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Fort Worth man who beat aunt to death for $30 scheduled to be executed on Wednesday

A Fort Worth man who told a detective his alternate personality “James” killed his 83-year-old great-aunt for $30 in 1999 is scheduled to be executed on Wednesday.

Quintin Phillippe Jones, now 41, was convicted of murder in February 2001 and sentenced to die for killing and robbing 83-year-old Berthena Bryant.

A stay of execution was denied on May 12 by the Court of Criminal Appeals.

Attorneys for Jones, who has been on death row in Texas for more than 20 years, had filed the stay motion, saying his death sentence had been obtained by false and misleading scientific evidence, and that the Fort Worth man is intellectually disabled.

Jones does not deny killing his aunt, but his supporters say he is remorseful and has turned his life around in prison. He recorded a video asking Gov. Greg Abbott to grant him clemency, which would stop the execution but keep him in prison.

In the video he made with the help of the New York Times, Jones said, “All I’m asking you to do, Governor Abbott, is give me a second chance at life.”

Jones used a baseball bat to beat Bryant to death at her Fort Worth home on Sept. 11, 1999, just hours after she refused to loan him any money, authorities have said.

The victim’s sister, Jones’ great-aunt Mattie Long, told CBS News she has forgiven Jones and loves him “very much.”

“I think the governor should spare him, because he has changed and he’s a different person than he used to be,” Long told CBS News.

As of noon Tuesday, more than 150,000 people had signed a change.org petition in support of clemency.

“We are not asking for Jones’s freedom or forgiveness — he has not forgiven himself for the murder of his great aunt Berthena Bryant when he was a drug-addicted and angry 20-year-old man,” the petition says. “Instead, we ask you to see that in his time on death row, Jones has transformed himself into a kind and thoughtful man. We ask that you allow him to spend the rest of his natural life in prison.”

Jones was arrested on an outstanding traffic warrant just hours after neighbors found Bryant’s body in her home. He later confessed to killing his aunt after he lost his temper when he couldn’t find her purse and beat her with a baseball bat that she kept by the door.

He later found her purse, which contained $30, fled her home in her car, and went to a friend’s house to buy drugs. He abandoned the car in a parking lot.

After his arrest, Jones told then Fort Worth Detective Ann Gates that he had “another personality” named James who lived in his head, according to court documents. He stated that James had started living in his head since the age of 10 or 11, when he was molested by his brother and a cousin.

Jones and Ricky Carl “Red” Roosa also were accused of beating to death and robbing Clark Peoples, 27, and Marc Sanders, 19, in June 1999 in Fort Worth for money to buy drugs. The bodies of Peoples and Sanders were discovered in the West Fork of Trinity River in Wise County.

Prosecutors dismissed the capital murder charge against Jones on those two killings after he was sentenced to die, according to Tarrant County criminal court records.

Roosa was sentenced to life in prison on the capital murder, according to court records. He remained at the Allred facility in Iowa Park on Tuesday.

Jones is scheduled to be executed by lethal injection at 6 p.m. Wednesday at Huntsville State Penitentiary.