Witness reveals what it was like to watch ‘gruesome’ firing squad death
Infamous double murderer Brad Sigmon became the first man to die by firing squad in the US in 15 years. One onlooker watched it all go down.
One terrible night 24 years ago, factory worker Brad Sigmon stayed up smoking crack cocaine and planning violent revenge.
He was going to kidnap girlfriend Rebecca Barbare who had jilted him after five years.
But it didn’t play out like that. He ended up bludgeoning her parents to death with a baseball bat and shooting her when she jumped from his speeding car to escape.
At his 2002 trial, where he was sentenced to the death penalty, he told jurors he had been “obsessed” with Rebecca, adding: “Do I deserve to die? I probably do.”
But he added: “I don’t want to die. I want to live for my family’s sake.”
True to his word, Sigmon was unsuccessfully attempting to convince authorities he deserved a stay of execution right up until his final hours on earth.
On Friday, in a sparse room at Broad River Correctional Institute in Columbia, South Carolina, the double murderer was hooded, strapped into a chair with a red bullseye placed over his chest, and executed for his crime by firing squad.
Sigmon, 67, became the first man to be executed this way in the United States in 15 years.
Given the choice between a hail of bullets exploding in his heart and either lethal injection or the electric chair, Sigmon put his trust in three marksmen.
The trio of volunteer prison guards fired at him through a narrow slit in a wall 5m away from Sigmon.
Randy Gardner, whose brother Ronnie was the last man to be executed by firing squad after he killed a lawyer during an attempt to escape from a courthouse, described the process as “gruesome” and “barbaric”.
He has the autopsy photos of Ronnie’s body and said Sigmon’s end was worse because of the ammunition used.
The news of the shots that hit Sigmon rang out around the world, heralding a more unforgiving approach to justice in the US. President Donald Trump has vowed to restart the federal executions that were paused under former leader Joe Biden four years ago.
On his first week back in office in January he signed an executive action telling the Attorney-General to “pursue the death penalty for all crimes of a severity demanding its use”.
But as protesters demonstrated outside the South Carolina jail where Sigmon was executed, his lawyer Bo King called for an end to capital punishment in the US, branding it a “barbaric, state-sanctioned atrocity”.
King had argued his client had an undiagnosed mental illness and succumbed to a psychotic episode following “organic brain damage” and “grief from his violent childhood”.
He added: “The jury that sentenced him had no idea of how severely compromised his mental health was, or that he was probably incompetent even to stand trial.”
Witness describes scene inside death chamber
Sigmon was allowed a hood to cover his eyes, and the choice of a final meal.
He was given four pieces of Kentucky Fried Chicken, mashed potato and cheesecake before heading to the chair in a black jumpsuit.
A prison worker then pulled up a horizontal slit in a wall to reveal the barrels of the rifles.
The chair Sigmon was strapped into had a tray underneath it to catch blood and was opposite the electric chair which was covered up.
The death chamber was filled by a tense silence, with neither the witnesses nor Sigmon knowing when the triggers would be pulled.
Associated Press reporter Jeffrey Collins, who was watching his 11th death row execution, said: “There was no warning or countdown. The abrupt crack of the rifles startled me.
“And the white target with the red bullseye that had been on his chest, standing out against his black prison jumpsuit, disappeared instantly as Sigmon’s whole body flinched.”
Less than a minute later a doctor examined Sigmon’s body and declared him dead at 6.08pm.
The .308 Winchester Tap Urban bullets, which explode on impact inside the body, had been as lethal as they are designed to be.
But Sigmon’s lawyer King thought that his client’s arm trembled “as if he was trying to break free from the restraints” once they had gone in.
He added: “It is unfathomable that, in 2025, South Carolina would execute one of its citizens in this bloody spectacle.”
Another witness, journalist Anna Dobbins, also suggested there had been some movement.
She said: “His arms flexed. There was something in his midsection that moved — I’m not necessarily going to call them breaths, I don’t really know — but there was some movement that went on there for two or three seconds.”
Collins, who has also seen the lethal injection and the electric chair used, felt that the firing squad was “much quicker”.
The aim of the prison guards was certainly better than that of Sigmon.
In April 2001, high on crack cocaine, he decided to take revenge on Rebecca for jilting him.
He planned to kidnap his girlfriend, shoot her then shoot himself.
Sigmon later told cops that if he couldn’t have her, “nobody could”.
Brutal detail of killings
He tied up Rebecca’s parents Gladys, 59, and David Larke, 62, at their rural property in Greenville County, South Carolina, and hit them both around the head nine times each until they were dead.
Sigmon then took David’s gun, waited for Rebecca to come home and then bundled her into his SUV.
She knew she had to escape. As they sped along a South Carolina highway at 60mph, Rebecca leapt from the car and made a desperate dash for her life.
Sigmon chased his victim down, firing at least three shots — but she was only hit in the foot.
Despite the unfathomable crimes inflicted on Rebecca, now 59, and her parents she did not agree with his life being extinguished.
Speaking publicly for the first time about the killings, she said: “I don’t think somebody being put to death is gonna bring me closure.
“It bothers me and gives me anxiety about him being put to death, and especially him picking the firing squad.”
Ever since he was found guilty of murder in 2002, Sigmon has been waiting on death row.
He admitted killing the defenceless David and Gladys, a hardworking God-fearing couple who had worked in a metals factory and raised five children in a rural part of South Carolina.
But after being incarcerated Sigmon found religion and expressed remorse for his crimes.
Rebecca said: “The Bible tells you, ‘an eye for an eye’ and ‘a tooth for a tooth’ but if you read on down in there it says, ‘Revenge is not mine, says the Lord, revenge is God’s.’”
Not everyone in her family agrees.
Prior to the execution, Rebecca’s son Ricky Sims, 40, objected to Sigmon’s attempts to appeal against the death penalty. He said: “He’s just trying to prolong something that should have been done 20 years ago.”
Before leaving office, President Joe Biden had commuted 37 out of 40 federal death sentences to life in prison.
But Sigmon was on South Carolina’s execution list and did not receive a reprieve.
It is one of 27 US states which currently maintain the death penalty, and each of them has been grappling with the most reliable means of carrying out that sentence.
In 1983 it took 24 minutes for John Louis Evans III to die on the electric chair, eyewitnesses reporting the stomach-churning smell of burnt flesh each time the high voltage shocks failed to finish him off in Alabama.
Five years later, two tubes administering a lethal injection to Raymond Landry in Texas came loose, with one squirting the deadly mixture over nearby witnesses.
South Carolina wanted to make sure its firing squad at the Broad River Correctional Institute in Columbia did not fail. There was to be no chance of stray bullets hitting any bystanders.
The witnesses sat behind three-inch-thick bulletproof glass as the firing squad stood behind a brick wall.
The US has struggled to get hold of the lethal sedatives due to export bans, but Trump wants his chief legal adviser to do everything possible to increase the supply.
The President has made it clear he wants to speed up the rate of executions, with over two thousand US prisoners on death row.
There might be more joining them. Trump last week called for all cop killers to be given the death penalty and recently suggested drug dealers should face state-sanctioned killing.
Risk of wrongful execution
According to opinion polls the majority of Americans agree with him, with 53 per cent supporting capital punishment.
This article was originally published by The Sun and reproduced with permission
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