Carl Wayne EXECUTED at 80 in Texas for the brutal murder of a cop | Death Row Documentary
The crime for which this man was executed was not just a murder. It was a cold-blooded execution of a police officer who was simply doing his job. This is the story of Carl Wayne Bunchin, a criminal who spent more than 30 years on death row and who when he finally received the lethal injection was 78 years old, making him the oldest inmate ever executed in the history of Texas.
[snorts] And before we begin, tell me in the comments where are you watching this video from? And is the death penalty legal in your state or not? >> How do you plan to spend your your final days? >> Well, just like I do every day, I read my Bible and I’ll read other books. I like to read and I’m too old to go out.
Uh >> Carl Wayne Bunchon was born on March 30th, 1944 into a family marked by constant and extreme violence. His [snorts] father’s brutality extended beyond the home. In one especially traumatic incident, he murdered a man in front of one of his children. After the killing, Carl, still a minor, was forced to help clean the crime scene, exposing him at an early age to an environment of extreme brutality.
Bunchon’s criminal career formally began in 1961 when he was first convicted of robbery. Over the following years, he accumulated convictions for burglary, property damage, possession of narcotics, and multiple violent offenses. One especially significant prior incident occurred in 1965 when Bunchon was convicted of assault with intent [music] to murder a police officer.
This episode made clear the deep and persistent hatred Bunchon felt toward law enforcement, an animosity that would shape the rest of his criminal trajectory. On April 10th, 1971, an event [music] took place that would permanently mark Carl Wayne Bunchon and according to multiple accounts, [music] intensify his hatred of the police over the decades that followed.
That day, his identical twin brother, Kenneth [music] Bunchon, died after a shootout with officers from the Houston Police Department. At that time, Carl Wayne Bunchon was serving a sentence within the Texas prison system. Records show that both Carl and his younger brother, Bobby Bunchon, who was also incarcerated, were granted special permission to attend Kenneth’s funeral.
During the service, Carl made a vow, promising to take revenge on the officers he held responsible for the death of his twin brother. [music] After regaining his freedom, Bunchon obtained a firearm and began carrying it with him at all times. He was determined never to return to prison, no matter the consequences.
During this period, he showed the gun to an acquaintance, Helen Smith. And during their conversation, he confessed that he felt an insatiable urge to kill the first police officer he encountered. Bunchon mistakenly believed that there was an outstanding arrest warrant for him for failing to report to his parole officer.
This paranoia, combined with his long history of violence, made him a ticking time bomb. On the night of June 27th, 1990, officer James Herby was on patrol when he observed a traffic violation committed by a vehicle at the intersection of Airline Drive in North Houston. Suspecting nothing out of the ordinary, he decided to stop the car solely for the infraction.
Behind the wheel was 42-year-old John Earl Killingsworth. Killingsworth stepped out of the vehicle and walked toward the rear to speak with the officer. The two engaged in [music] a calm, cooperative conversation, and officer Irby was already preparing to let them continue on their way. What James Herby did not know was that the vehicle was transporting heroin as he never searched the car.
Seated in the front passenger seat was 46-year-old Carl Wayne Bunchon. While the officer was speaking with the driver, Bunchon exited the vehicle on his own initiative. Officer Herby motioned with his hand for him to return to the car, but Bunchon ignored the order and continued walking toward him. When Bunchin was approximately 5T from the officer, and without any prior provocation, he raised a long barreled revolver with both hands and [music] fired directly into Herby’s forehead.
Officer Herby collapsed immediately. As he lay wounded and defenseless on the pavement, Bunchon stepped closer and fired two more shots into his back. All three gunshots were fatal. Officer James Herby had no opportunity to defend himself or to react. Once Bunchon was certain that officer Herby was down, he fled the scene on foot from the intersection of Airline Drive and [music] Larly Street in North Houston.
He did not return to the Pontiac where driver John Earl Killingsworth remained, but instead ran off on his own, leaving Killingsworth behind at the scene. His escape was chaotic and violent, firing his weapon indiscriminately as he ran. During his flight from the crime scene, Bunchon opened fire on at least two civilian witnesses who had seen the murder of Officer Herby.
[music] Realizing there were people who could identify him, Bunchon shot at them, apparently attempting to kill them or at least intimidate [music] them into not pursuing him or cooperating with police. Fortunately, none of the witnesses were killed. Eventually, without a vehicle, with police closing in around him and having exhausted his escape options, Bunchon took refuge inside a warehouse near the sight of the murder, he hid inside the building, likely hoping the confusion would allow him to escape later or simply having nowhere left to
run. Officers responding to the scene surrounded the warehouse and located Bunchin inside. Contrary to his earlier claims that he would rather die in a gunfight than return to prison once he was completely cornered, Bungeon surrendered and was taken into custody without further resistance. Years of bravado disappeared when he was confronted with the reality of multiple armed officers surrounding him.
While Bunchon was fleeing and spreading chaos, civilians at the original scene acted with extraordinary courage. Elmore Bro ran to Officer Herby’s police motorcycle and used the radio to contact dispatch and request immediate assistance. Another civilian, Richard Castillo, retrieved the fallen officer’s service weapon and used it to keep the vehicle’s driver, John Killingsworth, under control until backup arrived.
Without the quick and decisive actions of these civilians, the police response would have been delayed and Bunchon could have had more time to escape [music] or cause further harm. James [snorts] Bruce Herby was born on May 25th, 1953 in Houston, Texas into a family with a strong law enforcement legacy.
Following in his grandfather’s footsteps, he joined the Houston Police Department as a cadet in November 1972, shortly after graduating high school. He became an officer in 1973 and went on to serve in traffic control, central radio patrol, and later as a motorcycle officer, a position he earned in 1982 and [music] held until his death.
By 1990, Herby was a respected veteran with nearly 18 years of continuous service, known by colleagues as generous and deeply committed to his work. Outside the department, Herby built a quiet family life with his wife Mora [music] Mills, a nurse, and their two young children. By June 1990, the children were just three and one year old.
Only a month before his death, Herby had submitted his retirement paperwork, planning to leave the police force to spend more time with his family and open a pet food store. Bunchon’s behavior after his arrest, revealed a complete absence of remorse. He refused to cooperate with the arresting officers and during questioning attempted to justify the murder of officer Herby claiming that the officer had spread his legs and assumed a supposed combat stance.
An argument he used to rationalize the shooting. Even more disturbing was his statement that if placed in the same situation again, he would act in exactly the same way. In January 1991, Carl Wayne Bunchon was formally sentenced to death in [music] Texas for the capital murder of Officer James Herby. Carl Wayne Bunchon spent more than 31 years on death row.
[music] He was sentenced to death in 1991, and by the time he was finally executed, he was an elderly man nearly 79 years old. [music] In total, he lived under a death sentence for approximately 32 years. Most of that time in near total isolation at the Palinsky unit, confined for 23 hours a day in a small cell. This raises an unavoidable question in his case.
Why did he spend so long on death row? The first reason lies in how his case became entangled in ongoing changes within the judicial system. For years, Texas and US courts were revising the rules on how juries should be instructed to [music] properly consider mitigating evidence, such as a childhood marked by extreme violence or the defendant’s mental health issues.
As a result of these changes, in 2009, a Texas court overturned only the death sentence, not the murder conviction, and ordered a new punishment phase trial. That retrial took place in 2012 and once [music] again Bunchon was sentenced to death. However, this second death sentence restarted [music] the entire appeals process from the beginning.
The second reason is that after 2012, his attorneys [music] pursued every available legal avenue. They filed appeals in Texas courts, petitions in federal courts, [music] requests to the US Supreme Court, and in the final stage, emergency motions arguing that it made no sense to execute a 78-year-old man after more than three decades on death row.
Ultimately, his execution date was set for April 21st, 2022 through a state court order issued earlier that year once all [music] of Carl Wayne Bunchon’s appeals had been denied. By then, his attorneys described him as a frail geriatric inmate who relied on a wheelchair and required specialized care even for basic functions.
Bunchon suffered from multiple serious medical conditions including arthritis, vertigo, chronic pain caused by sciatic nerve damage that made it difficult for him to walk, hepatitis, cerosis, high blood pressure, and other chronic ailments. One week before the execution, he contracted pneumonia. According to medical experts cited by the defense, this condition could have made the lethal injection with pentabarbital more painful as it directly affected the lungs and breathing.
All of these medical issues formed the core of the clemency request. His attorneys argued that under these conditions, Bunchin no longer posed any danger and that executing him at such an advanced age constituted [music] cruel and unnecessary punishment. Clemency, however, was denied. In the hours leading up to his execution, Bunchin appeared visibly frail.
He coughed constantly due to the recent pneumonia and suffered persistent pain stemming from years of chronic illness and a life spent in isolation. Even so, he remained lucid enough to give interviews. He received very few visitors by that point. Many of his relatives had died or become estranged, and most of his human contact was limited to attorneys, anti-death penalty activists, and religious staff.
On the day of the execution, Bunchon was transferred from the Palinsky unit, where Texas’s death row is located, to the Walls unit in Huntsville, home to the lethal injection chamber. Outside, dozens of motorcycle officers and police personnel gathered to honor officer James Herby. The sound of the motorcycles was so loud that it would later be heard even inside the execution chamber.
Also present were the officer’s widow, his children, the Houston police chief, and the Harris County District Attorney. Around 6:00 in the evening, final preparations began. Bunchon was escorted into the execution chamber, placed on the gurnie, and secured with restraints on his arms, legs, and torso. Unlike in previous decades, current rules allowed the active presence of a spiritual adviser inside the room, not just behind the glass, Bunin chose to be accompanied by his spiritual adviser who stood beside him and kept a hand resting on his right ankle throughout the
procedure. Before the intravenous lines were inserted, officials asked him whether he wished to make a final statement. Bunchon agreed. His last words were, “Well, to begin with, I would like to thank everyone who stayed. Karen, Linda, Barry, Danny, Barbara. God bless you all. I have a message for the Herby family.
The shooting happened on June 27th, 1990.” A week later, a police officer named Michael Garrett came to my cell on his day off. He was dressed in civilian clothes. I thought he was a chaplain. He came all the way to the back where it’s extremely secure. The guys started making fun of him because the officer brought me a small Bible.
He said, “Son, do you know you just ran into a wall? I’m a sheriff’s deputy.” He asked me if I had ever been to church. “Have you heard of Jesus Christ?” I said, “Yes.” [music] And then he gave me a small Bible called the Gideon Bible, and he read [music] from Romans. The deputy told me to repent before God.
The deputy’s friends, five or six guys standing in the hallway, were mocking him. And the deputy told them not to listen, to listen to my voice. That was July 4th, 1990. I wanted the Herby family to know one thing. I feel remorse for what I did. Mrs. Herby, the little one-year-old, I don’t remember her name. Cody was three and she was one when I took their father’s life.
I ask God that you can find closure for the killing of your father and Mrs. Zerby’s husband. I hope to see you in heaven someday. And when you arrive, I’ll give you a big hug. To all my friends who have been with me all these years, I’m not going to say goodbye. Just see you later. I’m ready to go. At 6:26 p.m.
, medical staff began administering the lethal dose of penttoarbital intravenously. As the drug started circulating through his body, the spiritual adviser began reciting Psalm 23. The Lord is my shepherd. Bunchon joined in reciting the opening lines alongside him. According to witnesses, after speaking a few lines of the prayer, Bunchon [music] took a deep breath, coughed once, and then took three more breaths, each weaker than the last, before becoming completely still.
Following protocol, prison medical staff confirmed the absence of a pulse and [music] breathing. At 6:39 p.m., exactly 13 minutes after the injection began, the state of Texas officially pronounced Carl Wayne Bunchon dead. He was 78 years old, becoming the oldest person ever executed in the state’s history.
>> And as we we finish up here, our time is running out. Is there anything I did not ask you, Carl, that you wanted to say? >> Yes, I would like to say something to you. I wish like hell it never had happened. If if that was Miss Herby sitting right there, I tell her the same thing. I’m I’m I I’m sorry it happened.
My My heart aches every day for her and her and her kids. So maybe my execution will set their mind at ease a little bit. I mean, you know, I I can’t bring their dad back, but maybe maybe by me being executed, may maybe they can finally put this thing behind them, you know, and look and look to the future. For the family of officer James Herby, it was more than 32 years of waiting that ended in those [music] 13 minutes.
For critics of the death penalty, Bunchin’s case represents an extreme example of what it means to keep a person in isolation for decades only to execute them when they are already a sick elderly man. Now, the question remains, was it justice [music] or simply the delayed end of a punishment that lasted too long? Leave your opinion in the comments.
