of fantastic lies. Once while in custody in California he was interviewed by police who thought he had information about the disappearance of Laci Peterson.

Mrs. Peterson disappeared while eight months pregnant. Her husband was later convicted of her murder and is on death row in California.

Police questioned Tabler about the case because he bragged to other inmates he had intimate knowledge about it.

Tim Steglich, lead investigator in Tabler’s case, said Thursday there is no doubt in his mind Tabler killed the strippers. He said the timeline and Tabler’s statement to him about the murders were consistent with the evidence.

The pain and bewilderment Tabler created in the lives of many here was just part of life for his family as he grew up in California. During his trial it was reported his temper was so bad when he was a baby that he would hold his breath in his high chair until he passed out.

He always came back after the high chair episodes and he talks like he’ll do the same after his execution.

“When I’m executed watch the Internet,” he said. “You’re going to see the tape (of the first murders). It’s got crooked cops. It will justify my actions and show that I was justified. When I get executed it (his murders) will be on Yahoo, MySpace, Hotmail . . . It will be all over the place.”

When asked where the tape is now, he says, “that is irrelevant.”

Another side of Tabler he would like to have perpetuated after his death is a side maybe only his family has seen.

“When I die, I’ll probably come back as my little niece’s baby puppy,” Tabler said. “She’s got two little basset hounds. If I come back, I’m going to come back as one of those puppies, so I can watch her grow up and protect her.”

Tabler said his happiest memories as a youth are playing soccer and riding motocross - things he did with his father.

He has now severed all ties with his father after finding out during his trial that when he was in his mother’s womb, his father wanted to abort him.

“I’m not a cold blooded killer. I’m someone’s son, a father, a brother,” Tabler said. “I’m not a monster. I’m just like anybody else out there.

“I’ve got a heart. I’ve got emotions. I cry. I’ve got feelings. But at the same time I refuse to be somebody’s prey. I refuse to be a victim.”

In reality, Tabler is a victim of himself. His anger has destroyed his life as much as it has others. He says he tried to control his anger by cutting himself with a razor blade for years.

Soon his arm will be punctured one last time. When the needle is pulled out, it will not form a scar because he will be dead.

“This is what society wants, the jury wants, the public, the judge, the victims’ family,” Tabler said about his execution. “All right, I’ll give it to you. It’s not going to bring your loved ones back. If you would have sentenced me to life in prison that would have tore me up worse because now I’m just a state assisted suicide.

“I’m not afraid to die. If you had had me sentenced to life without the possibility of parole, every day I would be thinking about why I am locked up. I would be suffering.

“It’s hell in the penitentiary. They didn’t want to do that. They wanted to execute. All right, I’m going to drop my appeals. Let’s do what you want to do.

“I got a date. Come on, let’s go to the party. I’m drinking a lethal cocktail.”