Brittany Holberg Women On Death Row
Brittany Holberg was convicted of a brutal murder and has spend the last two decades on Texas death row. According to court documents Brittany Holberg would murder an elderly man in his home by stabbing him repeatedly, blows with a hammer and a foot long lamp pole was shoved down his throat. Brittany Holberg would soon be arrested, convicted and sentenced to death
Brittany Holberg 2025 Information
| Name | Holberg, Brittany Marlowe | |
| TDCJ Number | 999258 | |
| Date of Birth | 01/01/1973 | |
| Date Received | 3/27/1998 | |
| Age (when Received) | 25 | |
| Education Level (Highest Grade Completed) | 11 | |
| Date of Offense | 11/13/1996 | |
| Age (at the time of Offense) | 23 | |
| County | Randall | |
| Race | White | |
| Gender | Female | |
| Hair Color | Brown | |
| Height (in Feet and Inches) | 5′ 5″ | |
| Weight (in Pounds) | 125 lbs. | |
| Eye Color | green | |
| Native County | Potter | |
| Native State | Texas |
SID Number: 05149809
TDCJ Number: 00999258
Name: HOLBERG,BRITTANY MARLOWE
Race: W
Gender: F
Age: 49
Maximum Sentence Date: DEATH ROW
Current Facility: MOUNTAIN VIEW
Projected Release Date: DEATH ROW
Parole Eligibility Date: DEATH ROW
Inmate Visitation Eligible: YES
Brittany Holberg Other News
Brittany Holberg was convicted of capital murder and sentenced to death for the robbery-murder of eighty-year-old A.B. Towery, Sr. Towery was walking back to his apartment after purchasing groceries on the afternoon of November 13, 1996, when Brittany Holberg asked to use his telephone. When Towery allowed the appellant to enter his apartment, a struggle ensued in which Towery sustained fifty-eight stab wounds and multiple blunt-force trauma injuries. Brittany Holberg used several items in the apartment as weapons, including a cast iron skillet, a steam iron, a hammer, a paring knife, a butcher knife, and two forks. Additionally, the appellant shoved a lamp base five inches down Towery’s throat.
Brittany Holberg—a severe drug addict—was high on crack cocaine when this attack occurred. After the attack, the appellant showered, changed into some of Towery’s clean clothes, and fled the scene with $1,400 in cash and prescription medications, both stolen from Towery’s apartment. Later that evening, she purchased more cocaine using a portion of the cash she had stolen earlier. Towery’s son, Rocky Towery, discovered his father’s body at 7:45 a.m. the following morning in a supine position with the lamp base lodged in his throat, a knife stuck in his abdomen, and his father’s wallet lying on top of his body.
Brittany Holberg More News
Brittany Holberg’s confession to the 1998 slaying of an Amarillo man and a litany of drug-addicted or marginally credible witnesses plagued her defense team as it prepared the trial’s punishment phase, an attorney testified Thursday.
On March 13, 1998, a Randall County jury found Brittany Holberg, now 40, guilty of capital murder in the Nov. 13, 1996, slaying of A.B. Towery Sr., 80.
Towery had been beaten and stabbed nearly 60 times in his apartment. Investigators found Towery slumped against a closet with a lamp pole partially shoved down his throat.
In May, the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals ordered a Randall County court hearing to take testimony from Holberg’s former defense team about how they gathered possible mitigating evidence in the case and to investigate claims that her attorneys “threw” the trial, allegations her lawyers denied.
Brittany Holberg, who was sentenced to death in 1998, was arrested Feb. 17, 1997, outside a McDonald’s restaurant in Memphis, Tenn., after “America’s Most Wanted” aired multiple segments on the slaying.
Candace Norris, one of Holberg’s former attorneys, said Holberg confessed to Memphis authorities after she was arrested there, called her mother and possibly implicated herself in the killing.
“She had given a confession to this, and this was a big problem,” Norris said of the defense team’s trial concerns.
Leslie Kuykendall, an assistant attorney general, also asked if Holberg also made a “confession of sorts” to her mother, and Norris replied that she had.
The defense, Norris said, later opted to not to call Holberg’s mother, a Potter County jailer, as a punishment phase witness, in part, because the woman appeared to be more concerned that her testimony would conflict with vacation plans
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Brittany Holberg is currently incarcerated on Texas Death Row For Women
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Brittany Holberg was convicted in a brutal murder
Brittany Holberg More News
After a knee injury Holberg became addicted to painkillers. This led to the use of street drugs, a habit she supported with sex work. Holberg claims she was introduced to Towery by a fellow prostitute named “Green Eyes”, but investigators were not able to verify her claim. During the trial, Defense Attorney Catherine Brown Dodson argued that Towery was wrongly portrayed as an innocent elderly man, and that Holberg acted in self defense when Towery attacked her. Dodson said A.B. Towery became angry and violent when he found a crack pipe on Holberg. She told the jury that Towery struck Holberg twice in the head with a metal pan while her back was turned, and then threatened her with a knife. Holberg reacted by stabbing him with her own knife, and the fight escalated until Holberg put the lamp post in his mouth to attempt to end the struggle. Holberg believed she would have little legal recourse, because of her status as a drug-abusing prostitute, and fled to Tennessee.[3] Despite her self defense claim, after the murder she showered, then exchanged her bloody clothes for some of his clean clothes. She also robbed him of $1400 that was in his wallet.
Holberg filed an appeal in the Court of Criminal Appeals of Texas (no. 73,127), but on November 29, 2000, the appeals court upheld the decision of the trial court.[4]
In 2015, James Farren, the district attorney of Randall County, stated that due to the legal complications involving the Holberg case and the resulting legal expenses—he estimated the cost was about $400,000—and time expended, he would pursue life imprisonment without parole for future capital murder cases unless exceptional circumstances occur.[5]
Brittany Holberg Death Sentence Overturned
A federal appeals court tossed out the murder conviction of a Texas woman sitting on death row for more than a quarter-century, ruling she’d been unjustly convicted on the basis of tainted testimony from a paid jailhouse informant.
Brittany Marlowe Holberg , 52, remains behind bars at the Patrick L. O’Daniel Unit in Gatesville in the slaying of A.B. Towery, 80, in Amarillo on Nov. 13, 1996.
Holberg had turned to sex work to support a crack cocaine habit when she got into a heated argument with Towery, her customer, at his home. Towery was found “dead with stab wounds and part of a lamp in his throat,” according to court records.
Holberg had always maintained that she killed Towery in self-defense after he started beating her.
But at trial, prosecutors brought to the stand Holberg’s cellmate, Vickie Marie Kirkpatrick, who testified that Holberg confided that she murdered Towery for the money, court records showed. Holberg denied having ever spoken to Kirkpatrick about the slaying.
Holberg, defense lawyers and the jury “had no knowledge that Kirkpatrick was a confidential informant” for Amarillo police, the court said.
“At the time of Holberg’s trial, the State knew about Kirkpatrick’s confidential informant work for the Amarillo police but presented her to the Amarillo jury as a disinterested individual who ‘wanted to do the right thing’ and was attempting to be ‘as truthful … and complete as [she] could be,'” according to Judge Patrick E. Higginbotham, writing for the majority in the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruling, which was published Friday.
“The State did not disclose Kirkpatrick’s work as a paid informant until after Holberg was sentenced to death. Holberg’s counsel’s cross-examination of Kirkpatrick spanned only six pages of the trial transcript, a reality that speaks volumes,” he wrote.
Judge Stuart Kyle Duncan, writing in dissent, argued that Kirkpatrick’s testimony played only a small role in the case.
“So, even had Kirkpatrick been impeached, there’s zero chance that a jury would have credited Holberg’s laughable claim of self-defense or spared her the death penalty for slaughtering a sick old man,” Duncan wrote.
The appellate court ruling kicks the case back to the trial court.
Randall County District Attorney Robert Love, previously a prosecutor on the case, said he’s “disappointed” by the ruling but vowed that “this legal action is not over.”
“The Texas Attorney General’s Office has been handling this appeal since 2010 and they are currently discussing the legal options available to the State of Texas in this case,” Love said in a statement Wednesday evening. “Our office has agreed to not weigh in on the legal aspects of the case until the Attorney General’s Office has decided their course of action in this matter.”
Holberg’s appellate attorneys could not immediately be reached for comment Wednesday.
Since the U.S. Supreme Court affirmed the constitutionality of capital punishment in 1976, Texas has put 593 inmates to death.
Lisa Coleman, 38, was the last woman put to death in Texas, via a lethal dose of pentobarbital, on Sept. 17. 2014. She had been convicted of the starvation and torture death of her girlfriend’s 9-year-old son.
