This undated handout photo provided by the Texas Department of Criminal Justice shows Guadalupe Esparza. Esparza is scheduled to be executed Wednesday for abducting a 7-year-old girl from her San Antonio apartment, sexually assaulting her then strangling her before dumping her body in some weeds behind a convenience store near the complex where she lived more than a decade ago. (AP Photo/Texas Department of Criminal Justice)

HUNTSVILLE, Texas (AP) — A convicted sex offender has been executed for slipping into a San Antonio apartment in the middle of the night, snatching a 7-year-old girl and raping and strangling her.

Forty-six-year-old Guadalupe Esparza was pronounced dead at 6:21 p.m. CST Wednesday from a lethal injection.

Esparza's appeals were exhausted and there were no last-day efforts to spare him.

The battered body of Alyssa Maria Vasquez was found in some weeds near her home hours after she was reported missing in June 1999. A baby sitter who discovered her gone identified Esparza as visiting the residence earlier that night. The child's mother told authorities Esparza had been calling her even though she'd given him the brushoff.

DNA evidence linked him to the slaying.