Witness to a Florida Execution

Death is a life-changing experience. 

Hi, I’m Mollye Barrows, a long-time reporter in Florida’s Panhandle and welcome to my investigative series, Gulf Coast Confidential, where I explore the saltier stories that surface in Northwest Florida and all along the Gulf of Mexico. 

This is a companion series called Gulf Coast Confidential Conversations where my co-host, Pam Hill, and I break down some of the crimes and scandals I cover on GCC. 

In this grisly episode, "Witness to a Florida Execution," we’re talking about the death penalty and just how close Pam and I have both come to it, as witnesses to a controversial part of the American justice system. 

Judy Buenoano, Florida's so-called "Black Widow" serial killer was executed for her crimes in the Sunshine State and she wrote Pam Hill from death row. The two knew each other because Judy had once set her sights on Pam's father.

On May 3, 2023, I watched the execution of convicted murdered Darryl Barwick, a man who sat on Florida's death row for more than thirty years for killing a pretty young woman he saw sunbathing beside the pool at a Panama City area apartment complex. 

While this was the first time I witnessed a man's execution in person, I had been to death row  years earlier, in Angola, Louisiana, as part of a college assignment and met the anti-death penalty advocate and nun, Helen Prejean, who inspired the movie Dead Man Walking.

Join Pam and I as we talk about these eye-opening yet tragic experiences, and what it was like to come so close to those marked to die.