Todd Willingham
Navarro
County, Texas
Date of Alleged Crime: December 23, 1991
Executed February 17, 2004
Cameron Todd Willingham was convicted of murdering his three
daughters by setting his house on fire. Under police interrogation,
Willingham said that his wife, Stacy, had left the house around 9 a.m. After
she got out of the driveway, he heard his one-year-old twin daughters cry,
so he got up and gave them a bottle. The children’s room had a safety gate
across the doorway which his two-year-old daughter, Amber, could climb over
but not the twins. He and Stacy often let the twins nap on the floor after
they drank their bottles. Since Amber was still in bed, he went back into
his room to sleep. Willingham's house was warmed by three space heaters, one
of which was in the children's bedroom. This heater had an internal flame.
Amber had been taught not to play with the heater though she reportedly got
“whuppings every once in a while for messing with it.”
Willingham later awoke to a house full of smoke and the sound of Amber
crying “Daddy, Daddy.” He hollered, “Amber, get out of the house! Get out of
the house!” Willingham got up, felt around the floor for a pair of pants,
and put them on. While crouching, he went down a pitch black smoke-filled
hallway to the children's bedroom and as he stood up, and his hair caught on
fire. He crouched down and patted out the fire on his hair. The heat
radiating from the children's bedroom was so intense that he had to turn
back, not being able to bear it any longer. He managed to stumble to the
front door, trying to catch his breath.
He saw a neighbor, Diane Barbee, and yelled for her to call the Fire
Department. He tried unsuccessfully to re-enter the house through the front
and then by breaking two windows. He soon retreated into the yard, kneeling
down. He intermittently cried, “My babies!” but otherwise was silent. When
Barbee returned, she witnessed the windows in the children's bedroom blow
out as the fire reached flashover status. The twins died in the fire as did
Amber. Amber's body was found in Willingham's bedroom. After Amber called,
“Daddy, Daddy,” he never felt she was in his room. Perhaps she had entered
and passed out, or perhaps she had not entered the room from the hallway but
from another door that connected to the living room.
Fire investigators determined that there were burn patterns on the floor
which they felt were caused by an accelerant such as lighter fluid being
poured there and used to start the fire. Since common experience indicates
fires burn up rather than down, the investigators found it impossible to
believe Willingham's claim that during the fire he walked barefoot down the
hallway in his house. However, scientific studies that began in 1989, two
years before Willingham's fire, show that fires can, in some respects, burn
down rather than up.
After a fire starts and is able to heat its surroundings to a certain level
of intensity, the heat becomes so great that everything will ignite that is
exposed to the heat. At this point the fire instantaneously expands to
include areas not previously in contact with flames and is said to flash
over. Once a fire flashes over, further burning is controlled by ventilation
rather than by the presence of burnable materials or fuel. Since air
entering an enclosed fire is cooler than the air already present, it will
flow low along the floor and the oxygen in it will allow the fire to burn
along the floor, while the hotter, oxygen depleted air higher up will not
support burning. Thus burn patterns along the floor are to be expected in
such a fire and are not an indication that the fire started there. However,
the fire/arson investigators in Willingham's case were ignorant of the
results of these studies.
In addition to the alleged arson evidence, a jailhouse informant claimed
Willingham confessed, and witnesses testified that Willingham did not try
hard enough to save his children. Dr. James Grigson, the notorious “Dr.
Death,” testified at sentencing that Willingham cannot be rehabilitated in
any manner, and that he poses a continuing threat to society. Grigson
regularly gave such testimony regarding convicted defendants after
conducting superficial examinations that no serious person would regard as
supporting his diagnoses. Willingham was executed by lethal injection on
Feb. 17, 2004. [3/10]
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References: Chicago
Tribune,
New Yorker,
Nightline
Video
Posted in:
Victims of the State,
Northeast Texas Cases, Arson Murder Cases,
Son/Daughter Murder Cases,
Triple Homicide Cases,
Defendants Executed by Texas
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