This is a book that someone loaned to me so I had to rush and read it. I have a backlog to read and this was one I'd read a long time ago. I enjoyed reading it again, though.

It is the story of Velma Barfield, who was a grandmother and mother of two. She developed an addiction to prescription medicines in the 60s and 70s and would do anything to get her medicine. She would steal prescription pads and to pay for the medicine she often would steal checks and forge signatures of people who trusted her.

When the people (some elderly and dependent upon her care) would discover or were about to discover her, she would poison them with arsenic. When she did this the first time, she discovered that arsenic doesn't show up in a routine autopsy. It is only something they have to be specifically looking for. She learned, therefore, that it was an easy way to kill.

So, she killed at least five people, that she admitted to killing.

Arsenic poisoning is a gruesome way to die. All these people did was discover what Velma was doing or were about to discover it and she was worried she'd get in trouble.

She is one of the few women in the United States to get the death penalty and actually die by lethal injection.

The book presents her crimes and then presents Velma in the most sympathetic light possible. This is a good writer and he did a good job.

I didn't buy that Velma was a victim, too. To me, she was a vicious killer who deserved the death sentence.

anyone intersted in a lot of information on the death penalty and the inside of a woman's prison experience in North Carolina in the late 1970's and 1980's.

the victims and I identified with them and what they faced in trusting a terrible murdering witch like Velma Barfield.

it gives another side to the death penalty argument. I didn't buy it, but it was eloquently presented.

This writer is very talented at telling true stories about horrendous crimes. He was a newspapter reporter before he started writing about the trials and cases he covered. He also wrote, "Bitter Blood," which I would say is his best work to date.

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Created May 06, 2015 at 10:20am • Submit your own review...