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EXCLUSIVE: Smith County death row inmate gets execution date

An execution date was set on Monday for 34-year-old Clifton Williams who is convicted of brutally murdering a 93-year-old Tyler woman, then setting her on fire.

An execution date was set on Monday for 34-year-old Clifton Williams who is convicted of brutally murdering a 93-year-old Tyler woman.

Williams is scheduled to be executed on June 21, 2018. His execution comes more than a decade after his conviction in 2006.

Williams was originally set to be put to death in 2015, but was granted a delay after his attorneys filed a motion.

Investigators said in 2005 that Williams broke into the home of 93-year-old Cecilia Schneider. They said he brutally beat her, stabbed her and then set her body on fire.

Police said Williams took some cash from her purse, and then took off in her car.

CBS 19 spoke exclusively to Schenider’s daughter, Barbara Holder. Holder told us she’s been waiting to close this chapter for more than a decade.

“You live with the fact that someone is out there, regardless of whether they're in prison or not,” said Holder. “They're still breathing, eating, living their day as it is. Talking to their families or whatever it is they can do. I can't do that with my mother anymore.”

She went on to say that she is still recovering from the traumatic ordeal.

“I’m a little anxious because I’m having to relive a lot of that, we tend to put those things away to survive but I’m anxious I’m having to relive this,” said Holder.

Williams is currently being held at a maximum-security unit at the prison in Huntsville.

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