FILE - This undated file photo provided by the Texas Department of Criminal Justice shows death row inmate Danny Bible. Attorneys for Bible say his health problems make him unsuitable for lethal injection... (Associated Press) 
 
 FILE - This undated file photo provided by the Texas Department of Criminal Justice shows death row inmate Danny Bible. Attorneys for Bible say his health problems make him unsuitable for lethal injection scheduled for Wednesday, June 27, 2018 in Huntsville, Texas. They're proposing he be rolled in... (Associated Press) 
 
 FILE - This undated file photo provided by the Texas Department of Criminal Justice shows death row inmate Danny Bible. Attorneys for Bible say his health problems make him unsuitable for lethal injection scheduled for Wednesday, June 27, 2018 in Huntsville, Texas. They're proposing he be rolled in... (Associated Press) FILE - This undated file photo provided by the Texas Department of Criminal Justice shows death row inmate Danny Bible. Attorneys for Bible say his health problems make him unsuitable for lethal injection... (Associated Press) 
 
 HUNTSVILLE, Texas (AP) — A Texas prisoner accused of four killings and at least nine rapes was executed Wednesday for a 1979 rape and murder in Houston that went unsolved for two decades until he confessed. 
 
 Danny Paul Bible, 66, received lethal injection Wednesday evening after unsuccessful appeals contended his multiple health issues made it likely his execution would be botched and cause him unconstitutional pain. The U.S. Supreme Court rejected a last-day appeal about an hour before he was put to death without apparent complications. 
 
 Asked by the warden if he had a final statement, Bible replied: "No, sir." 
 
 His head was shaking slightly as the lethal dose of the sedative pentobarbital began. His attorneys said Parkinson's disease was among his ailments. 
 
 As the drug started to take effect, Bible started taking quick breaths, muttered at one point that it was "burning" and that it "hurt." His breaths then became snores and about a minute after the procedure began, all movement stopped. 
 
 Despite fears from his attorneys that a vein would not be found for the IVs, prison technicians had one needle inserted in his left hand three minutes after he was strapped to the death chamber gurney. The second IV was inserted in his right hand after another three minutes. 
 
 He stared intently at relatives of two of his victims who watched through a window a few feet from him, but never said anything to them. 
 
 He was pronounced dead at 6:32 p.m., about 15 minutes after the lethal dose started. The execution was the seventh this year in Texas, the country's most active death penalty state. 
 
 "Danny Paul Bible is as vile and evil a person that has ever drawn breath," said Larry Lance, whose sister, Pam Hudgins, was among Bible's victims. "We are glad to have witnessed him draw his last breath. I know he will burn in hell for eternity." 
 
 Bible's guilt was not disputed, but his lawyers had proposed he be rolled in his wheelchair in front of a firing squad or be administered nitrogen gas to cut off oxygen to his brain until he stopped breathing. Lawyers argued his deteriorating health left his veins unsuitable for IVs to be inserted. 
 
 If either of those alternatives wasn't possible — and state attorneys said neither was — Bible's lawyers said his punishment should be stopped. 
 
 "His unique and severe medical conditions render lethal injection an intolerably cruel method of execution as applied to him," attorney Nadia Wood told the high court. His civil rights claim "should not be barred simply because Texas has not authorized an alternative method of execution." 
 
 Bible's appeal went to the Supreme Court after the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals on Tuesday refused his lawsuit seeking a reprieve, a restraining order and an injunction. Assistant Texas Attorney General Stephen Hoffman said in a court filing that the lawsuit was a "meritless tactic" to delay his "well-deserved execution." 
 
 Lethal injection is the only execution method allowed in Texas and changing that would require approval of the state Legislature, which isn't scheduled to meet again until next year. A handful of death penalty states allow nitrogen hypoxia, although the method hasn't been used. Three Utah inmates have been executed by firing squad, the most recent in 2010. Utah now allows that method if drugs for execution are unavailable. 
 
 Bible's lawyers also argued that severe tremors accompanying his Parkinson's disease would complicate insertion of needles. They warned of a problematic execution like ones in recent years in Ohio and Alabama. 
 
 Hoffman, the state attorney, noted that IVs had been used recently to draw blood from Bible as part of his medical care. 
 
 Bible was a drifter with a record of violence in several states when he was arrested in Fort Myers, Florida, in 1999 for a rape in Louisiana. He told detectives in Louisiana about four Texas killings — including the death of a 4-month-old boy — and at least nine rapes, including five in San Jacinto County northeast of Houston. 
 
 The four slaying victims included 20-year-old Inez Deaton, a friend of Bible's cousin who was found on the banks of a Houston bayou in 1979. Investigators determined she had been raped and fatally stabbed with an ice pick. The killing went unsolved for decades before Bible linked himself to the case, and a jury decided in 2003 that the man who became known in Houston as "the ice pick killer" should die for the slaying. 
 
 The three other killings all occurred in North Texas on the same day in May 1983. The victims were Bible's sister-in-law, Tracy Powers; her 4-month-old son, Justin; and Powers' roommate, Hudgins. 
 
 Bible pleaded guilty to Hudgins' death and was sentenced to 25 year in prison. He served seven and was released to Montana in 1992 on a form of parole known as mandatory supervision. 
 
 At his trial for Deaton's slaying in Texas, Harris County prosecutors presented evidence of robberies, thefts, assaults and abductions, including the rape of an 11-year-old girl in Montana and his confessions to repeated sexual assaults of young girls from 1996 to 1998. 
 
 "Some criminals' actions are so heinous, they earn the label 'worst of the worst,'" Harris County District Attorney Kim Ogg said. ||||| (CNN) A man convicted of a series of rapes and murders in Texas had asked authorities to carry out his execution using gas or a firing squad before he was put to death on Wednesday. 
 
 Danny Paul Bible, known as the "ice pick killer," died of lethal injection, the Texas Department of Criminal Justice said. 
 
 The 66-year-old had appealed all the way up to the Supreme Court, arguing that he was "very weak and sick" and that his veins were not capable of sustaining the infusion of lethal injection drugs, making them likely to "blow," a court petition filed by his attorneys stated. 
 
 Bible's attorneys said the likelihood of a botched execution was very high due to his declining health, adding that he would suffer serious pain. 
 
 A judge for the Southern District of Texas in Houston and the 5th US Circuit Court of Appeals had dismissed his appeal before the Supreme Court denied a stay of execution petition on Wednesday, court records show. 
 
 'It hurts' 
 
 After receiving the lethal injection, Bible breathed heavily for about two minutes, shaking from Parkinson's tremors as he muttered "it hurts," a media witness said. 
 
 Keri Blakinger, a media witness from the Houston Chronicle, said Bible then started snoring and closed one eye before he stopped moving. 
 
 Jeremy Desel, a public information officer for the Texas Department of Criminal Justice, said he heard him saying quietly what sounded like "burning" and "hurts." 
 
 Desel said Bible declined last words and he was pronounced dead at 6:32 pm (local time). 
 
 "Danny Paul Bible is as vile and evil a person who has ever drawn breath. We are glad to have witnessed him draw his last breath. I know that he will burn in hell for eternity," Larry Lance, the brother of one of Bible's victims said in a statement following the execution. 
 
 The 'ice pick killer' 
 
 Bible was a serial rapist and murderer who stabbed at least two women to death with ice picks, officials said. 
 
 In 1979, Bible raped and stabbed his cousin's best friend. The body of 20-year-old Inez Deaton, a wife and mother of a 2-year-old girl, was found in a field in Harris County, Texas, records show. 
 
 Authorities say Bible also "left a trail of carnage" in 1983 when he killed two other women and the four-month-old son of one of them on the same day. 
 
 Danny Bible 
 
 Bible was sentenced to 25 years in prison for the murder of one of the women but was paroled in 1992. Following his release, he was accused of raping five young family members, officials said. 
 
 Deaton's murder went unsolved for nearly two decades until Bible was arrested in Louisiana for another rape and confessed to multiple crimes, including Deaton's murder. 
 
 In 2003, Bible was convicted of Deaton's murder and sentenced to death. 
 
 "Some criminals' actions are so heinous, they earn the label 'worst of the worst,'" Harris County District Attorney Kim Ogg had said prior to Bible's execution. 
 
 Firing squad or lethal gas 
 
 Bible was asking for either death by gas or firing squad, which are not offered in Texas but are available in a few other states. 
 
 Oklahoma recently decided to use inert gas inhalation as the primary method for death penalty executions after struggling to find legally obtainable lethal injection drugs. 
 
 The state has chose nitrogen to carry out the executions. Nitrogen is one of several inert gases that can cause hypoxia, an oxygen deficiency that causes death. 
 
 Oklahoma Attorney General Mike Hunter said the inert gas inhalation is used in countries that have legalized assisted suicide. 
 
 At least five other states allow gas inhalation but only as an alternative to the lethal injection, according to the Death Penalty Information Center. 
 
 Mississippi, Oklahoma and Utah also allow inmates to choose a firing squad for executions, though lethal injection is the primary method in those, according to the center. 
 
 In 2010, Ronnie Lee Gardner was executed by a firing squad in Utah. He was the third inmate in that state to be executed by that method since 1977. 
 
 Last year, Mississippi authorized a firing squad, electrocution and the gas chamber as other means of execution if lethal injection is not available in the state.
– A serial rapist and murderer known as the "ice pick killer" received a lethal injection in Texas Wednesday evening after the Supreme Court rejected his appeal. Danny Bible, accused of at least four slayings and nine rapes, had sought to delay the execution by arguing that he was too sick with Parkinson's and other ailments for a lethal injection to work properly, reports CNN. Instead, the 66-year-old asked to be killed by gas or a firing squad, neither of which is offered in Texas and thus would have required action by state lawmakers, who aren't even in session, reports the AP. His appeal made it to the Supreme Court, which declined to stop the execution about an hour before it took place. Bible was pronounced dead 15 minutes after the injection began, with a public information officer for the Texas Department of Criminal Justice saying that he breathed heavily for about two minutes and muttered words that sounded like "burning" and "hurts." Authorities say Bible killed three women and the 4-month-old son of one of his victims and raped others, including young family members. The victims included 20-year-old Inez Denton, the cousin of Bible's friend, who was killed with an ice pick in 1979. The case went unsolved for decades until Bible confessed to it and others after being arrested in Florida in 1999 for a separate rape. "Danny Paul Bible is as vile and evil a person who has ever drawn breath," says the brother of one victim. "We are glad to have witnessed him draw his last breath."