ustxtxb_obs_2010_08_20_50_00006-00000_000.pdf

A BLOOD Warren Horinek was a vicious drunk with a history of threatening his wife. But his conviction for murdering her was based on junk sciencelike thousands of others. BY DAVE MANN LISTEN to the 9-1-1 call c at bdo.com/wh911 6 THE TEXAS OBSERVER JUSTICE ARREN HORINEK WAS so intoxicated he could barely speak. His first words to the 911 dispatcher were mangled and unintelligible. He gathered himself and tried again. The words were still slurred, but he managed to force them out: “My wife just shot herself.” Horinek had been married to his wife, Bonnie, for three years. Their marriage was turbulent, and some of Bonnie’s friends would later say that Warrena former Fort Worth police officer whose drinking got him kicked off the forcewas abusive. They thought the couple was headed for divorce. But on that Tuesday night, March 14, 1995, they seemed to be having fun. Bonnie had left her office at the law firm of Jackson & Walker in downtown Fort Worth at about 7:15 p.m. and met Warren for dinner at a TGI Friday’s. They hung around the bar and kept drinking, closing their tab at 11:09 p.m. to head home. The Horineks lived about five minutes away, which was fortunate because they were both drunk. Warren had consumed at least 11 Coors Lights. Bonnie had been drinking chardonnay, and tests would later show her blood alcohol level nearly double the legal limit. At 11:39 p.m., a half-hour after they left the bar, Warren called 911. On the recording, he is frantic. As the dispatcher contacts paramedics, Warren can be heard in the background yelling, “Why’d you do that, goddammit. Why? Why? Why? Why?” When he returns to the phone, he is panicking. “Are you there? My wife just shot herself. Get over here now!” The dispatcher tries to calm him, saying an ambulance is on the way. “She’s already blue,” Warren says. The dispatcher tells him to begin CPR. In the background, Warren can be heard breathing into Bonnie’s mouth. He picks up the phone again: “I need somebody here.” Is she breathing? the dispatcher asks. “She shot herself in the throat, I think.” Is she breathing? “Yes, she’s breathing,” Warren says. After a pause, he adds, “Goddamn, get somebody here now!” By the time paramedics and police arrived, Bonnie Horinek had died. She was lying on the bed in her pink nightgown with a single gunshot to the chest. Warren was still performing CPR. Paramedics told him it was too late, but he wouldn’t stop. When they pulled him off the bed, he scrambled back to her body to continue chest compressions. The paramedics eventually had to drag him from the room. When police examined the scene, they found two weapons on the bed: a bloody .38-caliber revolver next to Bonnie and, on the edge of the bed, a 12-gauge Winchester shotgun. There was no sign of a break-in. No one else was in the house.