Karla Faye Tucker
Karla’s Childhood
Karla
Faye Tucker was born November 18, 1959, in Houston, Texas. “As a
little girl, I remember that we were a family,” Karla said when I
asked about her background.
“We lived in a middle-class neighborhood and went to the bay house
where we water-skied and fished. But that period didn’t last very long.
My
parents fought a lot and divorced each other several times.”
As her parents’ turmoil increased, Karla’s life began unraveling.
Her
first experience with drugs came when she was seven or eight. “I
caught (my older sisters) smoking pot and threatened to tell our
parents,” she told the Gatesville Messenger in 1998 (January
30). “But they gave it to me and then said I couldn’t tell because I
was doing it, too.”
Karla remembered one brief encounter with what seemed to be a normal
life. “At school this little girl would talk to me. I remember seeing
something really different in her. It was like a genuine love for people.
But her parents didn’t want her hanging around with me because they
thought that I was just a bad, bad child.
“Somewhere along the way, she talked her mother into letting me go
to church with them. I think they must have been very conservative because
they wore something on their heads and had to wear dresses. We sat on the
front row. At some point, she was down on her knees and really praying in
the Spirit. I thought, ‘What is going on here?’ Everybody came and laid
their hands on her. I don’t remember doing anything wrong that night, but
they never would talk to me again. Why didn’t they reach out to me? Why
did they cut me off?”
Karla’s Adolescence
Life
at home was rapidly deteriorating. Any chance of a normal childhood
disintegrated. “Back then there was a lot of drugs and sex.
My
sisters ran around with older people. One of their friends was in a biker
club. He came to see my sisters; and when he found out they weren’t there,
he took me off on his motorcycle. He asked me if I wanted to shoot some
heroin. I think he was going to molest me.
But he shot me so full of heroin that I got sick and he
wasn’t able to
do anything. He ended up dropping me off at some apartments. That was the
beginning of me shooting dope.” By the time Karla was in seventh
grade, she was heavily into drugs and dropped out of school. “I got
kicked out as much as quit,” she said. When her parents divorced for
the last time, she chose to live with her mother, Carolyn Moore. Life with
her mom was unrestricted, with little or no adult supervision.
“There were a couple of things my mother did that made me wonder,
‘Don’t you see what you are doing to me? Why don’t you notice this and
come to me and ask what is going on?’” In spite of inner turmoil and
confusion, Karla wanted to be just like her mother. When Karla was
only 14, she followed her mother into prostitution.
Road To Death Row
When
Karla was about 16 years old, she met Stephen Griffith. In a Houston
Chronicle article published on the day of Karla’s execution, Griffith
described their relationship:
“I was 19 years old. I had a Harley-Davidson, worked six months a
year, and made $20,000. I thought I was on top of the world. Me and a
bunch of buddies pulled into a local park. We were hanging out and
partying. Karla Faye and one of her friends were over there smoking a fat,
pink joint. I hollered over and introduced myself. That’s how we
met.”
About a year later, they married. “We got along fairly well,”
Griffith said. “We fist-fought a lot. I’ve never had men hit me as
hard as (Karla) did. Whenever I went into a bar, I didn’t have to worry
because she had my back covered. She was tough.” For fun, the couple
collected guns, joined a motorcycle club, and played tackle football
without protective gear.
“I saw things in her that no one else did,” Griffith said.
“That girl had so much potential. She could talk to anyone and make
them feel at ease. She was charismatic. Even when she was on drugs and
could hardly walk, she was beautiful.” Griffith himself had serious
substance abuse problems. Still, he described Karla as a “pretty good
wife”—she cleaned the house, got him off to work on time, and fixed
his meals.
When Karla announced she was leaving Griffith to work out her
“wild streak,” he feared the worst. “When we split, I told
my friend she was going to get killed or kill somebody.”
Once separated from her husband, Karla continued downward in her life
of drugs and prostitution. Periodically, over a span of several years, she
was one of the groupies following the Allman Brothers Band. In 1981, she
met Jerry Lynn Dean when he was involved with her best friend and
roommate, Shawn. From the beginning their relationship was turbulent.
The
animosity between them developed over the next two years. By 1983, Karla
was living with a man named Danny Garrett in a tumultuous household where
drugs, sex, and physical fights were the norm. She was the group’s leader.
On June 11, 1983, Karla, her sister, and their friends decided to
celebrate her sister’s birthday with a weekend bash. From Friday through
Sunday, they sat around the house shooting heroin, smoking cocaine, and
popping massive quantities of other illegal drugs.
It was then—high on drugs, sleep-deprived, and talking about old
grudges—that Karla and Danny decided to drive over to Jerry Dean’s
apartment and case it out in the hope of stealing his motorcycle. They
weren’t expecting him to be home. However, Jerry Dean and Deborah
Thornton, who had just met that afternoon at a party, were asleep in the
bedroom. At about 3:00 a.m. on June 13, 1983, Danny and Karla silently
entered the apartment.
Something went horribly wrong. Instead of stealing a motorcycle, Danny
and Karla murdered two people. Just weeks after Karla’s marriage to
Stephen Griffith officially ended in divorce, Karla Faye Tucker was
charged with the pickax murders of Jerry Lynn Dean and Deborah Thornton.
Life Row
“If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone,
the new has come!” (2 Corinthians 5:17)
February 3, 1998,
6:25 p.m., Walls Unit, Huntsville, Texas. With the strength and poise of a gymnast, Karla leapt up on the gurney and
whispered a prayer:
“Lord Jesus, help them to find my vein.”
Then, strapped to the table, she looked toward the small window and
spoke her last words.
“Can Warden Baggett hear me?”
After being assured that yes, the warden was nearby and was listening,
Karla went on:
“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.”
“Baby, I love you,” she told her husband, Dana.
“Ron, give Peggy a hug for me.
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 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.”
After her final words, she licked her lips and, according to witnesses,
appeared to be humming softly as she waited for the lethal injection.
(Taken from
Karla Faye Tucker: Set Free. Copyright © 2000 by Linda Strom.
Published by Waterbrook Press,
Colorado Springs, Colorado 80918. Used on www.LifeRow.org
by the author’s permission.)
