Killer shouts obscenities as he is executed

Shouting obscenities at his ex-wife standing a few feet away, a man was executed for the deaths of his three young daughters in a fire two days before Christmas 1991.

Cameron Willingham, 36, was pronounced dead at 6.20pm last night, seven minutes after the lethal dose began flowing through his veins.

Willingham, a former car mechanic and high school dropout, previously acknowledged he was not a good husband, but insisted he was not responsible for the blaze that killed two-year-old Amber and one-year-old twins Karmon and Kameron while their mother was away.

“The only statement I want to make is that I am an innocent man convicted of a crime I did not commit,” Willingham said at the death chamber in Huntsville, Texas. “I have been persecuted for 12 years for something I did not do.”

He expressed love to someone named Gabby, and then addressed his former wife, Stacy Kuykendall, who watched through a window eight feet away.

Using obscenity-laced language, Willingham said repeatedly he hoped she would “rot in hell” and attempted to manoeuvre his hand, strapped at the wrist, into an obscene gesture.

Kuykendall showed no reaction.

When firefighters arrived at the burning house in Corsicana on December 23, 1991, Willingham was outside.

At his trial, neighbours said he was outdoors even before flames engulfed the building and that he was concerned about his car getting scorched.

Prosecutors presented evidence of an accelerant believed to be charcoal lighter fluid, and contended Willingham just wanted to get rid of the children.

He was the seventh convicted killer executed in Texas this year and the third in seven days.