When 29-year-old Terry Wright failed to show up for work on May 10, 1994, her father became worried and went to her suburban San Antonio home.

He came upon a grim scene. Furniture was in disarray and a window leading to an enclosed atrium had been smashed open with a flower pot.

Muddy footprints led from the living room to his daughter's bedroom, where her jewelry box had been rummaged through and the cord to an oscillating fan had been cut. On the floor lay her nightgown, torn at the straps.

Later that day, police found Wright's car near a freeway intersection and followed a trail of transmission fluid to a dirt road. In a nearby field, authorities discovered her naked body covered in grass. She had been stabbed 11 times in the chest and back with a sharp object that was never identified.

An autopsy determined that she had sexual intercourse within 24 hours of her death with someone other than her boyfriend, with whom she had last spoken at about 11 p.m. The autopsy also revealed signs of sexual assault.

Wright's next-door neighbor, Richard Hinojosa, immediately became a person of interest because of his prior manslaughter conviction and his relationship with the victim. He claimed to have had an extramarital affair with Wright.

But family members who lived with Hinojosa confirmed that he came home from work at around 11 p.m. and stayed there until he left again for work before 8 a.m.

With scant evidence, the case was at a standstill — until Hinojosa was arrested in December 1994 on domestic violence allegations. While he was in custody, authorities took DNA samples from him and matched them to swabs taken from Wright's body.

In August 1995, more than a year after the murder, Hinojosa was indicted for capital murder, committed in the course of burglary, robbery, kidnapping and aggravated sexual assault.

When Hinojosa stood trial two years later, Bexar County District Attorneys relied heavily on the DNA evidence, along with footprints found in Wright's home and in the field where the body was found.

An expert testified that the odds of the DNA belonging to someone other than Hinojosa were 1 in 19,900,000. The test also indicated that a third potential donor could be excluded as a suspect, according to the state's DNA expert.

The jury deliberated for three hours before convicting Hinojosa of all counts. A few days later, the same jurors took 90 minutes to recommend a death sentence.

In post-conviction appeals, Hinojosa's lawyers claimed that prosecutors concealed the results of inconclusive DNA testing from the defense. Such evidence, they argued, would have proven that a third potential contributor should not have been excluded as a suspect.

Hinojosa's appeals also challenged the credibility of his ex-wife, claiming that she initially told investigators she was unsure whether the tread marks on her husband's shoes matched those found at the scene.

In 1999, the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals rejected the arguments and upheld the conviction. The state and U.S. Supreme Courts refused to hear his appeals.

Hinojosa maintains his innocence, but says he has come to terms with his fate by using his time in prison to repent for other misdeeds in his life.

"I feel that I'm a new person," Hinojosa told CourtTVnews.com. "Before, I used to go around and I was all negative. I wasn't a saint, let's put it that way, I wasn't a saint. I got into my share of fights, trouble. That person doesn't exist."