Dana lane brown

5th murderer executed in U.S. in 1998
437th murderer executed in U.S. since 1976
2nd female murderer executed in U.S. since 1976
1st murderer executed in Texas in 1998
145th murderer executed in Texas since 1976
1st female murderer executed in Texas since 1976

437
02-03-98
TX
Lethal Injection
Karla Faye Tucker

W / F / 23 - 38

11-18-59
Jerry Lynn Dean
W / M / 27
Deborah Thomton
W / F / 32
06-13-83
Pickax (mattock)
Acquaintance
04-25-84

Summary:
Between 2:30 and 4:30 a.m. on June 13, 1983, Tucker, Danny Garrett, and James Leibrant left Tucker's residence after some "partying." Tucker told accomplice Leibrant she wanted to go over to Jerry Lynn Dean's apartment to collect some money and intimidate him a little. Tucker secretly took the keys from Dean's wife, Shawn. Two weeks before, Tucker had talked about "offing" Dean. Tucker later related that when she and Garrett entered the apartment bedroom, she put a pickax to Dean's head and Dean began begging for his life. Tucker struck him with the pickax 28 times, and expressed that ever

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A riveting true story of a Texas murder that captivated a nation and the evangelical voices who fought for Karla Faye Tucker's clemency

Winner of the 2024 Georgia Author of the Year Award for Biography

On a June night in 1983, twenty-three-year-old Karla Faye Tucker and her boyfriend, fueled by a sinister cocktail of illicit drugs, broke into a Houston apartment. “We were very wired,” Tucker later testified, “and we was looking for something to do.” Though they later claimed they entered the premises with no murderous intent, they ended up slaughtering two people—one a sworn enemy, the other an utter stranger. The weapon: a pickax they found in the apartment.

Fourteen years later, in early 1998, Tucker was facing lethal injection. But after her religious conversion in prison, Texas would be executing a different woman than the one who’d committed the murders. Her change was so dramatic that the most powerful and influential voices in American televangelism—Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell among them—were urging viewers to contact Texas's governo

Karla Faye Tucker

American murderer (1959–1998)

Karla Faye Tucker

Texas Department of Criminal Justice photo

Born(1959-11-18)November 18, 1959

Houston, Texas, U.S.

DiedFebruary 3, 1998(1998-02-03) (aged 38)

Huntsville Unit, Huntsville, Texas, U.S.

Cause of deathExecution by lethal injection
Spouses

Dana Lane Brown

(m. 1995)​
Parent(s)Larry and Carolyn Tucker[1]
Conviction(s)Capital murder[1] (1984)
Criminal penaltyDeath
Victims
  • Jerry Lynn Dean (age 27)
  • Deborah Thornton (age 32)[1]
DateJune 13, 1983
3:00 A.M.
CountryUnited States
State(s)Texas
Location(s)Houston[2]
WeaponsPickaxe[1]

Date apprehended

July 20, 1983

Karla Faye Tucker (November 18, 1959 – February 3, 1998) was an American woman sentenced to death for killing two people with a pickaxe during a burglary.[2] She was the first woman to be executed in the United States since Velma Barfield in 1984 in North Car

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