Background
Karla Faye Tucker had a difficult childhood. Her father had given up on her as a child, and her mother died from the effects of drug abuse on Christmas Eve, 1979, when Karla was 20—ending her relationship with the only person, whom she said, had always really loved her.
She too had gotten into hard drugs, and her mother got her into prostitution at the age of 14.
It is a sadly common story in murder cases: a young person gets into drugs and then into crime after a poor or disturbed childhood.
The Murders
On June 13, 1983, Karla Faye Tucker (aged 23) and Daniel Ryan Garrett (27), allegedly high on a cocktail of methadone, Valium, heroin, marijuana, rum, tequila, and other drugs, went to the Houston apartment of Jerry Lynn Dean (also aged 27), apparently to steal Dean’s Harley Davidson motorcycle.
Karla knew Dean, who was the estranged husband of her best friend. She disliked him, as he had once parked the motorbike in her living room and let it drip oil onto the carpet. He had also destroyed her only pictures of her mother.
When they entered the apartment, they found Jerry Dean asleep. Garrett attacked Dean with a hammer. Dean was making a gurgling sound, so Karla finished him off with the pickaxe. “I just wanted to make the noise stop,” she testified at her trial.
Then she noticed 32-year-old Deborah Thornton cowering under sheets in a corner. Deborah had had a row with her husband and met Dean at a party earlier that evening. Hyped up on the drugs and the killing of Jerry Dean, Karla attacked Deborah Thornton with the pickaxe, raining numerous blows into her body and finally leaving the pickaxe embedded in her torso. The pair stole Jerry Dean’s money and car before they left.
Tucker later was heard on a police wiretap saying she had an orgasm every time she sank the pickaxe into Dean and Thornton’s bodies.
Arrest and Trial
Daniel Garrett was arrested after a tip-off on July 20, 1983, as he left home to go to work. Karla was arrested the same day, as was a third suspect, Albert Sheenan.
Karla Faye went to trial on April 11, 1984, before a jury of 8 women and 4 men, presided over by a female judge. Albert Sheenan admitted having gone to Dean’s apartment but denied any part in the murders. He testified against both defendants.
The defense called no witnesses, and the jury retired for only 70 minutes before convicting Karla. The trial then entered the penalty phase. The defense called a woman psychiatrist who testified that Karla had told her she had been taking drugs since the age of 9 and was addicted to heroin at 10. She described Karla’s state of mind to the court—how Karla had not slept in three days and how she had been taking drugs and alcohol on the night of the killings.
The psychiatrist also told the jury that she didn’t think it likely that Karla had derived sexual pleasure from the killings, even though she had boasted about having done so on the wiretap. She thought it unlikely that Karla had ever experienced any real sexual satisfaction, in fact.
Karla took the stand in her own defense and gave her version of the events. She told the jury that she did not feel the killings were real to her: “I did not see the bodies. I do not remember seeing any holes or any blood.”
After deliberating for nearly three hours on April 25, 1984, the jury recommended that Karla Faye be sentenced to death by lethal injection. The trial had made the news, but Karla’s death sentence made headlines:
“PICKAXE MURDERESS SENTENCED TO DIE”
A front page declared in letters an inch high over a picture of Tucker.
Daniel Garrett was tried separately, convicted, and sentenced to death in November of the same year but subsequently died of liver disease on death row in 1993.
Execution
Karla spent nearly 14 years on female death row at the Mountain View Unit of Gatesville Penitentiary. Here she went through the normal appeals process and a final appeal to the state governor, George W. Bush, for clemency—all of which were rejected.
On Monday, February 2, 1998, she was flown the 175 miles to Huntsville and taken to the Walls Unit to be placed in a holding cell next to the execution chamber.
On her final day, she refused breakfast in her cell and was said by her guards to be “at peace.” She wrote a letter and had two visits. She was allowed half an hour with her husband, prison minister Dana Brown, whom she had married on death row, and another half hour with a spiritual adviser.
The U.S. Supreme Court rejected two last-minute calls for clemency, and Texas Governor George Bush ordered the execution to go ahead on time. He said her case had been thoroughly reviewed:
“I have concluded judgments about the heart and soul of an individual on Death Row are best left to a higher authority,” Mr. Bush said.
Sometime after 6:20 p.m., Karla, dressed in fresh white prison clothes, got onto the gurney unaided and was strapped down over her legs and body. Her arms were strapped to sideboards, and a catheter was inserted into the veins of each arm. She was wheeled into the execution chamber at 6:35 p.m.
She was asked if she had a final statement and turned her head towards the witness chamber and said into the microphone:
“Yes sir, I would like to say to all of you, the Thornton family and Jerry Dean’s family, that I am so sorry. I hope God will give you peace with this.”
Karla then looked at her husband, watching from behind the screen, and said:
“Baby, I love you. Everybody has been so good to me. I love all of you very much. I’m going to be face to face with Jesus now.”
“Warden Baggett, thank all of you so much. You have been so good to me. I love all of you very much. I will see you all when you get there. I will wait for you.”
She closed her eyes and seemed to move her lips in silent prayer before looking at the ceiling.
The three drugs—sodium thiopental, pancuronium bromide, and potassium chloride—began to be injected at 6:37 p.m. Within two minutes, the witnesses heard Tucker give two deep sighs and then a groan. She was pronounced dead at 6:45 p.m., eight minutes later. Her eyes were open and still staring at the ceiling.
Richard Thornton, the victim’s husband, along with her son, Bucky David (24), and stepdaughter, Kathryn Thornton (26), were among those who watched the execution.
Afterward, Thornton said:
“I want to say to every victim in the world, demand this execution. This day belongs to Deborah Ruth Thornton. Her killer has been sent to a place we’re all going to go to sometime, some place my wife already is. She will deal with Karla Faye Tucker. I promise you, it won’t be pretty.”
He also dismissed Ms. Tucker’s apology to his family as “staged”:
“I don’t believe in her Christianity. I don’t believe in her conversion,” he said.
Outside the prison, there were demonstrations by both pro- and anti-capital punishment groups.
Karla Faye Tucker – Her Own Thoughts
On January 18, 1998, Karla sent a letter to George W. Bush, the governor of Texas, from which some extracts were published:
“I am in no way attempting to minimize the brutality of my crime. It obviously was very, very horrible and I do take full responsibility for what happened. I also know that justice and law demand my life for the two innocent lives I brutally murdered that night. If my execution is the only thing, the final act that can fulfill the demand for restitution and justice, then I accept that. I will pay the price for what I did in any way our law demands it.”
“I was advised by my attorneys to plead not guilty and I was trusting their legal expertise. They knew I murdered Jerry and Deborah. I did not lie to them about it. I am, in fact, guilty. Very guilty.”
“I used to try and blame my mother because she was my role model and she fashioned and shaped me into what I was at an early age… I wanted to please my mother so much… So instead of saying no, I just tried to do what she asked… I knew that what I was doing was wrong…”
“I no longer try to lay the blame on my mother or on society.”
“I don’t blame drugs either… I fully realize that I made the choice to do those drugs… and two people are dead because of me.”
“I did not plan on going over there that particular night to… kill anyone. But… we went there, we went into the apartment, we brutally murdered two precious people, and… bragged about what we did for over a month afterward.”
“It was in October, three months after I had been locked up, when a ministry came to the jail… that night I accepted Jesus into my heart. The full and overwhelming weight and reality of what I had done hit me.”
“I also wanted to try and send some money out to one of my victim’s family members… Ron Carlson… told me not to. He said I would only be hurting him.”
“Fourteen years ago, I was part of the problem. Now I am part of the solution.”
“I have purposed to do right for the last 14 years… because my God demands this of me.”
“I feel that if I were in here still in the frame of mind I got arrested in… you would consider that against me. I don’t understand why you can’t… consider my change for the good in my favor.”
“If you commute my sentence to life, I will continue… to make a positive difference… I can’t bring back the lives I took. But I can, if allowed, help save lives. That is the only real restitution I can give.”
Comment
Some of you reading this may be totally against capital punishment under any circumstances, which is a view I understand and respect. Equally, some of you may be wholeheartedly in favor of it, which I also understand and respect.
What I cannot accept is the selective view that says it is alright to execute a man but not a woman, or a person in the Middle East but not an American. This is inconsistent and patently unjust. If a society is to have the death penalty, then it should be applied even-handedly and promptly—or it should be abolished.
Whatever the punishment, it should not be based upon the race, sex, social standing, or personality of the offender. If it is, it could hardly be called justice. This is, in fact, often a criticism of the American justice system, which seems to some to be more willing to execute poor Black males while reprieving women and wealthy white males.
Had Karla been Karl—a man—most of us would never have heard of the case. Thirty-seven men were executed at the Walls Unit in 1997, but very few people can name any of them.
The anti-capital punishment lobby created as much hype as possible over this case. There is always stronger media interest in female executions—as with Velma Barfield.
Why do we have this strange attitude in society toward the execution of women that does not apply to men? Is it still a male-dominated society where women are perceived as vulnerable? These are nonsensical reasons in a modern world where women are equally educated, successful, and responsible.
Surprisingly, the only retentionist country that expressly forbids the execution of women is Pakistan.
The European Parliament, the Pope, Bianca Jagger, and the anti-capital punishment establishment were all rolled out for Karla—but why? Was it because she was still reasonably young and attractive? Or because of the media availability and advance notice of the execution date?
Certainly, Karla gave a good media performance and did not come across as a monster. But there is the little matter of the facts: she was, by her own admission, guilty of two particularly horrific murders.
The jury voted for the death sentence, which under Texas law they were entitled to do. Do we respect the jury system or override it when we disapprove?
Why wasn’t she executed in 1984, when she was still the same person who committed those crimes and her execution might have had some deterrent effect?
Religious conversion does not negate guilt. Many condemned prisoners turn to religion. Some are genuine, but this does not constitute grounds for reprieve. The Texas Pardons Board clearly agreed: they voted 16-0 (with two abstentions) against a reprieve.
A death sentence is not about rehabilitation. It is about retribution. Endless appeals cost vast sums—$2–2.5 million per Texas capital case. Had some of that money been spent on rehabilitating Karla and Garrett earlier, would four people still be alive today?
Whatever your view on capital punishment, there are no winners at an execution—it merely adds to the overall tragedy.
Conclusion
If a state is going to have the death penalty, Karla Faye Tucker was just the sort of case where it would be imposed. There should always be an appeal, but if that fails and no compelling reason exists to review the case further, the execution should be prompt.
Had Texas taken that route, there would have been less protest, and it would have been far less cruel to Karla Faye Tucker. Her victims’ families would have had closure much sooner, and the state would have saved money.
Surely it is pointless and cruel to keep someone on death row for almost 14 years before carrying out their sentence.
Justice delayed is justice denied.
This story is included in the book Women Executed in America (1900–2021) — 56 True Crime Biographies, along with 55 other compelling case studies of women who faced capital punishment. If you found this story interesting, click the link to buy the book and explore more of these powerful narratives.
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