Texas executes former Texas Tech graduate student for 2001 slayings of woman, associate dean

Published January 13, 2015

A former Texas Tech graduate student convicted of a double slaying a dozen years ago has been executed.

Vaughn Ross received lethal injection Thursday evening for the January 2001 fatal shootings of an 18-year-old woman with whom he had been feuding and an associate dean at the university in Lubbock who was with her.

Ross, from St. Louis, came to Texas Tech for graduate work in architecture.

He was convicted of killing his girlfriend's sister, Viola Ross McVade, and 53-year-old Douglas Birdsall. Court documents said Birdsall had been looking for a prostitute and that a friend of McVade introduced him to her that evening.

Authorities believe McVade and Birdsall were ambushed in an alley behind Ross' apartment after Ross had ordered McVade's sister to leave.

The 41-year-old Ross was the 10th Texas inmate executed this year.

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