Tag: execution

Betty Lou Beets Execution

Betty Lou Beets

Betty Lou Beets was executed by the State of Texas for the murder of one of her husbands. Betty Lou Beets would be executed by lethal injection on February 24, 2000.

Betty Lou Beets was born in North Carolina on March 12, 1937. According to Betty Lou she was sexually abused by her father. Beets who was deaf due to a childhood bout with measles. When she was twelve years old her mother was institutionalized and she had to raise her younger siblings

Betty Lou would marry her first husband when she was fifteen years old and would last for seventeen years. Betty Lou who was no angel would rack up a series of arrests for public lewdness. Betty Lou would marry her second husband twice, the first would end after she shot him twice in the back of the head (he would survive and testify against her at the murder trial) and she was later acquitted of attempted murder charges. The same husband would remarry Beets but they would divorce again a month later.

Betty Lou Beets would marry her third husband and soon after attempted to run him over with a car. Her fourth husband would only last a year before he disappeared.

Betty Lou Beets would marry her fifth husband in 1981, two years later Jimmy Don Beets would be reported missing. Betty Lou son told the jury that she told him to leave the house and when he returned two hours later Jimmy Don Beets would be lying dead from two gunshot wounds. Betty Lou and her son would bury the body in the front yard before reporting her husband missing. Beets and her son also spilled some of her husband’s heart medication in his boat and set it adrift. Police believed that Jimmy Don Beets had drowned.

Betty Lou Beets would be arrested two years later. The police would find the body of Jimmy Don Beets buried in the front yard. Police would also find the body of her fifth husband in a well on the propert.

Betty Lou Beets would be convicted for the murder of Jimmy Don Beets and sentenced to death. She attempted to blame the murders on two of her children however the jury did not buy it.

Betty Lou Beets would be executed by the State of Texas by lethal injection on February 24, 2000.

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BETTY LOU BEETS, a 62-year-old woman convicted of the 1983 murder of her husband, was killed by lethal injection just after 6 p.m. CST at a state prison in Huntsville, Texas. The state leads the country in executions, with 208 since resuming capital punishment in 1982. Two United Nations experts on human rights had appealed to Governor Bush in a letter Thursday to spare her from execution, saying that the domestic “abuse and extreme violence” she suffered was not made known to the jury that sentenced her to die. A federal appeals court on Thursday upheld a lower court ruling rejecting her attorneys’ plea that her case be reexamined because she was a battered wife. Beets is the fourth woman executed in the United States since the 1976 Supreme Court ruling allowing capital punishment. She is the second woman and the oldest person to be put to death in Texas since the state resumed executions.

https://www.wired.com/2000/02/betty-lou-beets-62-executed/

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The state of Texas executed Betty Lou Beets, a 62-year-old great grandmother, Thursday evening at Huntsville prison. Beets was the second woman to be put to death in Texas in the last two years—Karla Faye Tucker was executed in February 1998—and the fourth woman to die in the US since executions resumed in 1976.

Earlier in the day Beets’ attorney Joe Margulies told CNN, “She’s very scared. She doesn’t want to be strapped down to that gurney all alone.” Beets declined a last meal and gave no final statement as she lay strapped to the death chamber gurney. After she was injected with the lethal drugs she smiled at her attorney and pastor, coughed twice and gasped before being pronounced dead at 6:18 PM Central Standard Time.

Beets was convicted in 1985 of fatally shooting her fifth husband. Police found his body buried in the front yard of the couple’s trailer home near the small East Texas town of Gun Barrel City. She was also convicted of shooting and wounding her second husband and was charged with—but never tried for—killing her fourth husband. Prosecutors dubbed her the “Black Widow of Henderson County” and claimed she killed her last husband to collect insurance money.

The case attracted national and international attention because of revelations—never presented by her original trial lawyer—that Beets had suffered physical, sexual and emotional abuse both as a child and at the hands of her husbands. Her current attorneys argued that because she had inadequate defense counsel at her 1985 trial, the jury was never able to consider mitigating circumstances during the sentencing phase.

The attorneys also charged that the state parole board violated Beets’ civil rights by denying her the review process that the state legislature mandates for all murder cases involving battered women.

About 100 protesters, some holding photographs of a bruised Beets following a beating, gathered outside the prison before the execution. Death penalty opponents, domestic violence awareness organizations, Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and even officials from the UN Human Rights Commission had appealed to Texas Governor George W. Bush to commute the elderly woman’s sentence. According to the governor’s office, Bush received more than 2,100 calls and letters from people opposing the execution, while only 57 messages came from those endorsing it.

On Tuesday, the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles rejected Beets’ pleas for a 180-day reprieve and commutation of her sentence. On Thursday afternoon a federal appeals court in New Orleans denied a motion to stop the execution. In Austin, US District Judge James Nowlin dismissed the motion, saying it was “yet another example of a prisoner attempting to delay execution just prior to the execution date.”

Finally, about an hour before the execution, the US Supreme Court, without comment, refused to hear Beets’ case. Minutes later Texas Governor George W. Bush gave the go-ahead for the execution by turning down an appeal for a 30-day delay. The governor issued a cursory four-sentence statement.

“After careful review of the evidence in the case I concur with the jury that Betty Lou Beets is guilty of this murder,” Bush said. “I am confident that the courts, both state and federal, have thoroughly reviewed all the issues raised by the defendant. The courts, including the US Supreme Court, have rejected all of her appeals. I concur with the recommendation of the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles and will not grant a 30-day delay.”

Notwithstanding Bush’s claims to the contrary, Beets hardly received a fair trial and due process. Under Texas law, she could not be sentenced to death unless the state proved that she murdered her husband with premeditation, i.e., to recover a $100,000 pension and insurance policy. But her attorney, E. Ray Andrews, deliberately withheld from the jury the fact that she did not know about the insurance policy until a year-and-a-half after her husband’s murder, when Andrews himself told her about it.

This information would have seriously undermined the prosecution’s claim that Beets’ had killed for money. But to be a witness and provide testimony, he would have had to withdraw as her defense lawyer and give up his fee. His price for representing Beets was her signature on a contract surrendering all movie and book rights to her story.

“He said he was going to get rich on all this, and the case was going to be the biggest thing that ever happened to him,” Bob Miller, commander of the local Veterans of Foreign Wars post, told Beets’ appellate lawyers in a 1991 affidavit. “He said the case was going to turn into a big movie, and he had all the rights to it. It was something that he talked about pretty often.” Miller also said Andrews regularly drank heavily at the post prior to going into court to argue the case.

After becoming district attorney, Andrews was arrested by the FBI in 1994 for soliciting a $300,000 payoff to drop a death penalty case against a businessmen accused of killing his wife. He resigned from the prosecutor’s office, gave up his law license, and cried at his sentencing, saying he was a longtime alcoholic, prescription drug abuser and heavy gambler. He was sentenced to three-and-a-half years in federal prison.

Neither was the jury told that Beets had suffered years of abuse, beginning when she was a child in the 1940s. She grew up poor in a small Texas town, battling an alcoholic father and a mentally ill mother. Beets was sexually abused as early as age five and later suffered organic brain damage in a car accident. She first married at the age of 15, was beaten by many of her husbands and became an alcoholic.

In 1991, a federal court judge held that Beets’ defense attorney’s behavior violated her right to effective counsel and ordered a new trial. But the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals reinstated her conviction and death sentence, saying Beets could not show that either Andrews’ testimony or evidence of spousal abuse would have changed the trial’s outcome.

“All my momma’s life, she’s been abused,” her daughter Faye Lane said at a news conference earlier in the week. “I’ve seen it with my own eyes. And I know that if the jury heard the truth about my momma, she only could have done something like this if she’d been very scared or threatened.”

Shortly before her execution, Beets told the Athens Daily Review, “This is not a capital case, it’s about domestic violence…You don’t kill the one that survives it.”

The execution of Betty Lou Beets is a particularly gruesome example of the brutality and vindictiveness of the death penalty. But it is by no means the exception. The vast majority of the 3,600 inmates on death row come from impoverished and abused backgrounds and lack the resources for an adequate defense. They confront prosecutors, judges and politicians who want to further their careers by promoting the death penalty and appealing to the most backward and reactionary sentiments in the population.

Since becoming governor in 1995 George W. Bush, who is running for president as a “compassionate conservative,” has overseen 121 executions, more than any other governor in US history. The state parole board, which is dominated by Bush appointees, has only granted commutations to two death row prisoners. Rejections of appeals are so commonplace, the parole board rarely meets and instead votes on clemency appeals by fax. Overall, Texas is responsible for 208 of the 616 executions carried out in the US since 1976.

Support for the practice of state murder is by no means limited to the Republican Party. Just last week, President Clinton rejected calls for a moratorium on federal executions.

Advocacy of the death penalty is considered by the media and the political establishment to be a prerequisite for anyone seeking high national office. Even as evidence of wrongful convictions of death row prisoners generates growing public concern about capital punishment, reflected even in some official circles—as evidenced by a moratorium on executions by the Republican governor of Illinois—all of the current presidential candidates of both parties reaffirm their commitment to this barbaric practice. They make a point of aligning themselves with the law-and-order elements that hold sway in both big business parties.

https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2000/02/exec-f26.html

Betty Lou Beets FAQ

Why Was Betty Lou Beets Executed

Betty Lou Beets was executed for the murder of one of her husbands

When Was Betty Lou Beets Executed

Betty Lou Beets was executed on February 24, 2000

Judy Buenoano Execution

Judy Buenoano

Judy Buenoano was a serial killer who was convicted of two murders but believed to be responsible for several more. Judy Buenoano would be executed by the State of Florida on March 30, 1998

Not a lot is known about Judy Buenoano early life however she would marry James Goodyear who would die in 1971 in what doctors believed at the time to be by natural causes.

Judy Buenoano would move in with Bobby Morris in 1973 and he would die in January 1978. In 1980 Judy son Michael would become sick with an illness that took away the use of his legs. Later that year Michael would die when he fell from a canoe and drowned.

In 1983 Judy Buenoano was involved with John Gentry who would later be severely injured when his car exploded. When police were investigating the case they learned that there were sketchy moments in the history of Judy Buenoano.

It turned out Judy was telling friends that Gentry was suffering from a terminal illness in the months before his accident and police would learn that she was giving him vitamins that were laced with arsenic.

Police would exhume the bodies of her first husband, her son and Bobby Morris all of which had arsenic in their systems.

Judy Buenoano would be sentenced to death for the murder of James Goodyear, a life sentence for the murder of her son and a twelve year sentenced for the attempted murder of Gentry. Judy would also be convicted of a number of fraud charges relating to collecting the insurance money after each victim died.

On March 30, 1998 Judy Buenoano was executed in the electric chair at Florida State Prison.

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one were the painted, manicured fingernails and the fashionable dark hair. Gone was the tough-edged woman who drove around Pensacola in a Corvette and told bigger-than-life stories about her life, her businesses and her Chanel perfume.

Judy Buenoano walked shakily to Florida’s electric chair Monday, her head freshly shaved. Guards had covered it with gel – highlighting every bump, every vein – to conduct the electricity better. She wasn’t the same person who had boasted that Florida would never execute her. She was, simply, an old, frightened woman.

And by 7:13 a.m., Judy Buenoano, 54, had become the first woman executed in the state in 150 years and the first woman to die in the chair.

Prosecutors called Buenoano the “Black Widow,” saying she attracted men to kill them for insurance money. She was executed for killing her Vietnam veteran husband with arsenic in Orlando 27 years ago, but Pensacola juries also found her guilty of drowning her paralyzed son in 1980 and trying to firebomb her boyfriend in 1983.

She had gotten about $240,000 in insurance money from the deaths of her husband, son and a common-law husband who died of arsenic poisoning in Colorado in 1978. Prosecutors said she had used some of the money for a new car, for a diamond ring, to start her nail salon, to live the high life.

She might have gotten away with her crimes, they said, if she hadn’t botched the bombing and left a trail back to her.

Florida had not executed a woman since 1848, when a freed slave was hanged for killing her former master. Because of that, Buenoano’s death attracted widespread media attention. Early Monday, lights from TV cameras and satellite trucks rivaled those beaming from Florida State Prison. Reporters outnumbered protesters.

Judy Buenoano met with her two children, a cousin and her spiritual adviser through the night. They had Communion and a final contact visit. Buenoano dozed from 1 until 4 a.m., when she received a last meal of steamed vegetables, fresh strawberries and hot tea.

Throughout Sunday, she had been talkative and upbeat, a corrections spokesman said.

But when she entered the death chamber shortly after 7 a.m., Buenoano held tightly to the hands of two male guards who helped her walk. She was pale and terrified. But she seemed determined to face her death with a kind of stoic dignity.

As authorities strapped her in, she grimaced, especially as they tightened the belt around her chest. Through most of the preparations, she kept her eyes shut, not looking at the people who gathered to watch, including her spiritual adviser and the brother-in-law of Air Force Sgt. James Goodyear, her poisoned husband.

Asked whether she had a last statement, Judy Buenoano said in a barely audible voice, “No, sir.” Moments later, as the current flowed, her fists clenched. She seemed almost dwarfed in the 75-year-old oak chair. Smoke rose from the electrode attached to her right leg.

The witnesses watched silently. In the front row sat Orange-Osceola Chief Judge Belvin Perry, who prosecuted Buenoano in 1984. Next to him was Dusty Rhodes, who as a state attorney investigator had gathered evidence against Buenoano in the Goodyear case.

The two had become experts on arsenic. They had watched the exhumation of Goodyear’s body to check for poison. They had tracked down a witness who said Buenoano told her not to divorce her husband but instead kill him with arsenic. But you’ll need the stomach for it, the friend quoted Buenoano as telling her.

Perry and Rhodes called Judy Buenoano a cold, calculating killer.

“It was very serene, clinical,” Perry said of the execution. “It brings finality and a final chapter in this saga.”

As they drove home from Starke on Monday, the two talked about how Buenoano’s death had been humane compared with the agony Goodyear endured and the pain her 19-year-old son, Michael, felt as he drowned in a river with braces on his arms and legs.

But family members described a different Judy Buenoano. They called her a devoted Roman Catholic, a beloved mother and grandmother, a woman who had had a tough childhood but went on to raise a family of her own. They said the case against her was circumstantial and called prosecutors overzealous and high courts cowardly for not setting aside her death sentence.

Sunday, before they entered the prison to say goodbye to their mother, Buenoano’s daughter, Kimberly Hawkins, and son, James Buenoano, stood before cameras and asked the state not to commit a “hate crime against God and humanity.”

The pleas did not work. The courts refused a last-minute stay.

Twelve civilian and 12 media witnesses, plus corrections officials, were stuffed into a tiny room separated by glass from the death chamber. Female guards were brought in to be with Buenoano in her final days. One of them walked into the chamber with Buenoano, but male guards handled the execution.

Outside, death-penalty opponents and supporters waited for word on the execution – the third in Florida in eight days.

Members of Pax Christi, a state group organized with the Roman Catholic Church, held signs that read Buenoano is “a woman not a spider.”

“Executions are just an excuse for vengeance toward people,” said Martina Linnenahm, a member of the group.

Death-penalty supporters included Larin Cone, whose brother, Floyd Jr., was killed in 1981 when Edward Kennedy escaped from prison and shot him and a state trooper to death. Kennedy was executed in 1992.

Cone said Judy Buenoano did not deserve mercy because of her gender. “She killed just like a man,” Cone said, “so she should receive the same treatment as a man.”

Wayne Manning of Lawtey had a day off from work, so he brought his 7-year-old grandson, Steven, to the prison.

“He needs to learn what is going on in this world,” Manning said. “Maybe he won’t get into a situation like this, himself, if he is exposed to it now.”

https://www.orlandosentinel.com/news/os-xpm-1998-03-31-9803310252-story.html

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Judy Buenoano FAQ

Why Was Judy Buenoano Executed

Judy Buenoano was executed for two murders but believed to be responsible for many more

When Was Judy Buenoano Executed

Judy Buenoano was executed on March 30 1998

Karla Faye Tucker Execution

Karla Faye Tucker execution

Karla Faye Tucker was executed by the State of Texas for the murders of two men. On February 3, 1998 she was executed by way of lethal injection.

Karla Faye Tucker was born in Houston Texas on November 18, 1959 to parents in a volatile relationship. When Karla was ten years old she would learn that her father was not her father during her parents divorce proceedings.

Karla Faye Tucker was using drugs by the time she was twelve years old and would soon travel with her mother who was a groupie to a number of rock bands and would also work as a prostitute.

At the age of sixteen Karla Faye Tucker would be briefly married to an auto mechanic.

When Karla Faye Tucker was in her early twenties she would meet a man named Daniel Ryan Garrett who she would soon be in a relationship with. The two who spent a lot of time using drugs were short on cash and decided to rob someone they knew of his motorcycle

During the robbery they would grab the homeowner, Jerry Dean, and force him into the bedroom. Jerry Dean who made a grab for Karla Faye Tucker was beaten with a ball peen hammer. Tucker who was armed with a pick axe would strike Dean repeated with the tool causing his death.

When Garrett left the room to load more parts Karla Faye Tucker noticed a woman, Deborah Ruth Thornton, in the room and would strike her with the pick axe. The two women began to fight until they were separated by Garrett. Tucker would strike the woman repeatedly with the pick axe. Karla Faye Tucker would later tell people she has multiple orgasms when she killed the woman.

Karla Faye Tucker and Danny Garrett would be arrested five weeks later.

Karla Faye Tucker was initially charged with both murders however after agreeing to testify against Danny Garrett the murder charge for the Jerry Dean case was the only one she stood trial for. Danny Garrett would also only be charged with the Deborah Thornton murder. Both would be convicted and sentenced to death.

Karla Faye Tucker would be executed on February 3, 1998 by lethal injection. There was a ton of controversy around her execution for she completely changed her life while imprisoned and spent most of her time helping others. Most believed her death sentence should have been commuted.

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Karla Faye Tucker, the Pickax Killer turned born-again Christian, died of a lethal injection tonight, closing a long fight for her life as a crowd outside the Texas death house prayed for her soul.

Tucker, 38, was pronounced dead at 6:45 p.m. local time, becoming the first woman executed in Texas since the Civil War and only the second in the United States since the resumption of the death penalty in 1976. Although she and her attorneys had played down her gender in their many pleas for clemency, the fact that she was a woman helped arouse international interest in her cause and generate appeals for mercy from figures including Pope John Paul II and religious broadcaster Pat Robertson.

Wearing a white prison uniform and white tennis shoes, Karla Faye Tucker lay strapped on her back on a gurney as she delivered her final statements to the gathered witnesses, who included her husband, Dana Brown, a prison ministry worker she married by proxy in 1995, and Ronald Carlson, a Houston machinist and brother of one of the victims.

“I love all of you very much,” she said to the witnesses. “I am going to be face-to-face with Jesus now.”

Addressing her husband, she said, “Baby, I love you.”

Then a lethal dose of sodium thiopental began dripping into the veins of each arm, along with pancuronium bromide, which is a muscle relaxant, and potassium chloride, which stops the heartbeat. Within a few minutes, she was dead. Officials with the Texas Department of Criminal Justice said that Tucker also could have requested a sedative but did not.

“I never saw Karla Faye Tucker take the smile off her face,” said Vicente Arenas, a Houston television reporter who was among the witnesses.

The scene was emotional outside the Department of Criminal Justice facility here called the death house in this east Texas town of 35,000 about 60 miles north of Houston, where a record 37 men were executed last year. Several hundred people on both sides of the issue crowded against yellow police lines, some still arguing over the value of the death penalty, others praying and singing “Amazing Grace” and other hymns.

“Bye bye, Karla Faye,” read one sign. “Forget Injection, Use a Pickax,” read another.

But many others here were sympathetic to Tucker’s plight: “I’m Ashamed to be a Texan,” one sign read, and another said: “Jesus Loves Karla Faye and So Do I.”

Cheers went up from the pro-execution crowd when her death was announced.

The case had divided victims’ families. Carlson, brother of Deborah Thornton, one of the two people Tucker was convicted of helping to kill, participated in rallies at the state Capitol in Austin asking that Tucker be spared. Richard Thornton, the victim’s husband, argued that he was sick of the depiction of Tucker as “Miss Saint.”

Arenas said Thornton, who is in a wheelchair with severe diabetes and was a witness to the execution, muttered throughout the proceedings. “The world’s a better place,” he was heard to say during the execution.

It had become increasingly clear on Monday that despite Tucker’s efforts to show she was a changed person, notably in televised appearances on “60 Minutes,” Robertson’s “The 700 Club” and CNN, her quest to spare her life had failed. The state Board of Pardons and Paroles, which could have commuted her sentence to life in prison, voted 16 to 0, with two members abstaining, to deny her request. Tucker, who could have been eligible for parole in 2003 had the board agreed, had asked that she be given life in prison without the possibility of release, but there is no such sentence in Texas, and board members said they could not make a special case of Karla Faye Tucker.

After the board’s ruling, Tucker’s only hope was with the U.S. Supreme Court, which turned down two appeals without comment this afternoon, and Gov. George W. Bush (R), who, under the law, could grant her only one 30-day stay. But here in Texas, the national leader in executions with one in every three that occurs, governors have seldom intervened in death-penalty cases and Bush was no exception.

“May God bless Karla Faye Tucker and may God bless her victims and their families,” Bush said after declining to grant the stay.

No one disputed the fact that Karla Faye Tucker committed a nightmarish act. According to her own account, she began using heroin at age 10 and was a drug-addled prostitute when she and a friend, Daniel Garrett, entered the Houston apartment of Jerry Lynn Dean on June 13, 1983, to steal a motorcycle.

Garrett began beating Dean with a hammer, and Tucker, who said she was disturbed by the “gurgling” sounds the wounded man made, found a 3-foot-long pickax and began hacking at his body. Then she noticed a figure cowering under a pile of blankets and swung the pickax again, striking Deborah Thornton on the shoulder. She said that Garrett finished Thornton off; the pickax was found embedded in the woman’s chest.

Karla Faye Tucker, who testified against Garrett, was not tried for Thornton’s murder but received the death penalty for Dean’s slaying. Garrett, who was also sentenced to death, died of a liver ailment in prison in 1993.

But Karla Faye Tucker said that as she waited in the Harris County Jail for her trial, her head began to clear from the years of drugs, and meeting with jail ministry workers, she found religion and the peace that sustained her for more than 14 years on death row.

In her final days, an unusual assortment of people rallied to her cause, including the pope and Robertson, founder of the Christian Broadcasting Network and host of “The 700 Club,” who normally supports the death penalty. “The 700 Club” broadcast Tucker’s final interview today, in which she discussed what she might be thinking as she lay waiting on the gurney.

“I am going to be thinking certainly about what it’s like in heaven,” she said. “I’m going to be thinking about my family and my friends and the pain. I am going to be thankful for all the love.”

Repeatedly, in the weeks leading to her death, Karla Faye Tucker had told interviewers she was not afraid of dying. “I know that Jesus has prepared a place for me,” she said in a recent CNN report. “I know if I have to go February 3, he’s going to come and he’s going to escort me personally. I believe that.”

After the execution, Tucker’s body was taken to Huntsville Funeral Home, said prisons spokesman Larry Todd, where her husband was expected to claim it for burial.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/national/frompost/dec98/woman9.htm

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Karla Faye Tucker FAQ

Why Was Karla Faye Tucker Executed

Karla Faye Tucker was executed for a double murder

When Was Karla Faye Tucker Executed

Karla Faye Tucker was executed on February 3, 1998

Velma Barfield Execution

velma barfield execution

Velma Barfield was the first woman to be executed in the United States after the resumption of capital punishment. Velma Barfield who was classified as a serial killer would be convicted of one murder but would confess to six murders. Velma Barfield was executed on November 2, 1984 by lethal injection.

Velma Barfield was born on October 29, 1932 in South Carolina to an abusive father and a mother who would not intervene. Velma would escape her home by getting married at seventeen to Thomas Burke. Unfortunately Velma would suffer medical issues and have to undergo a hysterectomy which would lead to her abusing pain killers.

Soon after the marriage began to fall apart with Thomas Burke starting to drink and Velma worsening drug addiction. Thomas Burke would pass out on April 4, 1969 and Velma would take their kids and leave the home. When they returned the house was completely burnt down to the studs.

Velma Barfield would get married again in 1970 to Jennings Barfield who would die a year later from heart complications.

In 1974 Velma Barfields mother Linda began to have health problems and began to have severe vomiting and nausea. Linda would be admitted to the hospital and recover. At Christmas the same year Linda would be readmitted into the hospital with the same illness and would die within hours

In 1976 Velma Barfield began to work as a personal assistant for an elderly couple, Montgomery and Dollie Edwards. Montgomery Edwards would die in January of 1977 of the same illness that killed Velma’s mother Linda. A month later Dollie Edwards would die a few months later of the same.

In 1977 Velma worked for another elderly couple, Record and John Lee, John would die from a severe stomach illness a few months later.

The last victim was Rowland Stuart Taylor, who was dating Velma Barfield and a relation to Dollie Edwards, would end up dying after he was fed arsenic. Turns out Velma was stealing from Rowland and she was worried that he would find out.

Authorities would exhume the body of her second husband, Jennings Barfield and it turned out he died from arsenic poisoning

Velma Barfield was only charged with the murder of Rowland Taylor, which she was convicted and sentenced to death. Velma would confess to the murders of Linda Bullard, Dollie, and John Henry Lee.

Velma Barfield would be executed on November 2, 1984 by lethal injection

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After two marriages ended with the death of her husbands, by 1977 Velma Barfield was in a relationship with Stuart Taylor, who was a widower and tobacco farmer. As she had been doing for years, she forged checks on Taylor’s account to pay for her addiction to prescription drugs. Fearing that she had been found out, she mixed an arsenic based rat poison into his beer and tea. Taylor became very ill and Velma volunteered to nurse him. As his condition worsened she took him to hospital where he died a few days later.

Unfortunately for her there was an autopsy which found that the cause of Taylor’s death was arsenic poisoning and Velma Barfield was arrested and charged with his murder. At the trial her defense pleaded insanity but this was not accepted and she was convicted. The jury recommended the death sentence. Velma appeared cold and uncaring on the stand and actually gave the District Attorney a round of applause when he made his closing speech.

Velma Barfield later confessed to the 1974 murder of her own mother (in whose name she had taken out a loan) and of two elderly people, John Henry Lee (by whom she was being paid as a housekeeper/caregiver) and Dollie Edwards (a relative of Stuart Taylor). Velma Barfield always attended the funerals of her victims and appeared to grieve genuinely for them.

The body of her late husband, Thomas Barfield, was later exhumed and also found to contain traces of arsenic. Velma denied that she had killed him. Her motives for these four murders were the same. She had misappropriated money from her victims and then according to her, tried to make them ill so she could nurse them whilst finding another job to enable her to repay the money. Needless to say, the jury was less than impressed by this defense.

Velma Barfield gained notoriety as the “Death Row Granny,” becoming the first woman to be executed in the U.S. since 1962, and the first since the reinstatement of the death penalty in 1976.

http://www.clarkprosecutor.org/html/death/US/barfield029.htm

Frequently Asked Questions

Velma Barfield FAQ

Why Was Velma Barfield Executed

Velma Barfield was executed for one murder however she confessed to six more

When Was Velma Barfield Executed

Velma Barfield was executed on November 2, 1984

Kelly Gissendaner Execution

Kelly Gissendaner

Kelly Gissendaner was executed by the State of Georgia for the murder of her husband Douglas Gissendaner on September 30, 2015.

Kelly Gissendaner whose maiden name was Brookshire was born to a poor family in Georgia. According to family members Kelly was molested by several men and family mothers. During high school Kelly claimed she was raped and would give birth to a son nine months later. Kelly first marriage to Jeff Banks would only last for six months.

In 1989 Kelly Gissendaner would marry Douglas for the first time. Soon after they were married they would have a baby, lose their jobs and have to move in with Kelly’ mother.

Douglas Gissendaner would join the Army and would be sent to Germany. While her husband was abroad Kelly would get pregnant by another man who would later die from cancer. Kelly and Douglas would get divorced in 1993

Two years later Douglas and Kelly would get remarried and the couple would purchase a home together in 1995.

In 1997 Kelly Gissendaner would approach Gregory Owen to murder her husband. Kelly figured the only way she could keep her home and improve her finances would be for her husband to die so she could collect the insurance money.

On February 7, 1997 Gregory Owen would carjack Douglas Gissendaner and force him to a wooded area where he would be murdered. Kelly Gissendaner would arrive at the crime scene and the two would set Douglas’s vehicle on fire and hid the body in the woods.

It did not take long for police to crack the case and Kelly Gissendaner and Gregory Owen would be arrested and charged with capital murder. Gregory and Kelly were both offered life sentences before the trials. Owen would agree to testify against Gissendaner who would be convicted an sentenced to death

On September 30, 2015 Kelly Gissendaner would be executed by lethal injection.

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A Georgia woman who was executed despite a plea for mercy from Pope Francis sang “Amazing Grace” until she was given a lethal injection, witnesses said.

Kelly Renee Gissendaner, who graduated from a theology program in prison, was put to death at 12:21 a.m. Wednesday after a flurry of last-minute appeals failed.

Gissendaner, who was sentenced to death for the 1997 stabbing murder of her husband at the hands of her lover, sobbed as she called the victim an “amazing man who died because of me.”

She was the first woman executed in Georgia in 70 years and one of a handful of death-row inmates who were executed even though they did not physically partake in a murder.

The mother of three was nearly executed in February, but the lethal injection was abruptly called off because the chemicals appeared cloudy.

After a new execution date was set, Gissendaner, 47, convinced the Georgia Board of Pardons and Paroles to reconsider her application for clemency.

In an extraordinary turn, Pope Francis — who called for a global ban on the death penalty during his U.S. visit last week — urged the board to spare her life.

“While not wishing to minimize the gravity of the crime for which Ms. Gissendander has been convicted, and while sympathizing with the victims, I nonetheless implore you, in consideration of the reasons that have been expressed to your board, to commute the sentence to one that would better express both justice and mercy,” Archbishop Carlo Maria Vigano wrote on the pontiff’s behalf.

Shortly thereafter, the board announced that it would not stop the execution.

The victim’s family was split on whether Gissendaner should live or die: Her children appeared before the parole board to ask that their mom be spared the death chamber, but her husband’s relatives said she did not deserve clemency.

Kelly planned and executed Doug’s murder. She targeted him and his death was intentional,” Douglas Gissendaner’s loved ones said in a written statement

“In the last 18 years, our mission has been to seek justice for Doug’s murder and to keep his memory alive. We have faith in our legal system and do believe that Kelly has been afforded every right that our legal system affords.

“As the murderer, she’s been given more rights and opportunity over the last 18 years than she ever afforded to Doug who, again, is the victim here. She had no mercy, gave him no rights, no choices, nor the opportunity to live his life. His life was not hers to take.

In the hours before her death, Gissendaner pressed a number of appeals, arguing that it was not fair she got death while the lover who killed her husband got a life sentence. She also said the execution drugs might be defective, and that she had turned her life around and found religion while in prison.

She requested her final meal last week: cheese dip with chips, Texas fajita nachos and a diet frosted lemonade.

Jeff Hullinger, a journalist with NBC station WXIA who witnessed the execution, later told reporters that Gissendaner appeared “very, very emotional, I was struck by that.”

He added: “She was crying and then she was sobbing and then broke into song as well as into a number of apologies … When she was not singing, she was praying.”

https://www.nbcnews.com/storyline/lethal-injection/pope-urges-halt-execution-georgia-woman-kelly-gissendaner-n435566

Frequently Asked Questions

Kelly Gissendaner FAQ

Why Was Kelly Gissendaner Executed

Kelly Gissendaner was executed for the murder of her husband

When Was Kelly Gissendaner Executed

Kelly Gissendaner was executed on September 30, 2015.