Texas woman serving life for 1978 family murder dies in hospital at 75

GALVESTON, Texas (KFDM) — A woman who was serving a life sentence for what law enforcement officers and prosecutors call one of the worst crimes ever in Southeast Texas has died in a Galveston hospital.

Linda Mae Burnett was convicted of capital murder in 1979. A judge in Jefferson County sentenced her to death, along with co-defendant Joe Dugas, for shooting and killing a three-year-old boy in 1978. The boy, his parents, and grandparents were all shot and killed and buried in a common grave near Winnie.

Burnett's death sentence was later overturned and she was serving a life term in a Texas Department of Criminal Justice (TDCJ) unit in Gatesville, west of Waco. She died in a Galveston hospital in October. She was 75 years old.

Dugas was her boyfriend. He was mad at the family, blaming the older couple for the breakup of his marriage to the older man's daughter.

Dugas was shot and killed by a Jefferson County District Attorney's Office investigator in 1983 in Livingston, while he was trying to escape en route from a court hearing in Jefferson County.