HOUSTON -- A man was executed by injection Tuesday for fatally stabbing two Houston-area girls in 1992 after they refused to turn down some loud music.

Rex Mays, 42, was convicted of killing Kynara Carreiro, 7, and her 10-year-old friend, Kristin Wiley, at the Wiley home next door to his house.

"I'm ready to go," he said in his final statement. "I'm going to a better place. I'm just mad for one reason: I'm going to a better place, and y'all have to go through this hell on earth."

Mays confessed to the crime, saying he used knife skills he learned as a Marine. Kynara was stabbed and slashed 23 times and Kristin at least 18.

Mays, who occasionally earned money performing as Uh-Oh the Clown and dressed as Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny, killed the girls the same day he was fired from a low-level warehouse job.