This week the message came in letter form.
Tabler, convicted of two murders in Bell County, made an indirect threat to a reporter and a state senator in a letter he sent to the official in charge of the investigation of how cell phones ended up in the hands of death row inmates.
“I took it serious,” Sen. John Whitmire, D-Houston, chairman of the Senate Criminal Justice Committee, said about the threat. “I’m not worried about him. I’m more worried about who he or the nine guys he let use the phone may know on the outside.”
The threat named an Austin reporter and inferred that he and Whitmire may need protection because they played a role in getting his cell phone taken away and having his sister and mother arrested.
Lorraine Tabler and Kristina Martinez were both arrested within days of Oct. 20 when investigators raided Tabler’s death row cell as he spoke by phone to the Austin reporter.
Investigators working the cases did a threat assessment of Tabler’s letter and rated the threat as “minimal.”
“People who are serious about killing people usually don’t notify their victims in advance,” said John Moriarty, inspector general of the Texas prison system.
The letter was an apparent attempt to get officials to back off the investigation of his mother and sister, Moriarty said.
Moriarty confirmed that Tabler, 29, sent the letter but did not reveal the name of the investigator who received it, although a copy of the letter was given to Whitmire.
“I guess (Tabler) didn’t care for (the investigator’s) demeanor,” Moriarty said. “We paid him a visit and told him that (backing off on the investigation) wasn’t going to happen.”
No other arrests have been made in the case, although Moriarty said authorities have information that indicates an employee was involved. The information is not enough to bring charges yet.
Meanwhile, phones continue to be confiscated from death row despite prisoners going to great lengths to conceal them. Two phones were discovered this week, including one found in an inmate’s rectum on Friday.
On Friday, authorities found two SIM cards hidden in the Bible of Hank Skinner, who has been on death row since 1995 for a triple slaying in Pampa in the Texas Panhandle.
Skinner initially denied having a cell phone so he was taken to an X-ray machine at the Polunsky Unit outside Livingston. The scan found the phone.
On Wednesday, after the more than three-week-long lockdown ended, officials found a cell phone, charger, makeshift weapon and marijuana in the cell of Mark Stroman.
Officials do not believe that the two phones found this week are new to the unit.
Stroman’s phone did not have a SIM card in it.
“That phone had been moving around,” Moriarty said.
It may have belonged to another inmate in a nearby cell where investigators found four SIM cards and a cutout in the back of a book that was just big enough to fit a cell phone.
Moriarty said that during the lockdown, officials found cell phones located in typewriters that had been altered to both conceal and charge the phones.
During the lockdown, officials found 12 cell phones, nine chargers, three batteries and seven SIM cards on death row.
Whitmire said Tabler’s antics have helped make Texas’ prisons and death row safer. He said he has been telling lawmakers for years that contraband is a serious problem in the Texas prison system.
“He (Tabler) did what I couldn’t do,” Whitmire said.
The contributed to this report.
