David Spates: Texas man sentenced to life in prison for brutally murdering a woman as she begged for life

HARRIS COUNTY, TEXAS: A Texas man has been sentenced to life in prison for killing a 28-year-old woman. He is also accused of beating, stabbing, and suffocating the victim using a number of deadly weapons after accusing her of speaking to the police about one of their friends.

On Monday, January 22, a judge ordered David Spates, 61, to serve a mandatory sentence of life in a state correctional facility without the possibility for parole in the 2020 slaying of Kayla Lary, KHOU reports. 

What did the District Attorney say?

A jury in Harris County deliberated for only 19 minutes following a seven-day trial before finding Spates guilty of capital murder in Lary’s horrific death.

“This was not just a vicious and cruel murder, it was a premeditated and planned-out capital murder,” Harris County District Attorney Kim Ogg said in a statement, adding “The victim was tied up, with a garbage bag over her head, and then beaten with a hammer, stomped on and stabbed until she was dead.”

David Spates and Kayla Lary knew each other before the crime

According to a news release from the Harris County District Attorney’s Office, the criminal and the victim knew each other before her murder because both were part of a group of adults who hung out and did drugs together. Authorities said that the motive for Lary’s murder stemmed from a member of the drug-using group being arrested in early 2020.

How was Kayla Lary killed?

On June 24, 2020, inside of a rural home near Sheldon Lake, Spates accused Lary of speaking to police about the recently arrested member of the group. He then bound her hands and feet, covered her head with a trash bag, and proceeded to beat her with a hammer and stab her with a knife multiple times.

A witness to the grisly killing said that Lary was begging for her life and screaming that she “just wanted to go home to be with her baby,” as per the release.

David Spates drove Kayla Lary's car to a remote place after her murder and abandoned it

After killing Lary, Spates drove her car to a remote area in the woods where he abandoned the vehicle. He then brought Lary’s body to the San Jacinto River and tossed her remains into the water. Authorities were able to recover Lary’s body about 10 days after she was killed, but the remains were too decomposed for the medical examiner to determine her exact cause of death.

“No one deserves to die like that, and he threw her away like she was a piece of trash,” Assistant District Attorney Kathryn Rogers, who prosecuted the case against Spates with ADA Megan Long, said in a statement. “We are thankful to the jurors who listened to the facts of this horrible case and did the right thing," the statement added.