Texas Executes Cedric Allen Ricks for K!ll His Girlfriend and Her 8-Year-Old Son
The promise of a picture-perfect romance can be a terrifyingly effective camouflage for a predator. For Roxanne Diane Sanchez, a medical assistant at an obstetrics and gynecology clinic in Bedford, Texas, her initial bond with Cedric Allen Ricks felt like a storybook dream. Born in Chicago on September 8, 1974, Ricks managed to project an adult image of career stability in construction management and healthcare. This carefully curated exterior completely hid a deeply problematic past marked by volatile aggression that had disrupted his schooling as early as age eight.
When he met Roxanne, who was navigating the painful collapse and eventual end of her marriage, Ricks positioned himself as the ultimate antidote to her past heartbreak. He was affectionate, intensely attentive, and entirely free of jealousy. The attraction was immediate, the courtship rapid. Before long, they established a legally recognized common-law marriage under Texas law, and Ricks moved into her home at the Colonial Village apartment complex, assuring Roxanne he would raise her two young sons, Marcus and Anthony, as his very own.
The illusion of safety evaporated the moment Ricks firmly embedded himself within the household, revealing a hyper-controlling and dominant monster. He systematically attempted to cut Roxanne off from her closest friends, unleashing intense, unfounded jealousy at every turn. Even the birth of their mutual son in 2012, Isaiah Cedric Ricks, failed to bring peace; instead, the domestic friction only worsened.
Arguments transformed into physical violence, prompting a resilient Roxanne to end the relationship and protect her children with an emergency restraining order. Yet, court orders do little to deter a mind fueled by dangerous obsessions. On the evening of May 1, 2013, the 38-year-old Ricks drove to the Colonial Village complex in direct violation of the law. Finding the apartment empty, an explosive wave of irrational jealousy took hold, convincing him that Roxanne was out with another man.
Lacking the updated keys to the apartment, Ricks lurked on the exterior stairwell until Roxanne arrived from a routine grocery trip to Walmart, accompanied by her three children. The moment she pulled up, Ricks unleashed a torrent of screaming insults. Terrified, Roxanne hurried Marcus, Anthony, and the baby into Apartment 1400, sending the older boys into a bedroom while she carried the grocery bags inside. Ricks stormed up the stairs, continuing his verbal assault.
When Roxanne desperately tried to slam the door shut, Ricks forced his foot into the doorway, breaching the home. A chaotic physical fight erupted in the living room as they traded blows, but the struggle ended abruptly when Ricks slammed Roxanne to the floor, punching her and manually strangling her. Hearing their mother’s agonizing screams, Anthony and Marcus courageously rushed from their bedroom, throwing themselves onto Ricks’s back to break his chokehold. Ricks effortlessly hurled both boys to the floor, continuing to beat Roxanne with blunt-force trauma until she lay entirely motionless with severe head injuries.
What happened next was a display of pure, unadulterated cruelty. Ricks paused, surveying the weeping children and Roxanne’s limp body, before calmly walking into the kitchen to pull a knife from a drawer. Returning to the living room, he began stabbing Roxanne repeatedly, inflicting roughly 30 wounds, including a catastrophic cut to her neck that severed her cervical spine.
Forced to watch the slaughter of his mother, eight-year-old Anthony acted on pure, desperate love and lunged at Ricks to defend her. Ricks immediately turned his fury on the little boy, throwing him to the floor and stabbing and cutting him over 40 times. One deep wound penetrated Anthony’s skull, tearing into the temporal lobe of his brain; the child died right beside the living room couch, his final moments marked by a haunting gurgle brought on by hemorrhagic asphyxiation.
Terrified by the butchery, the older brother, Marcus, fled to his bedroom, ducking inside a closet to dial 911 on his mobile phone. Ricks kicked the door open, causing Marcus to drop the device. As the knife swung toward him, Marcus heroically grabbed the bare blade with his hands to shield himself, suffering agonizing, deep lacerations.
Ricks chased the bleeding boy back into the living room, knocking him down and plunging the knife into his head, neck, chest, back, and hands approximately 25 times. Stranded in an extreme battle for survival, Marcus made a brilliant, instinctive decision: he went entirely limp and feigned death. Believing the boy was successfully neutralized, Ricks finally halted his assault. Throughout the entirety of the bloodbath, baby Isaiah remained miraculously uninjured inside his crib.
With calculated, terrifying coldness, Ricks went to the kitchen to wash his heavily cut hands, showered in the master bathroom, bandaged his wounds, and packed a suitcase. Before fleeing, he walked over to his infant son’s crib, picked him up, kissed and played with him for a brief moment, and then laid him back down. Stealing Roxanne’s mobile phone and her car, he sped away from the scene.
Because Marcus had been unable to relay the full address to the emergency operator before dropping his phone, it took police nearly an hour to locate the apartment. While driving down the highway, Ricks phoned his cousin, confessing, “I just messed everything up. I killed Roxanne and her two sons.” He described the severe cuts on his own hands from the stabbings and begged her to rescue the baby, explicitly stating he would rather die than face a prison cell. Horrified, the cousin immediately dialed 911 to relay the confession.
When Bedford police finally breached the apartment, they discovered a heavily bleeding Marcus collapsed near the front door. The boy was immediately airlifted to Cook Children’s Medical Center, where he miraculously survived his extensive wounds; baby Isaiah was rescued from his crib completely unharmed. Utilizing cellular tracking through Sprint, authorities pinpointed Ricks’s location to Ardmore, Oklahoma. Around 10:30 p.m.—a mere three hours after the slaughter—Oklahoma State Troopers intercepted the stolen vehicle, executing a bloodless traffic stop. Ricks was arrested and hospitalized for his hand wounds.
His time in jail in Oklahoma proved volatile; he was severely beaten by other inmates for unspecified reasons, necessitating another hospital transfer and forcing him to beg for solitary confinement upon his eventual extradition back to Texas. Charged with two counts of first-degree murder and one count of attempted murder, Ricks took the stand in his own defense during his 2014 trial. He admitted to the slaughters but spinning a fraudulent narrative, claiming he acted in an uncontrollable fit of rage after the young children allegedly attacked him first with a knife.
The jury flatly rejected his lies, convicting him of capital murder on May 8, 2014, and sentencing him to death on May 16. Ricks spent nearly 12 years on Texas death row—a remarkably swift timeline compared to the state’s average 30-year delay—until a court order in October 2025 finalized his date with destiny. On Wednesday, March 11, 2026, Ricks’s final day arrived at the Huntsville Unit. Waking at 6:00 a.m., he showered, ate a standard-issue prison breakfast, and received a spiritual advisor.
As the afternoon progressed, his visible nervousness prompted prison officials to administer a tranquilizer at 2:00 p.m. to ensure his cooperation. Escorted to the death chamber at 5:30 p.m., he was strapped to the gurney and prepped with IV lines. Shortly after 6:00 p.m., the lethal dose of pentobarbital began flowing into his veins. Ricks offered no final words, nor did he request a special last meal. He grimaced and showed outward signs of physical discomfort for roughly 30 seconds before his body went completely still. He was officially pronounced dead at 6:14 p.m.
In the wake of the execution, Marcus continues his life in the care of his biological father, while young Isaiah was placed with his maternal grandparents, who have begun the legal process to adopt him and completely erase the Ricks surname from his life forever.
