Father executed for setting fire that killed three kids
06:58 PM CST on Tuesday, February 17, 2004
HUNTSVILLE, Texas – Spewing profanities at his ex-wife standing a few feet away, an angry former auto mechanic was executed Tuesday evening for the deaths of his three young children in a fire at their home two days before Christmas 12 years ago.
"The only statement I want to make is that I am an innocent man convicted of a crime I did not commit," Cameron Willingham, an Ardmore, Okla., native, said. "I have been persecuted for 12 years for something I did not do."
Willingham, 36, said, "From God's dust I came and to dust I will return so the Earth shall become my throne. I gotta go, Road Dog."
He expressed love to someone named Gabby and then addressed his ex-wife, Stacy Kuykendall, who was watching about 8 feet away through a window. He told her repeatedly in obscenity-laced language that he hoped she would "rot in hell" and attempted to maneuver his hand, strapped at the wrist, into an obscene gesture.
His former wife showed no reaction to the outburst. She declined to speak to reporters.
Willingham was pronounced dead at 6:20 p.m., seven minutes after the lethal dose began flowing through his veins.
Willingham previously acknowledged he was a lousy husband but insisted he wasn't responsible for the blaze in Corsicana that killed his daughters – 2-year-old Amber and 1-year-old twins Karmon and Kameron.
He was the seventh convicted killer executed in Texas this year and the third in seven days.
The U.S. Supreme Court in November refused to review his case and a late appeal Tuesday was rejected by the U.S. Supreme Court. Last week, the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles voted 15-0 to deny a clemency request.
"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?"
When firefighters arrived at the burning five-bedroom house on Corsicana's south side, Willingham was outside. At his trial, neighbors said he was outdoors even before flames engulfed the place and was concerned about his car getting scorched. Prosecutors contended he just wanted to get rid of the children.
Evidence at his trial showed an accelerant, believed to be charcoal lighter fluid, was used to ignite the floors, a front threshold to the house and on a concrete porch. A fire marshal testified the placement of the accelerant was designed to impede any rescue efforts by firefighters.
"Dude's a liar," Willingham said in a recent interview on death row. "It's all a farce ... They just didn't want to pursue what really happened."
Willingham suggested a lantern lamp dumped fluid when a shelf collapsed inside the house and caught fire or his oldest daughter, who was "fascinated with everything," accidentally set off the blaze.
"Either that or someone came in with the intent to kill me and the children," he said.
Willingham said his wife went out shopping and left him with the children. He was asleep late in the morning when the 2-year-old woke him with her cry for him. He saw smoke, jumped out of bed and told her to get out of the house, he said. Willingham said he tried to get to the twins' room, couldn't get past the flames and ran to get help. His house had no phone.
Trial testimony showed he expressed no grief over the loss of the children. Willingham, who did not testify in his own defense, disputed the comments.
"They were great kids," he said.
Willingham, a 10th grade dropout, had a history of violence and a record of felony and misdemeanor convictions both as an adult and juvenile. He said he got hooked on inhalants as a young teenager and was in and out of treatment centers beginning at age 14. He also spent time at a boot camp in Oklahoma. Evidence at his trial showed he was abusive to his family and once beat his pregnant wife with a telephone to try to force a miscarriage.
"I was a sorry husband, a piece of crap as husbands go," he acknowledged from death row. "I was so full of myself and so dumb."
Willingham's wife initially supported him and testified on his behalf at his 1992 trial. But Kuykendall told the Corsicana Daily Sun earlier this month that after reviewing case and meeting with her former husband in prison recently, she doesn't buy his version of the events that day.
"It was hard for me to sit in front of him," she said. "He basically took my life away from me. He took my kids away from me."
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