Matthew Lee Johnson was strapped to a gurney inside the Huntsville Unit of the Texas State Penitentiary when he turned his head toward the gallery. Inside sat the family of the woman he had brutally murdered — 76-year-old great-grandmother Nancy Harris. His voice cracked. Then came the words no one expected. “I hope she’s the first person I see when I get to heaven.”
Johnson, executed by lethal injection on May 20, 2025, had spent over a decade on death row for a crime so horrific it shocked even seasoned prosecutors. In May 2012, he entered a convenience store in Garland, Texas, during a botched robbery and set Harris on fire after dousing her with lighter fluid. Surveillance footage later showed her running out of the store, engulfed in flames, begging for help.
Despite suffering burns across 40% of her body, Harris survived long enough to identify Johnson as her attacker. She died five days later. The attack was described in the trial as “pure evil,” and the Garland police chief at the time said it was one of the most senseless acts he’d ever seen. During sentencing, prosecutors played the 911 audio in which Harris can be heard screaming, “He lit me on fire. I’m burning alive.”
Before the lethal injection began, Johnson addressed the victim’s family in a final, chilling statement that has since gone viral across social media platforms like X and TikTok. “Please forgive me. I never meant for it to happen this way,” he said, with a trembling voice. “I see her face every time I close my eyes. I pray that she can forgive me.”
His words hit hard. Harris’s family, many of whom wore photos of her pinned to their shirts, remained silent throughout. Her daughter, Janice Rhodes, told ABC News later that night, “We’ve waited 13 years for this. Nothing can bring her back. But at least now, there’s no more delay. No more pain.”
Johnson’s execution marked the 18th in the U.S. this year and the fourth in Texas. The Texas Department of Criminal Justice confirmed the lethal cocktail was administered without complications. But the moral debate surrounding his final words has ignited fierce division. An NPR panel on capital punishment aired the morning after, with advocates arguing his remorse was sincere — and critics calling it manipulative.
At trial in 2013, Johnson admitted to the crime and blamed his actions on a haze of crack cocaine and mental illness. He testified, “I was out of my mind. I wasn’t even human that day.” His public defender, Lauren Bennett, described him as a “man consumed by regret.” But prosecutors presented a different picture — a man with 11 prior arrests, a long rap sheet, and a history of violent outbursts.
The brutality of Harris’s death galvanized the Garland community. Over 500 people attended her memorial service, and a mural was later painted near the store where she worked. The mural, shared on Instagram by her grandchildren, shows her smiling, beneath the words: “Your light can’t be burned out.”
In the weeks leading up to his execution, Johnson penned a letter to the Harris family. Portions of that letter were released by Texas Monthly, and included lines such as, “You don’t owe me anything. But I owe you the truth — and I am so sorry.”
That letter has divided opinions online. A viral Reddit thread debated whether true remorse can come after such brutality. “He said he wants to see her in heaven? He set her on fire,” one user wrote. “I don’t care if he cried. So did she — while she was burning.”
Yet others saw his final words as powerful. “We are all capable of evil,” one viral tweet reads. “But not all of us are capable of facing it.”
Johnson’s execution has reignited political pressure on Texas Governor Greg Abbott, whose staunch support of capital punishment has long drawn scrutiny. Earlier this year, the governor rejected clemency for another death row inmate whose final appeals included proof of intellectual disability, sparking protests outside the state capitol. The Texas Tribune reports that Abbott is now facing renewed questions about the fairness and consistency of executions in the state.
Meanwhile, the Harris family is simply trying to breathe. At a vigil held hours after the execution, her son placed a candle at the front of the altar and whispered, “You didn’t deserve this, mama. But you’re free now.”
Johnson’s death closed one chapter — but the pain, and the questions, will live on. His final wish to meet Harris in the afterlife has stirred both anger and awe, and forced America once again to confront the morality of death and forgiveness inside the execution chamber.
