Timothy O'Bryan

popular name: Velma Barfield

date_of_death: November 2, 1984

age: 52

cause_of_death: Execution by lethal injection

claim_to_fame: Crime and their Victims

best_know_for: Velma Barfield was an American female serial killer and is remembered for being one of the first women to be executed in the United States after the death penalty was reinstated in 1976. Barfield was 1 of 9 children born in South Carolina into abject poverty. As the eldest girl, she was expected at a young age to cook, clean and mend clothes for the entire family (no easy task in a house with no electricity, no running water and no toilet facilities). A childhood marked by abuse and a difficult relationship with her family, she met and married Thomas Burke in 1949 and had two children. It was during her marriage to Burke that she developed a debilitating addiction to narcotics to treat depression and pain from several surgeries. Over a period of 16 years, Velma Barfield poisoned several victims when they discovered she was forging checks to fund her drug habit. Those victims include her own mother, her fiancé, and her mother-in-law, among others. She used arsenic to kill them, often claiming they had died from natural causes. After the death of Stuart Taylor (Barfield's boyfriend and a relative of victim #6 Dollie Edwards) the local police were tipped-off by Barfield's sister in 1976, thus investigators were able to link the deaths to her through forensic evidence. Upon her arrest and without a lawyer present, she confessed initially to 3 of the murders. In 1978 she was convicted of the death of her fiancé, Stuart Taylor, and sentenced to death. After 2 appeals and 6 years on death row, the "Death Row Granny" Velma Barfield was executed on November 2, 1984, by lethal injection in North Carolina. Her execution was notable because she was the first woman to be executed in the U.S. since 1962 and one of the few women executed in the 20th century. She was buried next to her first husband in a grave that remains unmarked in Parkton Cemetery in Raleigh, North Carolina.

popular name: Robert McGonagle

date_of_death: March 10, 1987

age: 39

cause_of_death: Drug overdose

claim_to_fame: Crime and their Victims

best_know_for: Robert “Bobby” McGonagle was a Boston fireman and member of the Mullen crime family in South Boston. McGonagle’s family were heavily connected to Boston’s underworld primarily involved in burglary, auto theft, and armed robbery. His brothers, Donald and Paul, who were twins, were killed by Whitey Bulgar during a war between their Mullen gang and Whitey Bulger’s Killeen gang. One was killed in 1969, the other in 1974. Bobby McGonagle himself was also wounded in a gang battle in 1974. To make it even more confusing, Bobby married Catherine Greig who later went underground for 16 years as Whitey Bulger's girlfriend.

popular name: Ernesto Miranda

date_of_death: January 31, 1976

age: 34

cause_of_death: Stabbing

claim_to_fame: Crime and their Victims

best_know_for: If you have ever been on the wrong side of a conversation with local police and were read your rights (You have the right to remain silent ...) then you have Ernesto Miranda (actually his attorney) to thank. Ernesto Miranda was a violent, predatory American criminal and day laborer whose conviction on kidnapping, rape, and armed robbery charges based on his confession under police interrogation was set aside in the landmark U.S. Supreme Court case Miranda v. Arizona, which ruled that criminal suspects must be informed of their right against self-incrimination and their right to consult with an attorney before being questioned by police. This warning is known as a Miranda warning.