Post-Furman US execution #29
North Carolina execution #2 since reinstatement
Female execution #1 in the United States since 1976
World female lethal injection #1
In the early morning hours of Friday, the 2nd of November, 1984, the State of North Carolina carried out the execution of 52-year-old Velma Margie Barfield by lethal injection at Central Prison in Raleigh, Wake County. Barfield had spent six years on death row following her conviction for the 1978 arsenic poisoning of her fiancé in Rowland, Robeson County.
Her execution marked a major historic milestone in modern penology: she was the first woman executed in the United States in twenty-two years—since Elizabeth Ann Duncan was sent to the gas chamber at San Quentin on the 8th of August, 1962—and the first female execution of the post-Furman era. Furthermore, she achieved the grim historical distinction of becoming the first woman in world history to be executed by lethal injection. Dubbed the “Death Row Granny” by the press, Barfield’s genuine conversion to evangelical Christianity and her grandmotherly appearance prompted a fierce international debate regarding gender disparity and redemption on death row.
Early Life and Domestic Background
Margie Velma Bullard was born on the 29th of October, 1932, in rural South Carolina, the second of nine children, and was raised near Fayetteville, North Carolina. Her domestic upbringing was characterised by strict discipline, poverty, and an abusive, domineering father. In 1949, aged seventeen, she married Thomas Burke, and the couple went on to have two children.
The early years of the marriage were relatively settled, but after Burke suffered an occupational injury and turned to heavy drinking, the home descended into constant strife. To cope with domestic stress and chronic physical complaints, Velma began taking prescription sedatives and tranquillisers, eventually developing a severe, uncontrollable addiction to prescription amphetamines, barbiturates, and benzodiazapines.
In April 1969, while Velma was away from the house, the Burke home caught fire under unexplained circumstances; Thomas Burke died inside from smoke inhalation. Less than a year later, in 1970, she married widowed widower Jennings Barfield. Within five months of the wedding, Jennings fell ill with mysterious abdominal cramping and died of apparent heart failure.
The Poisoning Spree
Driven by an escalating dependency on prescription pills, Barfield routinely forged cheques and took out unauthorised loans in the names of relatives and employers to finance her habit. To prevent the victims from discovering the financial deceit, she resorted to the covert administration of poison.
Her weapon of choice was Terro Ant Killer, a commercially available domestic insecticide whose active ingredient was sodium arsenite:
- Lillian Bullard (74) – In the summer of 1974, Barfield’s mother, Lillian Bullard, developed violent nausea and diarrhoea. She recovered, but during the Christmas holidays of that year, after Velma forged a $1,000 signature in her mother’s name, Mrs Bullard became acutely ill again and died in hospital on the 30th of December, 1974.
- Montgomery Edwards (84) & Dollie Edwards (80) – In 1976, Barfield gained employment as a domestic caregiver to an elderly couple, Montgomery and Dollie Edwards, in Lumberton. In January 1977, Montgomery became violently sick and died. A month later, after Velma forged cheques on the family account, Dollie Edwards suffered severe gastroenteritis and died on the 1st of March, 1977.
- John Henry Lee (76) – In 1977, Barfield was hired as a housekeeper for 76-year-old John Henry Lee. Having stolen money and forged cheques against his bank, Barfield slipped arsenic into his food and beverages. He died in hospital on the 4th of June, 1977.
- Stuart Taylor (56) – In late 1977, Barfield began a romantic relationship with Stuart Taylor, a widowed church deacon. By early 1978, she had forged several cheques against Taylor’s account to settle her debts. Learning that Taylor intended to examine his bank passbook, Barfield poured arsenic into his sweet iced tea and beer.
Taylor was hospitalised with excruciating stomach cramps, vomiting, and dehydration. Barfield remained dutifully at his bedside, tending to him as a compassionate nurse, even as his organs failed. Stuart Taylor succumbed to acute internal haemorrhage on the 3rd of February, 1978.
Investigation, Arrest, and Confession
Suspicions were aroused when Taylor’s children discovered forged cheques missing from his desk drawer. Investigators were alerted, and the Robeson County coroner ordered an autopsy. Forensic toxicology revealed massive, lethal concentrations of arsenic in Taylor’s liver, kidneys, and gastric contents.
Barfield was detained by police on the 13th of March, 1978. Faced with toxicology reports and the discovery of ant poison containers in her possession, she broke down and confessed to administering arsenic to Stuart Taylor, Dolly Edwards, John Henry Lee, and her own mother, Lillian. She maintained that she had never intended to kill them, claiming she merely wanted to make them sick so they would be bedridden, buying her sufficient time to secure funds to cover the forged cheques.
Authorities subsequently obtained court orders to exhumate the bodies of Lillian Bullard, Dollie Edwards, and John Henry Lee. Tissue samples taken from all three interred corpses revealed lethal quantities of arsenic, confirming serial homicide.
Trial and Sentence
Barfield was indicted in the Superior Court of Robeson County in Lumberton for the first-degree murder of Stuart Taylor (the state opting to reserve the other three homicides).
The trial took place in November 1978 before Judge Henry A. McKinnon Jr. The prosecution, led by District Attorney Joe Freeman Britt—a prosecutor recognized by the Guinness Book of Records for securing the highest number of capital convictions in modern American jurisprudence—portrayed Barfield as a calculating and utterly cold-blooded poisoner who watched her victims die in protracted agony while posing as their loving carer.
The defence, headed by attorney Bob Jacobson, offered a plea of temporary insanity resulting from severe prescription drug addiction. Neurological and psychiatric witnesses testified that Barfield’s brain was clouded by massive daily doses of sedatives, depriving her of the cognitive ability to form deliberate intent.
On the 1st of December, 1978, the jury rejected the diminished capacity argument and found Barfield guilty of first-degree murder.
During the penalty phase, the prosecution introduced evidence of the three earlier poisonings. On the 2nd of December, 1978, the jury found the existence of two statutory aggravating factors—that the murder was committed for pecuniary gain and was especially heinous, atrocious, or cruel—and recommended the sentence of death. Judge McKinnon formally imposed sentence of death by lethal gas (the sole statutory method in North Carolina at the time).
Incarceration, Conversion, and the Clemency Campaign
Because North Carolina maintained no separate female death row, Barfield was housed in a dedicated secure isolation wing at the Women’s Prison in Raleigh.
Shortly after her arrival, she underwent a profound religious transformation under the guidance of prison chaplains, becoming a devout born-again Christian. Over her six years of incarceration, she became an exemplary prisoner, counselling young female offenders and ministering to drug addicts. Her conversion drew the attention of world-renowned evangelists Billy Graham and his daughter Anne Graham Lotz, who befriended her and advocated on her behalf.
Her direct appeals to the North Carolina Supreme Court and petitions for federal habeas corpus were systematically rejected. In 1983, the North Carolina legislature amended its capital statutes to offer condemned inmates an election between the gas chamber and lethal injection. Barfield, fearing the suffocation of cyanide gas, elected lethal injection.
In October 1984, following the exhaustion of legal remedies, her attorneys submitted an application for executive clemency to North Carolina Governor James B. Hunt Jr. The clemency effort provoked a major domestic and international political struggle:
- Barfield’s legal team argued that executing a reformed Christian woman who presented zero threat of future violence served no penal interest, and emphasized the role played by her doctor-prescribed narcotics addiction.
- Human rights organisations, feminist advocates, and religious bodies highlighted that society rarely sentenced women to death, urging mercy.
- However, Governor Hunt was engaged in an extraordinarily tight, contentious race for the United States Senate against conservative Republican incumbent Jesse Helms. Political analysts observed that commuting Barfield’s sentence would damage Hunt’s reputation among conservative voters.
On the 25th of October, 1984, Governor Hunt formally announced his decision to deny clemency, stating:
“The jury heard all the facts, including the evidence of her drug use, and reached a unanimous verdict… To grant clemency in this case would be to substitute my judgment for that of the jury and the judicial system.”
Final appeals lodged with the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit and the Supreme Court of the United States were denied without recorded dissent in the late evening of the 1st of November.
The Execution
On the evening of Thursday, the 1st of November, 1984, Barfield was transferred across Raleigh from the Women’s Prison to the execution facility at Central Prison.
She declined a special last meal, requesting instead a 12-ounce tin of Coca-Cola and a bag of Cheez Doodles crisps. She spent her final hours singing hymns with her children and praying with her spiritual advisers.
Barfield was led into the execution chamber at Central Prison shortly after 1:45 a.m. on Friday, the 2nd of November. The room, which housed the state’s octagonal two-seat steel gas chamber, had been modified by placing a hospital-type padded gurney directly outside the gas chamber hatch.
She climbed onto the gurney willingly and was secured across her limbs and chest with wide restraint straps. Execution technicians placed intravenous catheters into veins in both of her arms.
The blinds to the witness room were raised at 2:03 a.m. Behind the partition sat sixteen official witnesses, state officials, four pool reporters, and members of Stuart Taylor’s family.
Barfield looked toward her spiritual adviser, smiling faintly. Warden Gary Dixon asked if she had any final statement. Barfield delivered a composed, sorrowful statement into the overhead microphone:
“I know that everybody has gone through a lot of pain—all the families that are connected—and I am sorry, and I want to thank everybody who have been supporting me all through these six years. I want to tell everybody that I am going home to be with my Lord.”
The execution sequence was initiated at 2:09 a.m. Technicians behind the wall introduced the three-drug protocol: an overdose of sodium thiopental to induce deep anesthesia, pancuronium bromide to paralyse the diaphragm and arrest breathing, and potassium chloride to halt cardiac function.
Barfield took three deep, steady breaths, exhaled softly, and closed her eyes. Her lips parted slightly, and her chest ceased all movement within two minutes. There was no visible struggling, twitching, or physical distress.
At 2:15 a.m. Eastern Standard Time—six minutes after the drugs began to flow—two examining physicians stepped forward, applied stethoscopes, checked her pupillary response, and formally pronounced life extinct. Margie Velma Barfield was 52 years of age.
Outside Central Prison, a peaceful crowd of approximately two hundred people stood in the cold drizzle, divided between religious anti-death penalty vigils holding candles and pro-death penalty college students chanting slogans.
Her body was removed to a funeral home and subsequently interred beside her first husband, Thomas Burke, in Parkton Cemetery in Robeson County. Her execution was the 29th in the United States since 1976 and established lethal injection as the operational method for female offenders across the nation.
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