CONTACT ME:Email: paranaughtica@gmail.com Twitter: @paranaughtica Facebook: The Paranaughtica Podcast Karla Faye Tucker, born November 18, 1959, was an American woman sentenced to death for killing two people with a pickaxe during a burglary. While on death row, Tucker was incarcerated in the Mountain View Unit in Gatesville, Texas. She became Texas Department of Criminal Justice (TDCJ) Death Row Inmate #777. This is a crazy story and you will shocked.***If you’d like to help out with a donation and you’re currently listening on Spotify, you can simply scroll down on my page and you’ll see a button to help me out with either a one-time donation or you can set up a monthly recurring donation. You can also go to the Facebook page where I have a link to Ko-Fi and Pay-Pal if you'd like to help out the show. I would greatly appreciate it! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
And welcome back to another fantastic edition of the Paranautica Podcast.
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So, what are we doing today?
What crazy-ass topic are we going to go over?
Well, that's going to be the case of a cold-blooded murderer, Carla Faye Tucker.
If you're just joining us, I'm covering some breaking news.
We begin today with no reason for breaking news.
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Breaking news is also happening everywhere around.
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So who the hell was Carla Faye Tucker?
Well, Carla Faye Tucker, K-F-T, Carla Faye, or to some, K-Fay, was born on November 18, 1959, to Larry and Carolyn Tucker in Houston, Texas, being the youngest of three sisters.
Some accounts say that Mr. Tucker was a longshoreman or a dock worker, while other accounts say that he owned a boat dealership.
Regardless... It is said that he wasn't very involved in Carla's life and eventually completely gave up on her.
The matriarch, Miss Tucker, was said to be a homemaker, one of those stay-at-home moms who would take care of all things that made an interior home an interior home.
Interestingly, Miss Tucker was said to be a devoted groupie to many bands over the years, but most notably to the Allman Brothers.
The Marshall Tucker Band, and the Eagles.
And quick side note, I've seen the Allman Brothers with the Dead at the Gorge many, many, many years ago.
Super awesome show.
Camping Lot Party, almost better than the actual show at the Gorge.
If anyone's been to the Gorge, you know what I'm talking about.
Anyway, I personally find this interesting because Carla's mom was said to be a homemaker, so how the hell...
Did she have time to be a devoted groupie to these three massively popular bands?
Doesn't make sense to me.
But, while it is unknown if she ever met any of the band members of those bands, she was known to be a heavy user of hard drugs and alcohol.
And this is likely what led to the Tucker's eventual final divorce, when Carlo was around 9 years old, between 8 and 10, depending on which account of this story you read.
But, in Carla's own words, she said that they were a family who lived in a middle-class neighborhood and often went to the bay to water ski and fish, but that period didn't last very long.
She also admits, my parents fought a lot and divorced each other several times.
And now, I don't want to offend anyone, but damn, divorced several times?
Actually... I know this guy who was divorced from his wife, her ex-wife at this point, three times himself, but I do think they are currently working things out again.
So yeah, it happens, but man, damn, that's just...
To be divorced once has got to be crushing.
At least it's the same person, it's not three different people.
So let's get that going for them.
Anyway, Carla ended up choosing to go along with her mother because, as Carla put it, her mother was far less strict than her father.
And her mother would allow her to use drugs and drink alcohol and hang out with older men, much older men, and even encouraged her to engage in sexual activity with those older men.
And eventually, her mother introduced her into prostitution at the age of 14, which is also when she dropped out of school.
Carla recounted during this time that Back then, there was a lot of drugs and sex.
There were a couple of things my mother did that made me wonder, don't you see what you're doing to me?
Why don't you notice this and come to me and ask what is going on?
And through all of the confusion that a developing teenaged female is sure to be experiencing, Carla only wanted to be like her mom, the one person who she actually loved, trusted, and looked up to.
And so, when Carla turned 16, she met a man, or boy I should say, named Stephen Griffith at a local park where the younger crowds would regularly gather to party.
He was 19 years old, had a job as a handyman and a mechanic, and by his own account, was making something like $20,000 each year.
Now, for those who don't know...
In the late 70s and early 80s, $20,000 was a, well, considerable income.
Very considerable, to say the least.
In fact, it is roughly equivalent to $110,000 in today's value.
So was this 19-year-old handyman and mechanic exaggerating?
I don't know, maybe.
Maybe. Or just maybe he had really good skills that paid the bills.
But who's to judge?
And one year later, at 17 and 20, the two were getting married.
Years later, Stephen would give an interview to the Houston Chronicle about Carla and their relationship.
In the article that was published, he is quoted as saying, We got along fairly well.
We fist fought a lot.
I've never had men hit me as hard as Carla did.
And he went on to say, I saw things in her that no one else did.
That girl had so much potential.
She could talk to anyone and make them feel at ease.
But this next part he said is pretty ridiculous.
He would go on to say this.
She was charismatic.
Even when she was on drugs and could hardly walk, she was beautiful.
Now just think about that statement for a moment.
Just think about that.
Anyway, moving on.
Their short marriage came to an end one day when Carla told him that she was leaving him to, quote, go work out her wild streak and get it out of her system while she was still young, end quote.
Which is reasonable.
I mean, yeah, you're young, there's so much life to live, so much to experience out there.
Do you really want to be connected to the old ball and chain at 17 or 18?
Or 19?
Or 20?
Or any time during the 20s?
I don't know.
But upon this announcement, Griffith said he feared the worst for her.
When we split, I told my friend she was going to get killed or kill somebody.
And over the span of the next several years, not much is known about Carla's life other than that she continued in a downward spiral fueled by heavy drug use, drinking, When Carla was 20 years old on Christmas Eve in 1979,
she was given a devastating blow.
Her mother had passed away from complications related to the effects of long-term drug and alcohol abuse.
And that was it.
Carla had lost the one person who she was the closest to.
After that...
She would harbor the most intense inward feelings of hopeless abandonment and loneliness.
It was around this time that Carla began hanging around with the rough and rowdy biker crowd, the ride-or-die type, and she ultimately met and soon began living with a woman named Sean Dean.
Carla's new best friend, Sean Dean, The two immediately disliked each other for reasons quite unknown.
But what is known is that on one occasion, and this is a super dick move, Jerry had purposely parked his dirty motorcycle in Carla's living room.
And let the oil that was leaking from it drip directly onto her carpet.
On another occasion, he destroyed the only photograph of Carla's mother that she still had of her.
So yeah, this guy was a total douche tool through and through.
But from the very start, and for whatever reasons they had, he and Carla never saw eye to eye, and their intense disgust for one another was not a secret.
They shared their hatred for each other openly amongst their circle of friends.
In fact, describing one such occasion that the two had, Carla would later say, One time he was sitting in his car outside, and I punched him in the eye for just being there.
Now, no matter what the situation, that is not fucking cool.
Like, at all.
And I don't care what the situation is, you know, man hitting woman, woman hitting man, Either way, it's not fucking cool.
And men get it the worst all the time.
Oh, men, we're so abusive.
Yeah, sure, men are abusive, yeah.
But so are women.
Either way, it all sucks and doesn't need to be that way.
It really doesn't.
So, at 21 years of age, Sean introduced Carla to a guy named Daniel Ryan Garrett.
Or Danny, as most called him.
He was a bit older, at around 35 years old, but he had a good connection to prescription pills and was a small-time drug dealer, so the two would hit it off almost immediately.
And almost just as immediately, Carla would be living with him.
By all accounts, it was a chaotic household where drugs of all kinds were overly abundant and the sexual deviancy, along with the physical and psychological violence, Made up what was the typical daily routine.
At some point during this time period, Sean would break it off with Jerry.
So now, let's strap our third-hand rollerblades on that are missing five wheels in total, and head off to the date of June 11, 1983.
It was the birthday of one of Carla's sisters, and they had glorious plans to celebrate it with their friends at Carla and Danny's house over the weekend from Friday to Sunday.
It wasn't going to be anything too crazy, just a hardcore little banger of a weekend and back to the grind as usual.
The entire point of the party wasn't necessarily to commemorate the day that Carrie Tucker was birthed into the world as much as it was to consume a lot of drugs, drink a lot of alcohol, and have a lot of hairy and sweaty sex.
In fact, It was intended to be a full-on orgy, with everything included, and it would pan out accordingly.
When asked about the night in question, Carla would later say this.
On top of all this, I had been doing a considerable amount of coke and bathtub speed.
I didn't usually do speed much.
Heroin and downers were my preference because I am a very hyper person, and doing speed always skitzed me out, made me go crazy.
On that night, we were cooking speed, and we started shooting it because it was there, and I loved the needle in my arm, what one would call a needle freak.
Her best friend, Sean, attended the party, but she walked in and it was obvious that she had been beaten and battered.
Along with the bruising, her nose was a little swollen and she had a bloody lip, and so, instead of having a fun, drug-fueled orgy, most of the night consisted of sitting around...
Angrily talking about the marital breakup and domestic abuse of Sean and Jerry.
And perhaps due to the drugs and the alcohol, the discussions became increasingly aggressive, particularly on Carla's part.
At one point on Saturday night, Carla started going off about wanting to drive over to Jerry's apartment to physically beat him up herself.
I saw what he had done to Sean, and I was really mad, because I was really protective of her.
I thought, yeah, I'll get even with him.
My idea of getting even with him meant confronting him, standing toe-to-toe, fist-to-fist.
Yet there was a party to be had and many guests to entertain.
And at this point, let's take a pause.
Meow. Meow.
Meow.
At this weekend-long orgy of a party, there would be a steady supply of heroin, cocaine, methadone, Valium, Dilaudid, Placidil, which was used to treat insomnia,
and it sounds like the opposite of Viagra.
There's also Mandrax, or as some may call them, lemons, or as others may have referred to them, Quaaludes.
Which were a family favorite, but were sadly discontinued in 1984 due to the potential for abuse, which was ridiculous when you consider all of the other drugs that were on the market at that time.
But at this party, there were also a whole lot of other uppers and downers, along with the steady supply of beer, whiskey, and tequila.
And of course, there would be little to no sleep for anyone, but especially for Carla.
She... By Sunday night, the 13th of June, the party had begun to fade out as people left to get ready for another boring-ass work week ahead of them.
While most people had already left for the night, one man, named James LeBron, did not.
Interestingly, James also disliked Jerry.
Perhaps not quite as much as Carla did.
I don't think anybody else hated Jerry as much as Carla.
But it was known that he also harbored a lot of hatred toward Jerry for their own transgressions.
As it were, James and Carla began to rant and rave about their mutual resentment for Jerry.
And the two began to think about ways to get some revenge like a couple of uncultured children.
It is said that Danny had left the house earlier to go to work but returned around 4am to find Carla and James on the couch, vivaciously complaining about Jerry.
After some moments of just standing there staring at the two without saying a word, Danny finally joined in and began to equally talk shit.
All this shit-talking eventually led to some half-hearted threats which turned into legitimate threats.
Multiple accounts by eyewitnesses at the party have slight differences, but overall say that Carla wanted to go over to Jerry's house in order to quote-unquote intimidate him, as she was heard saying.
Then she also started saying that she wanted to go over to his house to retrieve money that he supposedly owed to her.
And somewhere along the way of their reckless conspiring, it became unanimous that it would be a good idea...
Probably the best idea to go over to Jerry's house and steal his motorcycle, which he loved more than anything else.
They also started talking about stealing other items of value, such as a radio, a car, and a television, but they figured that they were just wasting valuable time and could look around for shit to take when they got there.
It is unclear where exactly Sean is during the three's conversation about breaking into her own ex-husband's house to intimidate him and rob him, but we know that she was at the house while that long conversation took place.
And we're talking hours long.
I mean, according to the reports, Danny had left to go to work, for God's sake, and then returned afterward to find them still talking about it.
Granted, we don't know how long exactly he was at work, but the point is that this anger that they had towards Jerry was just culminating all night, all weekend really, just building and building, and then it all came to a boiling point.
In later testimony, They said that they did not expect Jerry to be home, and by all accounts, they never even talked about murdering Jerry.
They said they just wanted to get some ill-gained revenge, based on the premise that in their opinion, Jerry was an asshole.
There is one account that states that Carla had actually talked about offing Jerry about two weeks prior to this night.
The exact details of whatever conversation she was having with whoever it was that she was talking to about offing Jerry are unclear.
I do believe it was her sister, but I'm not 100% sure.
Someone within that circle of friends later told investigators that Carla had mentioned something about killing Jerry, or Jerry being killed, but this could have been some offhand remark she made with no real substance behind it.
But again, we just don't know.
Before the three of them would head over to Jerry's house, they needed the set of keys to unlock the front door because they didn't want to have to break a window or do something else that could potentially wake Jerry or ruin their element of surprise.
Granted, they said they didn't know if Jerry was home.
Again, there are some discrepancies in various reports about how they gained access to the keys that they used, but one report states that Carla had stolen the keys from Sean at an earlier date and then convinced her that the keys were lost.
Another report says that Carla had found the keys after Sean had truly lost them.
And if either of those are to be the case, then either way, it would appear that she wanted those keys for something prior to this party taking place, meaning that whatever she wanted those keys for was premeditated.
And I just, I have to continually ask the question, was Sean Dean involved in this in some way?
I mean, she was allegedly being abused by Jerry Dean, so she would have a clear motive.
And it's like how Carla obtained the keys is questionable.
It's almost like someone just gave them to her.
And how the hell is she, Sean, just going to be at this party where at least three people...
One of which is your best friend, your road dog, your ace deuce deuce, and they're all talking loudly about robbing and beating up your ex-husband for literally hours.
And it's your ex-husband who you were just with prior to this party and who had allegedly just beat you up prior to going to this party.
So, I don't know.
There just seems to be something a little off with that whole aspect of this case.
Regardless, they had the keys to Jerry Dean's house in their possession, and then they headed on over to Jerry's place sometime around 4.30am on Sunday.
And real quick, I should have said this earlier, but when I say some accounts say this, some accounts say that, what I mean is that these accounts...
accounts given by the people that are actually involved in this case.
So just to clear all that up.
The three would pull up to Jerry's house.
James said he would wait outside and look around for the El Camino that Jerry cherished almost as much as his motorbike.
Carla and Danny proceeded to enter Jerry's apartment.
Once inside, they would find the motorcycle that they had planned to steal.
And lucky for them, it had already been disassembled in order to be repaired.
So they just started taking the parts out to the car.
Just made everything that much easier.
And while they were taking the parts out to the car, Carla would hear Jerry shouting from his bedroom.
So Carla immediately started off toward his room, and once there, she saw in the relative darkness the silhouette of Jerry sitting up in his bed.
She quickly ran over, jumped on top of him, and started attacking him with her fists.
Jerry tried to protect himself in the confusion and laid himself back while grabbing Carla's wrists in an attempt to control the situation.
It was at this point that shit was about to get really bad for Jerry.
Danny heard the commotion and ran back inside and ran into the bedroom.
And he instantly took action as he saw that Carla needed his help.
Danny glanced around the room and was quick to spot a ball-peen hammer that was either in a toolbox or lying on the floor.
And he took this ball-peen hammer and he began to strike Jerry repeatedly on the side of the head and on the back of his head as he turned to avoid the blows.
After a few very heavy hits, Jerry laid bloodied and moaning in agony.
Danny, being completely uninterested in the violence that he just inflicted, simply tossed the hammer aside and left the room to gather as many motorcycle parts and other items of value as he could to load into the car.
Meanwhile, James is allegedly still outside looking around the house for the El Camino.
And whatever else he could find that they could easily take with them.
When Danny left the room after senselessly battering Jerry, Carla turned on the light so she could see the satisfying sight of Jerry lying in his bed, dying as blood poured out of his face and his head.
A slight gurgling with the trickling of blood sounded through the now dead silent room.
As Carla stood there, growing with excitement as she watched Jerry struggle to live as blood filled his throat, she started to become irritated by the gurgling sounds that he was inadvertently making as his body was literally struggling to live.
And in court documents, it is shown that she wanted to, quote, unquote, Stop him from making that noise.
Once she had that thought run through her brain, Carla then scanned around the room looking for a weapon that she could use to finally silence Jerry once and for all.
As she searched the bedroom for a weapon, she finally found an object that she was satisfied with.
A three-foot pickaxe that was resting up against a wall nearby.
Carla quickly grabbed the pickaxe and held it tightly in her hands as she envisioned her next move in slow motion.
And then, just like that.
She immediately went into a frenzy using the pickaxe to repeatedly hit Jerry with.
And all records indicate that the word hit means to impale the pickaxe into the body of Jerry.
It's unclear exactly how many times Carla hit Jerry with the pickaxe, but at some point during her attack on Jerry, Danny returned to the bedroom.
There are different accounts of what happened next, but one account states that as Carla was repeatedly hitting Jerry with the pickaxe, impaling him, Danny returned to the room and witnessed Carla giving the final blow to Jerry's chest.
Another account says that when Danny returned to the room, he grabbed the pickaxe and he gave the final blow to Jerry's chest.
But whichever event actually took place, The one fact that remained was that Jerry was now deceased due to being pickaxed and smashed in the head with a hammer.
As they stood there for a while and staring at what they had just done, either Carla or Danny yelled out for James to come into the room.
This is the moment when James would later report that he saw Carla pull the pickaxe out of a body, smile at the body, and hit it again.
James said that he quickly left the room after witnessing that because, well, as he said, he really didn't want any part in a murder.
All he thought they were there for was to intimidate Jerry and to take some of his most prized possessions.
But later that evening, regardless of whether James wanted any involvement in the murder or not, he would, however, agree to help Danny get rid of Jerry's car, the El Camino.
According to Carla's sister, Carrie, Carla would later reveal to her, like the next day, that when she and Danny went into the bedroom, she grabbed the pickaxe and put it to Jerry's head and began to threaten his life.
She said that Jerry began to beg for his life, pleading with them not to kill him.
And this insinuates that Danny and possibly James were in the room at that time because I doubt that Jerry would be begging for his life if it was just Carla in there holding a pickaxe.
I feel that Jerry would have taken control of that situation.
But if Danny and or James were in the room with Carla, then there's a high possibility that, yeah, Jerry was probably begging for his life.
And it was later found during the autopsy that Jerry was struck somewhere between 20 and 28 times.
Meaning that it was likely that some of the wounds had been hit more than once.
He had also suffered fatal skull fractures and further devastating injuries to his neck, chest, and back.
Jerry was only 27 years old.
Alright, so this next part will give you a pretty decent idea into Carla's psyche.
Carla would later tell the investigators that she experienced an orgasm every time that she plunged the pickaxe into Jerry's body.
She not only told this to the police, but it's reported that she bragged about it to her sister.
Carla never denied committing the crime and actually told the police that she was surprised at how long it took to kill Jerry.
It appeared that she reveled in thinking about the brutal murder, taking it to be a pleasurable experience.
But Jerry wasn't the only victim in that house that night.
There was one other person.
So, when Carla turned the light on after Danny had left the room, Deborah Ruth Thornton...
Was unfortunately exposed as she desperately tried to hide under a pile of discarded laundry that was in the corner of the room.
She tried her best to remain as calm and still as possible throughout the entire brutal attack on Jerry.
Just imagine that.
Just holy fuck.
There you are.
You're scared shitless.
You're trying to hide under all these dirty clothes, but you're obviously not completely concealed.
And you literally have to just sit there and watch your friend be ruthlessly murdered over a period of time.
Or at the very least, you're forced to listen to it.
And, I mean, the whole time, there's this crazed woman swinging this pickaxe, and she's literally having orgasms every time she swings at the body.
I mean, what the fuck?
Now, this is just sad.
Deborah was extremely unfortunate through a series of events that ultimately led to her being in that room.
Born on May 10, 1951, in Columbus, Ohio, Deborah had moved to the Houston area with her brother, Ron Carlson, to work at a trailer manufacturing company.
The day before her murder, she had an argument with her husband.
And she just wanted to get away for a little while.
She ended up going to a party where she met Jerry Dean.
And now which party this was isn't entirely certain, but it could be speculated that it was Carla's sister's weekend bash.
It is reported that Jerry had attended the party, albeit briefly, and perhaps Deborah knew someone who knew someone who brought her there.
She did hang around the same type of crowds, but it isn't known if she was a close acquaintance to any of Carla's own inner circle.
Regardless, Deborah and Jerry are reported to have met at a party earlier that evening, and not wanting to return home to her husband, she ended up going back to Jerry's house to stay for the night.
We can speculate that when Carla and Danny first entered the apartment and were looking around, it alerted Jerry and Deborah.
Deborah seems to have simply tried to hide under the laundry in the corner of the dark room as Carla and Danny rushed into the house.
But once the two had rushed into the bedroom, she knew at that point that they were after Jerry, not her.
Having to sit through what she had to sit through, Being as quiet and as still as possible as not to be seen or heard by these crazed attackers is just horrifying.
And now, with the lights on, Deborah's cover was completely blown.
Carla quickly took the bloodied pickaxe from Jerry's chest and swung it at Deborah, grazing her shoulder.
Deborah then tried to fight for her life as she struggled with Carla.
But Danny returned to the room where he apparently only separated the two of them and then he left the room again.
Carla proceeded to attack Debra with a pickaxe again and eventually impaled her repeatedly.
As Debra laid on the floor, Carla took the pickaxe and swung it at her chest, which reportedly went directly through her heart and pierced the floor beneath, pinning her.
Which is exactly how the police would later find the scene.
Now, there is an account that says that Danny was the one who pierced the pickaxe through Deborah's chest into the floor beneath, which would make sense given the strength that it would take to fully pierce a body.
But that can also be achieved by repeatedly stabbing the same wound, despite your strength or stature, but I doubt that Carla would have achieved that.
Again, Carla later testified that she experienced an orgasm every time she pierced Debra's body with the pickaxe.
It's unclear how many times Debra's body was hit, but examinations revealed that she did suffer multiple stab wounds to the chest and the head.
And I'll repeat this.
Jerry Dean and Debra Thornton were killed by a pickaxe?
To the chest and the head.
Deborah Thornton was 32 years old and left behind a child with her husband.
Danny, James and Carla then proceeded to take Jerry's money, his car, the motorcycle and other items of value and then they left.
The next morning, Jerry didn't show up for work which was highly unusual for him to do.
In fact, it was so unusual That one of his co-workers, Gregory Scott Traver, was perturbed enough to stop by his house to see if he was alright.
And that is when he discovered the horrible scene.
Gregory said he walked into Jerry's house and noticed that the bike was gone, and then he noticed that the TV was gone, and as he was making his way to the bedroom, he realized that he didn't see the El Camino outside either.
And that's when he came to the bedroom doorway.
In the bedroom, he saw Jerry with blood all over his head and his body and a woman on the floor with a pickaxe protruding from her chest.
He stumbled back in horror and quickly located the telephone to call the police.
So like I mentioned earlier, Carla couldn't contain herself.
She and Danny.
We're both elated with having killed Jerry that they openly talked about both murders with her sister Carrie and to Danny's brother.
Danny's brother, Douglas, and Carla's sister, after hearing what Carla and Danny gleefully spoke about, had no problem with turning both of them into authorities.
Douglas wore a wire at the request of detectives and he had discussions of the killings with Carla and Danny.
Carla couldn't have been happier to admit to her part in the senseless murders, and after five weeks of pretty easy police work, the trio were arrested.
Carla was the state's leading witness against Danny, and for testifying against Danny, Carla was only tried for Jerry's murder, which is bullshit.
Her attorneys tried to argue that Carla was not guilty of first-degree murder through diminished responsibility, which, An unbalanced mental state that is considered to make a person less answerable for a crime and to be grounds for a reduced charge,
also called diminished capacity.
But that does not classify them as insane.
Her defense also asks the jury to consider Carla's very rough upbringing with the absence of her father.
The jury didn't accept any ancillary reasons for the murders,
and they didn't accept the argument that Carla suffered from any diminished capacity.
No one cared, not one bit, and Carla was ultimately sentenced to death.
In a secret deal with the prosecution, James LeBron was promised a single-digit sentence for his part in the crime.
And due to the testimony of both James and Carla against Danny, the jury found Danny guilty and sentenced him to death as well.
However, he would die in prison in 1993 while waiting for a new trial.
At that point, he had served nearly 10 years of his life sentence.
Carla would go on to submit a number of appeals and motions in a desperate attempt to reduce her sentence and avoid the death penalty, but all of her attempts failed and Carla was set to die via lethal injection.
Carla would go on to become the epitome of a model inmate.
Unfortunately, she decided to start turning her life around much too late.
She certainly had a lot of potential, just as her ex-boyfriend Stephen had said about her after she had broken up with him years earlier to chase her wild streak.
She was interpersonal, attractive, and had an air about her that both men and women were naturally drawn to.
But now she sat in prison, on death row, waiting for her day to be murdered by the government.
Carla became a devout Christian, and in 1995, she married the prison minister, Reverend Dana Lane Brown.
Many believed that her conversion to Christianity was just for show, just a way to get sympathy from those around her and from the church, while others saw her devotion to Jesus Christ as being purely authentic.
At this point, the story of the beautiful woman found guilty of murdering two people with a pickaxe and being sentenced to death made headlines around the world.
She became a media sensation, and she took advantage of every moment.
Her pleas for mercy on her life drew vast support from powerful figures such as Pope John Paul II, the World Council of Churches, the Italian Prime Minister Romano Prodi, The Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich, televangelist Pat Robertson,
and even Ronald Carlson, the brother of Deborah Thornton.
The warden of Texas Huntsville Prison testified that Carla was a model inmate and that after 14 years on death row, she had likely been reformed.
But the board rejected her appeal.
Carla also wrote a letter to the then-Governor George W. Bush, who downright refused any form of relief at the 11th hour.
Nothing worked for Carla.
She would be executed via lethal injection.
She chose four people to watch her execution.
Her sister, Carrie Weeks.
her spouse, Dana Brown, her friend, Jackie Onkin, and Deborah's brother, Ronald Carlson.
And I do believe that all would be in attendance.
Her last meal consisted of a banana, a peach, and a garden salad with ranch dressing.
It's said that she barely touched it, but I can't imagine having much of an appetite in the moments leading up to being strapped into a gurney to be executed.
On February 3rd, 1998...
Carla was led to the execution chamber, and she is said to have led herself to her death, skipping down the corridors toward the chamber, whistling and singing.
Once inside the chamber, she was strapped into the gurney, and two needles, one for each arm, were inserted into her veins.
At 5.35pm, the sequence of the chemicals began.
As the chemicals were flowing into her veins, she praised Jesus Christ, licked her lips, looked up at the ceiling, and began to hum.
She took three deep gasps of breath as her eyes became wider, staring up toward the ceiling.
Carla was pronounced dead at 6.45 p.m. Central Standard Time, eight minutes after receiving the injection.
There's one account being said that she strapped herself to the gurney, which is simply untrue.
There is an exact protocol that the state officials must follow when carrying out the capital punishment of execution.
This includes every form of capital punishment, whether it's lethal injection, electrocution, hanging, firing squad, or the gas chamber.
Each has its set of specific protocols that the elected officials must follow to the T. And in this case, this is the protocol that would have been followed.
Once properly dressed, the inmate is taken to the execution chamber.
They either walk on their own or are restrained to a gurney and rolled into the room.
Inmates who walk into the execution chamber are then restrained to the gurney or the table either inside the chamber or in an adjacent preparation room.
The inmate is secured to the gurney or table.
With lined ankle and wrist restraints, a sheet may be placed over the person.
Obviously, if even allowed to do so, an inmate cannot properly and completely restrain themselves on a gurney pursuant to the legal protocols.
Sure, Carla could have secured her ankles and one wrist, yeah that's possible, but it is highly unlikely that the warden, the guards, and any other officials present would have allowed her to do so.
Also, even if she did secure herself, an official of the execution would have had to re-restrain her to make sure that she was indeed properly restrained as pursuant to the legal protocols.
This is because sometimes the bodies of the condemned will thrash uncontrollably in the gurney when there is a violent reaction to the drugs being used, which happens often.
Such is the case of Stephen McCoy.
On May 24, 1989, McCoy, after the lethal drugs were injected in sequence, began choking, seizing, and thrashing.
His chest was heaving rapidly as his body desperately gasped for air, and his back arched in a grotesque manner.
Carla Faye Tucker was the first woman to be executed in the state of Texas in 135 years.
the last was chapita rodriguez who was executed by hanging in eighteen sixty three during the american civil war after being accused of murdering a traitor named john savage with an axe
Strong evidence points to her innocence, and perhaps I'll cover that story as well.
And so that was the story of Carla Faye Tucker and the pickaxe murders that she took part in.
It was a ruthless story full of drugs.
Abusive relationships, alcohol, meth crank.
But, you know, more often than not, those things are not going to lead you to a decent future.
But I'm not going to sit here and tell you not to do drugs.
I'm not going to sit here and tell you not to drink.
Those are your decisions to make.
So, go out and make them.
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