A man executed for the horrific murder of an elderly store clerk delivered a chilling final message to the victim’s family before receiving a lethal injection.
On Tuesday (May 20), Matthew Lee Johnson was put to death 13 years after he doused 76-year-old Nancy Harris with lighter fluid and set her on fire during a robbery at a Garland convenience store in 2012.
The grandmother and longtime store employee succumbed to her injuries days later after suffering agonizing second- and third-degree burns across her body.
The 49-year-old was pronounced dead at 6:53PM at the state penitentiary in Huntsville - just 26 minutes after the lethal drugs began to flow.
In his final statement, he turned to Harris’s family, who were watching through a window just feet away, and delivered a plea for forgiveness laced with haunting words.
“As I look at each one of you, I can see her on that day,” he said, per The New York Post. “I please ask for your forgiveness. I never meant to hurt her. I pray that she’s the first person I see when I open my eyes and I spend eternity with.”
He also addressed his own family: “I made wrong choices, I’ve made wrong decisions, and now I pay the consequences.”
Security footage captured parts of the brutal attack, and Harris, though gravely injured, managed to describe her attacker before dying.
Prosecutors said Johnson had calmly walked out of the store after grabbing money from the register, leaving Harris to burn as she stumbled outside screaming for help.
A responding police officer used a fire extinguisher to put out the flames covering her body.
At his 2013 trial, Johnson admitted to the killing, telling the court: “I hurt an innocent woman. I took a human being’s life. I was the cause of that. It was not my intentions to - to kill her or to hurt her, but I did.”
He also called himself “the lowest scum of the earth,” claiming he was high on crack at the time and unaware of his actions. His attorneys told jurors Johnson had a long history of drug abuse and was sexually abused as a child.
Despite appeals citing constitutional violations and improperly determined future danger, the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles denied Johnson's request to commute his sentence, and the U.S. Supreme Court was not asked to intervene.
The state’s Attorney General’s Office argued in court that “justice should no longer be denied," per CBS News.
Harris, a beloved grandmother, had worked at the store for more than a decade and lived just a block and a half away.
Her son Scot testified during the trial, saying she had only just started her Sunday morning shift when Johnson entered the store and launched his deadly attack. She left behind four sons, 11 grandchildren, and seven great-grandchildren.
Johnson’s execution was one of two carried out on Tuesday in the US, with Indiana executing Benjamin Ritchie for the 2000 killing of a police officer.
Their deaths marked part of a flurry of executions, including Glen Rogers in Florida the previous week and Oscar Smith, scheduled to be executed in Tennessee on Thursday.
If Smith’s execution proceeds, it will mark the 18th execution in the U.S. this year.