Anthony Sanchez, His Execution Nearing, Pleads: 'I'm Not a Killer'

A death row inmate scheduled for execution later this year has maintained his innocence, telling Newsweek in an exclusive interview: "I'm not a killer."

Anthony Castillo Sanchez, 44, is set to be executed by lethal injection in Oklahoma on September 21.

But he says he had nothing to do with the crime that put him on death row almost two decades ago.

"I did not kill Juli Busken," Sanchez told Newsweek on a phone call from the Oklahoma State Penitentiary in McAlester.

Jewell "Juli" Busken, a 21-year-old ballerina, was abducted on December 20, 1996, from her apartment complex in Norman.

Her body was found that evening near Lake Stanley Draper in southeast Oklahoma City. She had been bound, raped, and shot in the back of the head, authorities said.

For years, the horrific slaying remained unsolved.

Then, in 2004, the Combined DNA Index System connected Sanchez to DNA recovered from Busken's clothes. He had provided a sample two years prior, after going to prison in Oklahoma on a second-degree burglary conviction.

Sanchez said he felt like he was living a bad dream when he was learned he was charged with Busken's murder.

He was a young father, eagerly looking forward to getting on with his life after serving his sentence. Instead, he learned that he was facing charges that could get him the death penalty.

"I thought, this is all a mistake," he said. "I was in another prison and they took me out of that other prison and brought me down to this prison, two stories underground... there's no sun, there's no windows, it's like [being] in a dungeon."

When he learned what he had been accused of, his "insides just dropped."

He was 18 when Busken was killed, and had never even heard the name, he said.

"It's like the whole world just crumbled because I was about to get out of prison and continue living my life," he said.

Sanchez, a member of the Choctaw Nation, feels the odds were stacked against him from the start. During his trial, he said he was made to look like a monster.

"I was forced to wear leg shackles and handcuffs throughout my whole trial," he said.

His trial attorneys let him down, he said, failing to check his alibis or verifying where he lived. Prosecutors said he lived a mile from Busken, but he was living in the next town over when she was killed, he said.

Sanchez said he feels abandoned by his current attorneys, whom he said he has only met with in recent years when documents needed to be signed, but not to discuss his case.

One of his attorneys, Mark Barrett, disputed that.

Barrett said he and Randall Coyne, another attorney representing Sanchez, had a "lengthy in-person visit" with Sanchez prior to filing an appeal earlier this year.

"We discussed thoroughly the issues in the post-conviction application and discussed thoroughly his case in general," he said in a statement to Newsweek. "To say that we came just to have him sign something is flatly incorrect."

In that filing, Sanchez's attorneys requested an evidentiary hearing, saying that his late father, Thomas Glen Sanchez, was the actual killer.

It included a sworn declaration from Charlotte Beattie, former girlfriend of Sanchez Sr., who said that he confessed to killing Busken multiple times to her, but she was too afraid to come forward until after he died. Sanchez Sr. died by suicide on her front porch in April last year.

Beattie, in an interview with Newsweek, described him as a violent man who physically and sexually abused her throughout their relationship. She said he first mentioned that he killed Busken in 2020, and threatened the same fate would befall her if she ever spoke about it to anyone.

"He told me about it a few times, saying that he had to hogtie her cause she squealed," Beattie said. "He said after he finished the job with her, he just shot her in the head."

The Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals last month rejected the claim, saying the allegations were hearsay and not enough to overcome "compelling evidence" of Sanchez's guilt.

Beattie's description of Sanchez's father "portrays a violent and profoundly disturbed man given to vague and menacing claims of involvement in the murder for which his son was convicted," Judge David Lewis wrote in an opinion.

At least sometimes, it was clear he was trying to scare Beattie, Lewis wrote.

"We are not confronted here with a solemn death bed confession stating verifiable facts that exonerate a person wrongly condemned," he added in the opinion.

In a statement to Newsweek, Oklahoma Attorney General Gentner Drummond said the evidence is "overwhelming that Anthony Sanchez brutally raped and murdered Juli Busken. Instead of expressing remorse, he made the cowardly decision to try blaming the crime on his deceased father—a ludicrous allegation thoroughly discredited by DNA analysis.

"What makes this claim all the more despicable is that it makes a mockery of how advances in DNA evidence have exonerated wrongly convicted individuals in recent years. Just as DNA evidence has helped clear the innocent, it can also conclusively show guilt. Anthony Sanchez is guilty beyond any conceivable doubt, and I will ensure justice is served."

The Oklahoma State Bureau of Investigation in February conducted new DNA testing after getting a sample of Sanchez Sr.'s blood from the medical examiner's office, The Oklahoman reported, and concluded the DNA did not match that from Busken's leotard.

Sanchez and advocates say that the DNA evidence in the case was manipulated and erroneous, and that the original sample should be retested. They also argue that other evidence in the case is not credibly connected to Sanchez—and that evidence taken from Busken's vehicle, including fingerprints and hair, was not matched to him.

"I used to have really long hair down to the middle of my back," he said. "None of my hair was found at the crime scene."

Asked if he truly believed his father was Busken's killer, Sanchez said he has "very mixed emotions" about it.

"That's my father and I love him with all my heart and soul," he said.

But he acknowledges that a police sketch of the killer—constructed with a detailed description from an eyewitness—does resemble his father in the 1990s.

"It does look like my father," he said. "It does."

That sketch shows an apparently older man with narrow face, sunken cheeks and shoulder-length hair.

Sanchez's attorney wrote in the February filing that the image resembles a photo of the older Sanchez taken in 1996. Photos of Sanchez when he was younger show him with a round face and much longer hair.

Cathy Hodge, who was married to Sanchez's father from 1980 to 1994 and raised him, told Newsweek that the image did look like her ex-husband.

"It did resemble Glen. It didn't look anything like Anthony," she said. "When the sketch came out, people thought that... like my sisters, people that I know in town, they seen it and said it did look like Glen."

She also described Sanchez Sr. as a violent man, saying he would drink on the weekends and physically abuse her during their 14-year marriage.

According to court documents, there had been efforts to interview Sanchez Sr. around the time of his son's trial and in later years. He spoke to a defense investigator only once before his son's trial and refused contact afterwards, the documents said.

Sanchez said he never spoke with his father about Busken's killing while he was alive. He feels like if he could do so now, he would know if his father was telling the truth.

"I wish I could look him in his eyes right now," he said.

Sanchez remembers his father as "normal," but notes that others disagree. "He did a lot of things. There's a lot of things that I'm not proud about," he said.

Beattie said Sanchez Sr. physically abused his son, so badly on some occasions that he was unable to go to school.

With advocates campaigning on Sanchez's behalf, he is experiencing a mix of emotions.

"I have faith that people will help prove my innocence," he said. "At the same time, I've had multiple appeals and I got my hopes up and let down. I don't want to let myself get my hopes up. I gotta expect the best but prepare for the worst."

Oklahoma has executed more inmates per capita than any other state since the reinstatement of the death penalty in 1976.

Eight inmates have been put to death since the state resumed executions in October 2021 after a six-year pause prompted by a series of flawed lethal injections.

Earlier this year, Drummond appointed an independent counsel to review the case of Richard Glossip, another inmate on death row, after an independent investigation by Texas law firm Reed Smith last year raised concerns about lost or destroyed evidence in the case.

That investigation led to dozens of state lawmakers, including Republicans who support the death penalty, to call for a new evidentiary hearing in Glossip's case.

Sanchez feels race is a factor in why his case has not received the same level of attention as Glossip's.

"That's the only difference that I could think of," he said. "I guess you gotta be a white guy to get any kind of help."

The Rev. Jeff Hood, Sanchez's spiritual adviser, told Newsweek: "We want the Glossip treatment. We want a person of color who has an innocence claim in Oklahoma to be taken as seriously as a white person who has an innocence claim in Oklahoma."

Abraham Bonowitz, executive director of the nonprofit Death Penalty Action, called on Oklahoma's lawmakers to step up for Sanchez like they did Glossip.

"His life is valuable too. There are real and urgent questions about his guilt also," Bonowitz said. "He deserves every bit as much of a re-investigation as Glossip got."

They will gather at the Oklahoma State Capitol on Thursday to launch a campaign to stop Sanchez's execution.

As that date nears, Sanchez is, above all, scared. "I do not want to die for something I did not do," he said.