Velma Barfield: The Death Row Granny and America's First Woman Executed by Lethal Injection

May 8, 2025

9 min read

Updated: Nov 2

Collage of Velma Barfield in a prison cell and smiling portrait, with sepia close-up; title: The Death Row Granny

When tobacco farmer Stuart Taylor died in a North Carolina hospital in February 1978, his fiancée sat with his grieving family at the funeral. Velma Barfield was a churchgoing grandmother who looked after elderly people for a living, and nobody had a bad word to say about her. Then the autopsy results came back. Taylor had been full of arsenic.

He wasn't her first victim. Once investigators started digging, quite literally, Velma was linked to as many as seven deaths going back to 1969, including her own mother's. Six years later she became the first woman executed in the United States in 22 years and the first woman anywhere in the country to die by lethal injection. Along the way her case pulled in Billy Graham, one of the nastiest Senate races in American history and a psychiatrist who claimed a man called Billy had done the killing.

Quick Answers

Who was Velma Barfield? A North Carolina carer and grandmother who poisoned at least four people with arsenic between 1974 and 1978.
Who did she kill? She confessed to killing her mother Lillian Bullard, Dollie Edwards, John Henry Lee and her fiancé Stuart Taylor. Arsenic was also found in the body of her second husband, Jennings Barfield.
When was she executed? In the early hours of 2 November 1984 at Central Prison in Raleigh. She was pronounced dead at 2:15am, aged 52.
Why is she remembered? She was the first woman executed in the US since 1962, the first since the death penalty came back in 1976 and the first woman ever put to death by lethal injection.
What was her last meal? She couldn't face a proper one and asked for Cheez Doodles and a Coca-Cola instead.

From Margie Bullard to Velma Burke

She was born Margie Velma Bullard in 1932 and grew up in the countryside around Fayetteville, North Carolina. It wasn't a happy home. She later described her father as violent and said her mother, Lillian, never stepped in to protect her.

In 1949, aged 17, she married Thomas Burke to get out. Two children followed, Ronnie and Pam. By most accounts the early years were good ones. Things started going wrong after a hysterectomy in her early thirties left her with constant back pain and a growing reliance on prescription pills. Her temper got shorter, Thomas started drinking heavily and the rows got louder.

Black-and-white family photo of Velma and Thomas Burke standing outdoors with their son Ronnie and daughter Pam — Velma and Thomas Burke with their children, Ronnie and Pam

The Fire That Started It All

On 4 April 1969, Thomas passed out drunk at home. Velma took the kids out of the house, and when they came back the place was on fire and Thomas was dead. It went down as a tragic accident and nobody looked twice.

There's a grim postscript, though. Executed Today reports that shortly before her execution, Velma admitted to her family that she'd started the fire herself.

In 1970 she married Jennings Barfield, a widower. He was dead within a year, in March 1971, supposedly from heart trouble. Years later his body was dug up and found to contain arsenic. Velma always denied killing him in public, but Crime Library says she privately admitted it to the minister who helped her write her memoir, Woman on Death Row.

Her Mother, the Bad Cheques and a New Job

In 1974 her mother, Lillian Bullard, was struck down by violent vomiting, diarrhoea and stomach cramps. She pulled through. Then over Christmas it came back much worse, and she died in hospital on 30 December 1974. NCpedia notes that doctors couldn't work out what had killed her and no autopsy was ever carried out.

The following year Velma was caught writing seven bad cheques and got six months. She served three. When she came out she found work as a live-in carer for elderly people around Lumberton. It gave her a roof, a wage and unsupervised access to people's food, drink, medicine and chequebooks.

The Edwards and Lee Households

In 1976 she moved in with Montgomery and Dollie Edwards. Montgomery died in January 1977, which nobody questioned given his age and health. Dollie followed on 1 March after a sudden attack of vomiting and stomach pain, the same symptoms Lillian had suffered.

Vintage photo of a young Montgomery and Dollie Edwards standing outdoors with two children in front of trees — A young Montgomery and Dollie Edwards

Velma later confessed to poisoning Dollie. The University of North Carolina's capital punishment exhibit goes a step further and lists Montgomery among her confessions too, though most accounts only put Dollie on her tally.

Her next job was with Record Lee, who needed help after breaking her leg. This time it was Record's husband, John Henry Lee, who fell ill with the same agonising stomach trouble. He died on 4 June 1977. Velma later admitted lacing his food and drink with arsenic.

Her explanation was always the same. She'd been stealing from these people to pay for her pills and was terrified of being found out. It's a grimly familiar motive in carer killings, and it's the same thing that drove Dorothea Puente, the Sacramento landlady who preyed on her elderly lodgers for their benefit cheques.

Stuart Taylor and the Revival Meeting

By 1977 Velma was seeing Rowland Stuart Taylor, a widowed tobacco farmer and a relative of Dollie Edwards. They got engaged, and she started forging cheques on his account.

Black-and-white photo of Stuart Taylor in a suit leaning against a white vintage car with trees behind him — Stuart Taylor, Velma Barfield's fiancé and final victim

When she started to worry he was on to her, she began slipping an arsenic-based pest poison into his beer and tea. At a Pentecostal revival meeting the pair went to in Cumberland County, Taylor spent the evening doubled over with stomach pain. Velma nursed him at home and eventually took him to hospital, where he died on 3 February 1978.

Her story, then and at trial, was that she'd only ever meant to make him ill enough to stop asking questions, never to kill him.

“Where'd She Get the Arsenic?”

At first Taylor's death looked natural. The local medical examiner, Dr Bob Andrews, thought he was looking at gastroenteritis. But when he talked it through with the state's chief medical examiner, the response cut straight to the point. Reality Blurred's look back at the case pins down the moment everything turned: “Where'd she get the arsenic?”

The police had their own tip-off by then. Before the autopsy report was even back, Velma's sister rang Lumberton police in tears to say Velma had poisoned Taylor and others.

Detectives picked her up in March 1978, officially over more bad cheques, then steered the conversation round to Taylor. She broke down and confessed to his murder, then to Lillian, Dollie and John Henry. The bodies were exhumed and arsenic turned up in all of them, Jennings included, as Gizmodo's write-up of a 1984 People report details.

Even so, she was only ever tried for one killing. Taylor's was the case with the strongest forensic evidence, so that's the one the state went with.

Up Against America's Deadliest Prosecutor

Velma had a court-appointed lawyer. On the other side was Joe Freeman Britt, a district attorney whose run of death sentences had earned him a place in the Guinness Book of Records as the deadliest prosecutor in the country.

Her defence pleaded insanity, blaming years of prescription drug abuse and arguing she hadn't understood her doses would kill. It got nowhere. Prosecutors hammered home that she'd watched Taylor suffer for days and never told a single doctor what was really wrong with him, when that might have saved his life. On the stand she turned sarcastic and snappy, which did nothing for the sweet-granny image.

In December 1978 the jury convicted her of first-degree murder and recommended death.

Death Row for One

North Carolina wasn't set up for a condemned woman. For years Velma was the only woman on the state's death row, a section with a population of one.

Velma Barfield wearing glasses sitting on a bed in a small cluttered cell with photos on a shelf and a calendar on the wall — Velma Barfield in her cell on 25 April 1984

She got off the pills, found religion and threw herself into it. Prison staff were so impressed they routinely broke the no-contact rule so “Mama Margie” could sit with troubled young inmates, as Executed Today puts it. She led Bible studies, wrote endless letters and became something of a mother figure behind bars.

Velma Barfield walking along a park path beside a prison official who's holding a cup and a folder — Velma Barfield, right, walking with Jennie Livingston, assistant superintendent of women's prisons, on 9 March 1982

Her ministry drew national attention. Billy Graham's wife Ruth wrote to her and both Grahams came out in support of her plea for mercy.

Black-and-white photo of a uniformed officer walking beside a woman in a shawl along a fenced prison path topped with barbed wire

Velma Barfield in glasses sitting by a cluttered desk with photos and handwritten notes pinned to the wall behind her — Velma Barfield at Central Prison in Raleigh on 25 April 1984

Billy and the Last Round of Appeals

As the end got closer, her lawyers tried something new. They brought in Dr Dorothy Otnow Lewis, a New York psychiatrist who specialised in violent offenders. Lewis said she'd met another personality inside Velma, a man called Billy, who claimed Velma had been abused as a child and that he'd done the killing. Her appeal lawyer Richard Burr later appeared in Crazy, Not Insane, HBO's 2020 documentary about Lewis's work.

Black-and-white close-up of a woman with curly hair speaking, wearing a collared shirt with a small pin

Dissociative identity disorder barely registered in courtrooms in 1984, and the judges weren't having it. US District Judge Franklin Dupree refused to halt the execution, and the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals turned down her last appeal on 1 November, hours before she died.

There's some confusion over how hard Velma fought at the end. She'd said publicly that she wanted to die with dignity rather than drag things out. But UPI's report from 1984 notes that five days before her death she agreed to let her lawyers keep going after all. It made no difference.

A Governor, a Senator and an Election Days Away

Her last real hope was clemency from Governor Jim Hunt, and the timing couldn't have been worse. Hunt, a Democrat, was locked in a brutal Senate race against the Republican incumbent Jesse Helms, the most expensive Senate contest in American history up to that point.

Hunt turned her down in late September, saying her victims had been “literally tortured to death” with repeated doses of arsenic. The victims' families had pushed hard against mercy, and Stuart Taylor's daughter, Alice Taylor Storms, publicly welcomed the decision.

Critics said Hunt couldn't afford to look soft on crime with the polls about to open. He denied politics had anything to do with it, cancelled his campaign events on the day of the execution and called it one of the tough decisions that came with the job, the New York Times reported. It didn't help him. Helms won by 86,280 votes.

The Last Night

Velma chose lethal injection over the gas chamber. She asked to go to her death in pink cotton pyjamas rather than prison clothes, a request the Associated Press reported that week, along with the grim detail that her holding cell was just 18 steps from the death chamber.

Billy Graham phoned her as the end approached. Crime Library quotes him telling her “you're going to get to heaven before I do.” His daughter, Anne Graham Lotz, told her to think of the death chamber as the gateway to heaven, and Velma clung to the idea.

In her final statement she apologised for the pain she'd caused the families and thanked the people who'd stood by her for six years. Shortly after 2am on 2 November 1984 she lay down on the gurney, and at 2:15am she was pronounced dead. She was 52. Time magazine and 60 Minutes had followed the story, and reporters from overseas had descended on Raleigh too.

She'd asked to donate her organs. In the end her corneas and some skin tissue were used, Capital Punishment UK notes.

Mourners in suits gathered around a flower-covered casket being carried outdoors in front of greenery — Velma Barfield's funeral at Jernigan-Warren Funeral Home in Fayetteville on 3 November 1984

Why Velma Barfield Still Matters

She was the 29th person executed in the US since 1976 and the first woman, Death Penalty USA records. No woman had been put to death anywhere in the country since 1962. North Carolina itself had only executed two women in the 20th century before her, Rosanna Phillips in 1943 and Bessie May Williams a year later, both in the gas chamber.

Her case also set the template for a fight that came round again 14 years later with Karla Faye Tucker in Texas. Can a killer who's genuinely found God earn mercy from the state? Both times the answer was no.

To some, Velma was a cold poisoner who let people die in agony to cover up a few forged cheques. To others, she was proof that people can change. What nobody disputes is that at least four people died slowly and painfully at the hands of the woman who was supposed to be looking after them.