If we’ve any chance of understanding why Velma Barfield ordered a Coke and a bag of cheesy-puffy snacks for a final meal, we’ve got to look at what led her to her final days — sitting in isolation in a men’s correctional facility right across from the door to the execution chamber, per a 1984 interview on YouTube.
Velma Barfield was born in South Carolina in 1932. At the time of her death, she was the first woman to be executed in the United States in 22 years, per All That’s Interesting. She was a serial killer, and her weapon of choice was arsenic. She was also a regular church-goer, fervently religious (on the surface), and a devout Billy Graham fan. Some sites — including All That’s Interesting and Crime Museum — tend to approach her actions apologetically because she had an abusive father, married young at 17, had a hysterectomy, got addicted to painkillers, and more. This is all true. In interviews like the aforementioned death row interview, she even comes across as borderline affable — hence her nickname, “Death Row Granny.”
Barfield, however, was more of a black widow than a doting grandmother. Her first husband and house burned down while she was away, her second husband died mysteriously, then her mother, two elderly people she cared for, and her final boyfriend followed. She confessed to poisoning four of them. As All That’s Interesting quotes her about her boyfriend, who started keeling over in church, “I only meant to make him sick.”
