Velma Margie Barfield

Velma Margie Barfield was a woman with extremely bad luck when it came to marriage. She had been married twice, however both of her marriages ended with the death of her husbands. In 1977 Barfield met Stuart Taylor, who was a widower and tobacco farmer; they began dating short after.  For many years, Barfield had been forging check on Taylor's account to pay for her addiction to prescription drugs. Barfield feared that Taylor had found out, so she began mixing an arsenic based rat poison into his beer and tea. Taylor became very ill and Velma volunteered to nurse him. As his condition worsened she took him to hospital where he died a few days later. Unfortunately for her, there was an autopsy which found that the cause of Taylor's death was arsenic poisoning and Velma was arrested and charged with his murder. At the trial her defense pleaded insanity but it was not accepted and she was convicted. The jury recommended the death sentence. Velma appeared cold and uncaring on the stand and surprisingly gave the District Attorney a round of applause when he made his closing speech.

Barfield later confessed to the 1974 murder of her own mother (in whose name she had taken out a loan) and of two elderly people, John Henry Lee (by whom she was being paid as a housekeeper/caregiver) and Dollie Edwards (a relative of Stuart Taylor). Velma always attended the funerals of her victims and appeared to grieve genuinely for them. The body of her late husband, Thomas Barfield, was later exhumed and also found to contain traces of arsenic. Velma denied that she had killed him. Her motives for these four murders were the same. She had been stealing money from her victims and then according to her, tried to make them ill so she could nurse them while finding another job to help her to repay the money. Velma Margie Barfield was executed by lethal injection on November 2, 1984.

Meet Kelly Renee Gissendaner

Kelly Renee Gissendaner and Doug Gissendaner had an extremely complicated relationship.Over the course of their relationship they’d been married, divorced, remarried, separated, and reunited between 1989 and 1997. Gissendaner had been in a relationship with Gregory Bruce Owen. On the evening of February 7, 1997, Gissendaner drove Owen to her home, gave him a nightstick and a large knife, and left him inside the home to wait for her husband. Gissendaner then drove to a friend's house, and, upon Gissendaner's insistence that the group keep their plans for the evening, she and her friends went out to a nightclub. The victim arrived home shortly after 10:00 p.m. Owen confronted the him from behind, held a knife to his throat, forced him to drive to a remote location, forced him to walk into the woods and kneel, and then killed him by striking him with the nightstick and then stabbing him repeatedly in the back and neck with the knife. As instructed by Gissendaner, Owen took the victim's watch and wedding ring before killing him to make the murder appear like a robbery. Gissendaner returned home from the nightclub at about the time the murder was being carried out, paged Owen with a numeric signal, and then drove to the crime scene. After asking if her husband was dead, she took a flashlight and went toward the body to inspect it. Owen burned the victim's automobile with kerosene provided by Gissendaner, and the pair returned to their respective homes in Gissendaner's automobile. After her arrest, Gissendaner called her best friend and confessed to her active and willing role in the murder, although she then called a second time and claimed that she was coerced into participating. Gissendaner also wrote a letter while in jail in an effort to hire someone to give perjured testimony and to rob and beat witnesses. Gissendaner was convicted in 1998 of recruiting her lover to kill her husband. Gregory Owen, testified against her as part of a plea bargain that landed him a life sentence but spared him from the death penalty.  Kelly Renee Gissendaner was executed by lethal injection on Tuesday, September 29.

Meet Suzanne Basso

Suzanne Margaret "Sue" Basso was an American woman who was one of six co-defendants convicted in the August 1998 murder of Louis "Buddy" Musso, a mentally disabled man, who was tortured and murdered for his life insurance money. Buddy Musso had been married previously and had a son with his wife. She died of cancer in 1980. In 1997 Musso was living in an assisted living house in Cliffside Park, New Jersey, near New York City, and he worked as a bagger at a ShopRite. On  In 1997, at age 58, he met Suzanne Basso, who was 43 at the time, at a church bazaar near his house. They started a long-distance relationship and he planned to move to Texas with Basso. He moved to the Houston area on June 14, 1998. Musso's murder took place sixteen days after his arrival. According to James O'Malley (Basso's son and one of the conspirators) Musso was killed at the apartment of Bernice Ahrens Miller, another co-conspirator. The group beat Musso, stomped on him and burned him with cigarettes as he sat on a child's play mat. The group also used a wire brush on him. The group put him in a bathtub that was filled with kitchen cleaner and bleach. They put clothes on Musso's body before leaving it in Galena Park, Texas. A jogger found the body and called police. The Galena Park Police Department ruled that Musso's death was due to "multiple blunt impact trauma." The perpetrators included Basso, O'Malley, Miller, Miller's children: Craig Ahrens and Hope Ahrens, and Hope Ahrens' fiancé, Terence Singleton. Basso was executed on February 5, 2014 by lethal injection.

Meet Wanda Jean Allen

In 1981, Wanda Jean Allen was sharing an apartment with her childhood best friend, Dedra Pettus, who eventually became her girlfriend. On June 29, 1981, the two got into an argument which resulted in Allen shooting and killing Pettus. Allen pleaded guilty to a man slaughter charge and was given a four year sentence. Allen served two years of the sentence. Seven years after the death of Dedra Pettus, Allen was living with her girlfriend, Gloria Jean Leathers, whom she met while she was serving her time in prison. On December 2, 1988, Allen and Leathers had gotten into a dispute. A city officer escorted the two women to their apartment and waited while Leathers collected her belongings from their apartment. Leathers and her mother were on their way to file a complaint against Allen. Allen had been following them. As Leathers exited her vehicle Allen shot her in the abdomen. Gloria died from her injuries three days later. Allen was arrested and charged with first degree murder. Allen was sentenced to death on April 27, 1989. Allen was executed by lethal injection by the state of Oklahoma on January 11, 2001.

Meet Lois Nadean Smith

On July 4, 1982 Lois Nadean Smith, 61, also once known as " Mean Nadean", murdered the ex-girlfriend of her son, Greg Smith. On the morning of July 4, Louis Smith, Greg Smith, and another woman, picked up Cindy Baillee from a Tahlequah motel . As they drove to the home of Baillee, Smith confronted Baillee about rumors that Baillee had arranged for the death of her ex- boyfriend, Greg Smith, which Baillee denied. Louis Smith choked Baillee and stabbed her in the throat as they drove . At the house of Baillee, Smith forced Baillee to sit in a recliner and taunted her with a pistol, and eventually fired several shots. Baillee fell to the floor, and while her son reloaded the pistol, Smith laughed and jumped on Baillee's neck. She then fired four shots into Baillee's chest and two to the back of her head. An autopsy found that Baillee had nine gunshot wounds in her body.  Smith was sentenced to death December 29, 1982, and was excecuted on December 4, 2001. 

Meet Kimberly McCarthy

On July 27, 1997, Kimberly McCarthy made a phone call to her 71- year old neighbor stating that she had planned to come over and borrow some sugar. Little did Dorothy Booth know, it wasn't sugar that she would be losing that day, it was her life. Kimberly McCarthy had no intention of borrowing sugar from Booth that day, her goal was to rob her. Upon McCarthy's arrival, she stabbed Booth repeatedly with a butcher knife, beat her with a candelabrum, and cut off her ring finger in order to steal her diamond wedding ring. McCarthy also stole Booth's purse and Mercedes Benz, and pawned the wedding ring in order to purchase crack cocaine. The day after Booth's death Kimberly McCarthy was arrested and charged with murder. Evidence showed that McCarthy had used Booths credit card at a liquor store and also was in possession of Booths credit card Police also found the murder weapon in McCarthy's home. On November 24, 1998, McCarthy was sentenced to death by lethal injection. After a few unsuccessful appeals,  McCarthy was finally executed by lethal injection at the Huntsville Unit in Huntsville, Texas, on June 26, 2013.

Meet Christa Pike

Christa Pike, 39, was sentenced to death at the age of 20 for the torture and murder of classmate Colleen Slemmer. Pike is the youngest in the United States to ever be sentenced to death, and the only female on death row in Tennessee. January 13, 1995 was the day Christina Pike's life took a turn for the worst. On January 13, 1995 Pike lured Slemmer into a secluded area in the woods around the University of  Tennessee. Pike believed that Slemmer was trying to steal her boyfriend, and the thought of this enraged her  . With that being said, Pike, her boyfriend, and a friend attacked Slemmer. They slashed her neck and beat her for over 30 minutes. The three then carved a pentagon into the chest of the victim. After this, Slemmer took a blow to the skull, from Pike,  with a chunk of asphalt, which is what finally killed her. Pike kept a piece of Slemmer's skull after the murder and showed it off to students all around campus. Pike was sentenced to death by electrocution in 1996.