By Loyd Cook
HUNTSVILLE — With much of his last statement a torrent of obscenities directed toward his ex-wife, Cameron Todd Willingham was executed in Huntsville Tuesday night for the 1991 arson murders of his three daughters.
Willingham was pronounced dead at 6:20 p.m., after receiving the three chemicals that make up the lethal injection used by the State of Texas.
His last statement began with a continued claim of innocence.
“The only statement I want to make is that I am an innocent man — convicted of a crime I did not commit,” Willingham said, laying strapped on the gurney, facing the ceiling above him and speaking into a microphone suspended inches above his lips. “I have been persecuted for 12 years for something I did not do.
“From God’s dust I came and to dust I will return — so the earth shall become my throne. I gotta go road dog.”
From that point on, Willingham’s statement was addressed to his ex-wife, Stacy Kuykendall. He turned his head and looked through the viewing room glass, spewing curses and his hope that “ you rot in hell ...” directed toward Kuykendall.
As his statement progressed, Willingham worked the fingers of his right hand into view and made an obscene gesture to punctuate one of his remarks.
During the punishment phase of the August 1992 trial where he was convicted, Kuykendall testified on Willingham’s behalf. In the years following the trial, she changed her mind about her ex-husband’s guilt.
“I’ve been torn for 12 years ... so I just acted like a jury,” Kuykendall said in a Feb. 8 Daily Sun article. “I went through my papers, I’ve got a lot of copies of some of the stuff (from the trial) and I read some of it more than once.
“I had to make sure for myself since I didn’t get to sit in on the trial.”
Tuesday night, Kuykendall refused to speak with the media afterward. During the execution, she stood stoically at the window as Willingham angrily addressed her through the viewing window, separated by only several inches.
She did not return a message left by the Daily Sun on her cell phone voice mail Tuesday night.
“I can’t think of a more horrible case,” said Pat Batchelor, who was district attorney in Navarro County when Willingham was the lone survivor of the blaze Dec. 23, 1991. “All you had to do was see the pictures of little babies.
“Anybody that can do that, you just think: My God, what kind of sadistic monster is this?”
The couple’s three daughters — 2-year-old Amber Kuykendall and 1-year-old twins Kameron and Karmen Willingham — were killed in the fire that their father was convicted of intentionally starting on Dec. 23, 1991.
The Supreme Court refused to review Cameron Todd Willingham’s case in November. On Friday, the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles voted 15-0 to refuse a clemency request.
Late Tuesday night, word reached the public information office that the Supreme Court had denied a late appeal. That allowed the execution to go forward less than an hour later.
During his trial, neighbors said that Willingham was outdoors before the flames engulfed his home and that he was concerned that his car would be scorched.
“People can tell you they’d do this or they’d do that,” he said during a Feb. 4 interview with the Daily Sun. “Let me drop you in a burning house and you show me what you’d do.
“I don’t care if people say my name ... and spit on the ground. They don’t know me. All they know is what they’ve been taught by lying (district attorneys).”
Evidence presented at trial by a state fire marshal indicated an accelerant believed to be charcoal lighter fluid was used to set the fire, starting with floors, a front threshold to the home and onto the front porch.
The state fire marshal testified that the accelerant was placed to impede the efforts of the fire department.
Willingham said he was asleep when Amber yelled “Daddy, Daddy” bringing him from a sound sleep. He said he saw a layer of smoke floating above him, then he jumped up, pulled on his pants and ran to the twins’ room.
Willingham said he couldn’t see the children because the room was engulfed in flames and that he didn’t return to his own bedroom, leaving the home by a hall that led to the front door.
He suggested during the Feb. 4 interview that his oldest daughter started the fire accidentally and a kerosene lantern on a knick-knack shelf was the accelerant that fueled the flames in his home, and called the state fire marshal “a liar.”
Tuesday night’s last statement was a first for most of those in attendance. A Huntsville Item reporter who covers executions, Associated Press writer Michael Graczyk and Texas Department of Criminal Justice public information officer Michelle Lyons were all hard-pressed to recall a similar obscenity-filled tirade.
Lyons said it is “rare to have someone direct their anger that way. I mean, we’ve had (prisoners) be angry before, but not like this.”
Willingham was the seventh convicted killer executed in Texas this year and the third in seven days.
The Associated Press contributed to this article.
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