On a summer Friday in Texas, July 10, 1987, Debra Lynn Ewing, a 26-year-old female, was at her job in an insurance office inside the Huntsville Vision Center. She and her husband of five years, Wayne Ewing, lived in the small town of Grangerland, about 45 minutes south of her workplace. In the days leading up to her death, Debra had grown concerned about her safety, having to work alone in the office.
She had even called the police just three days earlier about a man lurking in the parking lot, a fear she had expressed to her manager more than once.
That Friday, her fears were tragically realized when a man entered the office and abducted her at gunpoint. A witness was present and provided a detailed description of the kidnapper, but the initial investigation yielded no immediate suspects. Two days later, Debra’s body was discovered in a remote area of neighboring Montgomery County. She had been raped, strangled with a ligature, and stabbed twice in the chest. For more than a year, her murder remained unsolved, leaving her family in anguish and the community on edge.
The break in the case came from the incredible bravery of another woman. In October 1988, a Texas A&M student named Wendy Gant was abducted, sexually assaulted, and left for dead by a man who tied her to a tree and slit her throat. Miraculously, she survived and, despite being unable to speak due to her injuries, worked with a forensic artist to create a composite sketch of her attacker. A corrections officer recognized the man in the sketch as Daniel Lee Corwin, a parolee with a violent past.
Daniel Lee Corwin, born in 1958, had a history of escalating violence that was tragically overlooked. In 1975, as a teenager, he had abducted and brutally attacked a high school classmate, leaving her for dead. For that crime, he was sentenced to 40 years for aggravated rape but was paroled after serving only nine. By 1987, he was free and began a nine-month spree of terror across southeast Texas. Before killing Debra, he had murdered 72-year-old Alice Martin in February. After Debra, he murdered 36-year-old Mary Carrell Risinger in Huntsville in October 1987.
Following his arrest for the attack on Wendy Gant, for which he received a 99-year sentence, Corwin confessed to the murders of Debra Lynn Ewing, Alice Martin, and Mary Carrell Risinger. In March 1990, he was tried in Montgomery County under Texas's then-new "serial killer statute," which allowed for a capital murder charge for multiple killings committed in separate incidents as part of the same criminal scheme. The jury convicted him of capital murder.
After less than half an hour of deliberation, the jury sentenced Daniel Lee Corwin to death. He spent eight years on death row at the Huntsville Unit. On December 7, 1998, Corwin was executed by lethal injection. In his final statement, he addressed the families of his victims, expressing sorrow and regret. Six family members of the women he murdered, including Debra's sister, Wanda Simmons, watched him die.
For Debra's family, the execution brought a measure of finality to a decade of pain. "I get satisfaction he's dead and not going to get out," Wanda Simmons, then 29, said after the execution. "I expected him to lay there and die. And he did." The case of Debra Lynn Ewing stands as a tragic reminder of a predator who moved through the justice system until his violent path was finally ended, leaving behind a wake of shattered lives.
