Convicted of brutally murdering two people in Houston in 1983, Karla Faye Tucker eventually became the first woman to be executed in Texas since 1863.
Bob Daemmrich / Alamy Stock PhotoKarla Faye Tucker reads her Bible in a prison visiting room in December 1997.
In the 1980s and 1990s, the death sentence of a Texas woman named Karla Faye Tucker triggered a worldwide controversy. No one had any doubt about her guilt — in 1983, Tucker had murdered two people with a pickax during a botched burglary. But after she was sentenced to death, many wondered if the young, newly reformed Christian should be executed.
As a girl, Tucker had had a tumultuous childhood. As an adult, she fell in with the “wrong crowd,” and accompanied her boyfriend Daniel Garrett to the Houston apartment of Jerry Dean on June 13, 1983 after several days of drug use. There, Tucker and Garrett murdered Dean and a woman who had had the bad luck to be with him that night, Deborah Ruth Thornton.
Both Garrett and Tucker were sentenced to death. But while Garrett died of liver disease before his execution, Tucker underwent an intense transformation in prison and became a Christian. As her execution date loomed in the late 1990s, Karla Faye Tucker’s case ignited intense national — and international — debates over the ethics of the death penalty, with many calling for her sentence to be commuted.
Despite widespread support across the globe, however, Karla Faye Tucker was executed on February 3, 1998, at the age of 38.
The Troubled Early Life Of Karla Faye Tucker
canalbio.comA young Karla Faye Tucker.
Born in Houston, Texas, on Nov. 18, 1959, as the youngest of three sisters, Karla Faye Tucker had a troubled home life from the beginning. Her parents had tumultuous marriage, and the couple divorced when Tucker was 10 years old. By then, Tucker had already started dabbling in drugs.
According to Crossed Over: A Murder, A Memoir by Beverly Lowry, who interviewed Tucker in prison, Tucker’s drug use started at the age of eight. Lowry wrote that Tucker was “a doper at 8, a needle freak behind heroin by the time she was 11,” and that she started having sex at 11 or 12.
By 12, Tucker had become a sex worker who accompanied her mother, a groupie, as she followed various rock bands across the country. It wasn’t long before Tucker was regularly using heroin, coke, and speed.
“My mother and I were really close,” Tucker later wrote to the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles. “We used to share drugs like lipstick.”
By the early 1980s, Tucker had started hanging out with the “the Harley-Davidson subculture,” according to Lowry, a group of tough Texas bikers that included Daniel Garrett as well as a couple, Shawn Dean and Jerry Lynn Dean. Tucker, then 21, started dating the 35-year-old Garrett.
Texas Department of Criminal JusticeA mugshot of Daniel Garrett, Karla Faye Tucker’s boyfriend.
Over time, things became tense between Tucker and Jerry Dean. Dean had beaten Shawn, Tucker’s friend, and had purportedly left a leaky motorcycle in her living room. Still, when Tucker and Garrett went to Dean’s apartment on June 13, 1983, it was not to seek revenge, but to steal motorcycle parts.
Things, however, would go terribly wrong.
The Brutal Pickax Murder Of Jerry Dean And Deborah Thornton
By the time Karla Faye Tucker, Daniel Garrett, and one of their friend arrived at Jerry Dean’s apartment, Tucker and Garrett had just finished a three-day drug binge. Jumpy, bored, and sleep deprived, they were wired. And when they found Jerry Dean in his bed, Garrett and Tucker attacked.
After Garrett bludgeoned Dean with a hammer, Tucker joined in with a 15-pound pickax. She struck Dean multiple times, purportedly to make him stop making a “gurgling noise,” until he went silent.
But then Tucker noticed that Dean hadn’t been alone.
Cowering under the covers was Deborah Ruth Thornton, a woman who Dean had picked up just a few hours before. Tucker didn’t hesitate. She began to bludgeon Thornton with the pickax, eventually leaving the weapon sticking out of Thornton’s chest.
As Tucker later said, she got a sexual thrill with each swing of the pickax — and Dean and Thornton each suffered more than 20 blows.
Karla Faye Tucker and Daniel Garrett then fled Dean’s apartment. But the bloody scene was quickly uncovered. Five weeks later, Tucker and Garrett were arrested and put on trial for murder.
Karla Faye Tucker’s Newfound Christianity — And Fight For A Second Chance
Texas Department of Criminal JusticeKarla Faye Tucker’s mugshot.
At the end of 1984, Karla Faye Tucker was sentenced to death for her role in Dean and Thornton’s murders. But by then, she’d undergone a surprising transformation. While in prison, Tucker had become a Christian.
Sober for the first time in years, Tucker had started to read the Bible shortly after she was imprisoned. In it, she found inspiration and revelation.
“I didn’t know what I was reading,” Tucker said. “Before I knew it, I was in the middle of my cell floor on my knees. I was just asking God to forgive me.”
She converted to Christianity in October 1983, and married her prison minister, Reverend Dana Lane Brown, in 1995.
And though Garrett died in 1993 before his execution, Karla Faye Tucker started fighting against her sentence.
“I am truly sorry for what I did,” she told the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles. “I will never harm another person again in my life, not even trying to protect myself. I pray God will help you believe all that I have shared and will help you decide to commute my sentence to life in prison.”
Karla Faye Tucker’s Final Fight For Life
Karla Faye Tucker’s plea for a second chance stirred many, including Pope John Paul II, the European Parliament, and the television evangelist Pat Robertson. Her supporters were drawn to her story of religious rebirth, and many were uncomfortable with the idea of executing a woman (Texas had not executed a woman in 135 years, not since Chipita Rodriguez in 1863).
Sister Helen Prejean/XKarla Faye Tucker and Sister Helen Prejean, an advocate for the abolition of the death penalty.
Many Christian leaders rallied around Tucker — and her efforts to have her death penalty sentence repealed. Tucker appealed for clemency, saying that she had been on drugs at the time of the murder and, had she been sober, she never would have committed the crime.
She also claimed that Christianity had changed her into a force for good, saying in a statement: “I can promise you this: If you commute my sentence to life, I will continue for the rest of my life on this earth to reach out to others to make a positive difference in their lives.”
But despite the support from many important figures – including Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich, the Italian Prime Minister, and even Ronald Carlson, Thornton’s brother – Tucker’s appeals were rejected.
In the last few hours of Karla Faye Tucker’s life, Governor George W. Bush refused to reduce her sentence to life imprisonment and rejected her appeal. “The gender of the murderer,” his spokeswoman told reporters on multiple occasions, “did not make any difference to the victims.”
Bob Daemmrich / Alamy Stock PhotoDeath penalty supporters hold pro-death penalty placards hours before the scheduled execution of Karla Faye Tucker.
And so, on Feb. 3, 1998, Tucker prepared to serve out her sentence. She consumed a last meal of peach slices, a banana, and a tossed salad, and was transported to the Huntsville unit for her execution.
Shortly before her execution via lethal injection, Karla Faye Tucker spoke her last words: “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.”
Thornton’s husband, watching the execution, had something else to say. “Here she comes, baby doll,” he said, as if speaking to his murdered wife. “She’s all yours. The world’s a better place.”
After learning about Karla Faye Tucker, read the story of Hans Schmidt, the only Catholic priest to be executed in the United States. Then, check out these chilling last words of executed criminals.
