Richard Lee Tabler’s Deadly Thanksgiving Crimes
Texas Department of Criminal Justice Richard Lee Tabler in a 2008 mugshot.
On Thanksgiving Day 2004, a workplace disagreement turned into a deadly incident that fueled discussions about capital punishment for two decades.
In the months leading up to the Thanksgiving crime, a Texas man named Richard Lee Tabler had been working at a strip club called TeaZers — that is, until he was banned from the premises by the club’s manager, Mohammed-Amine Rahmouni. Following a conflict with Rahmouni, who allegedly threatened to have Tabler’s family “wiped out” for $10, Tabler recruited Timothy Payne, a soldier from nearby Fort Cavazos, to help execute his deadly plan.
Rahmouni and his friend, Haitham Zayed, were lured to a late-night meeting under the pretense of purchasing stolen stereo equipment. Unbeknownst to them, the meeting was actually a planned ambush, during which Tabler shot both men in their car. Tabler then pulled Rahmouni out and had Payne film him shooting the club manager again.
Three days after the initial murders, Tabler killed two teenage employees of the club — Tiffany Dotson, 18, and Amanda Benefield, 16 — because he worried they would inform others about the men’s deaths. Before his arrest, Tabler also brazenly called the Bell County Sheriff’s Office to taunt deputies about the murders and threatened to kill more employees.
Tabler later confessed that he had indeed maintained a list of other club staff members he planned to kill in retaliation against his former boss, as reported by the Texas Tribune in 2025.
Despite confessing to the murders, though, both Tabler and Payne pleaded not guilty in separate trials.
Regardless, Tabler was convicted of murder for the deaths of Rahmouni and Zayed and sentenced to death. Payne, meanwhile, was sentenced to life in prison. And although he was indicted for killing the teenage girls, Tabler was never tried for their deaths. In the end, Richard Lee Tabler was executed by lethal injection in February 2025 at age 46.
In his final statement, he expressed deep remorse for his Thanksgiving crime, asking victims’ families for forgiveness: “There is not a day that goes by that I don’t regret my actions, I had no right to take your loved ones from you, and I ask and pray, hope and pray, that one day you find it in your hearts to forgive me for those actions. No amount of my apologies will ever return them to you.”
After reading about these disturbing Thanksgiving crimes, read about nine horrifying crimes committed on Christmas. Then, read about nine teenage serial killers and the chilling crimes they committed.
