HUNTSVILLE, Texas — Matthew Lee Johnson was pronounced dead at 6:53 p. m. Tuesday evening, executed by lethal injection exactly 13 years to the day after he doused a 76-year-old convenience store clerk in lighter fluid and set her on fire over roughly $80 in cash.
Johnson, 49, gasped several times and then began making low, snoring-like sounds inside the execution chamber at the Huntsville Unit before all movement stopped. He was declared dead at 6:53 p. m.
Central Time.
The execution came exactly 13 years after the attack that defined the final chapter of Nancy Harris’s life. Just after 7:00 a. m.
on May 20, 2012, Harris had opened the Whipin convenience store in Garland, Texas, as she had done countless times before.
She was mopping the floor in the quiet morning hours when the door swung open and Johnson walked in. He was not there to shop. He carried a plastic bottle filled with lighter fluid and a cigarette lighter in his pocket.
Johnson walked past the counter, ignoring the familiar display of snacks and soft drinks, and headed straight for the register. Harris followed him and told him he was not allowed back there. She was firm but not yelling, someone used to handling trouble with words.
Johnson did not stop. He raised the bottle and poured the lighter fluid over her head, demanding she open the cash register. As she complied, he grabbed cigarettes and cash.
Surveillance video also showed him taking her ring, though he later claimed he did not remember doing that.
Even after he had what he came for, he did not leave. Standing just inches from her, still holding the lighter, Johnson flicked it once, claiming later that he was trying to scare her into backing away. She did not move.
He flicked it again, and again.
The third time, the flame caught. Because her clothes were soaked in lighter fluid, Harris instantly burst into flames. Johnson did not try to extinguish the fire.
He did not look back. He walked out calmly, paused long enough to grab a piece of candy near the exit, and vanished into the day.
Nancy Harris fought to survive. She leaned over the sink, splashing water on her burning clothes. Her shirt kept burning, so she tore it off and dropped it to the floor.
But the flame spread fast, and her bra was still on fire.
When she leaned over the sink again, the smoldering shirt on the floor caught her pants leg. Her lower body was burning too. Still on fire, Harris stumbled toward the front of the store, shoved the doors open, and made it outside screaming for help.
Two nearby police officers, Billy Coffee and Anthony Simon, had already seen movement and smoke through the store’s windows. As they pulled into the parking lot, Harris came bursting through the doors engulfed in flames.
Officer Coffee grabbed a fire extinguisher from his cruiser and ran to her, spraying her down as fast as he could. Officer Simon tried to keep her conscious. When the flames were finally out, she was still alive, barely, and still able to speak
Harris told the officers everything. She said a man had robbed her and poured something on her. She described him as a heavy-set Black man wearing a t-shirt and blue jeans.
It was not much, but it was enough to start the hunt.
Inside the store, officers found the cash register drawer emptied. It did not hold much. About $80 in bills and coins, according to the store manager.
That is what Johnson traded a life for: a handful of cash, a pack of cigarettes, and some candy.
Firefighter and paramedic William Cruz arrived on the scene soon after. Harris’s face, shoulders, arms, stomach, and legs were covered in burns, some so deep they destroyed all layers of her skin. She was still conscious, but barely holding on.
As he treated her, she kept whispering the same words, barely louder than a breath. “Help me! Help me!
Help me!” Then again, “Help me! Help me!
Please!” There was panic in her voice, not just fear, but understanding. She knew exactly how bad it was.
Meanwhile, Johnson was still on the run. He jumped fences, tossed his shirt in a trash can, stole a bicycle off someone’s porch, and disappeared into the neighborhood. He smoked another stolen cigarette, hid in bushes, and fought with a man who tried to stop him.
About an hour after the attack, an officer spotted him. After a short foot chase, Johnson was finally arrested. In his pockets, investigators found Harris’s ring and approximately $76 in bills.
Back at the station, Johnson confessed. He admitted everything: robbing the store, taking the cigarettes, setting the fire. But he claimed it was all a mistake.
He said he was high, confused, and that lighting the flame was just a scare tactic, that he never meant for Harris to get hurt.
No one accepted that explanation. The injuries Harris suffered were horrific. Dr.
John Hunt, a burn specialist at Parkland Hospital, testified that she sustained burns over more than 40 percent of her body, with burns to her upper body ranging from second to fourth degree in severity.
Though she could not speak because of the breathing tube in her throat, Harris was conscious and alert. Nurses said she spelled out words with her fingers, asking questions the best she could. At one point, she asked her nurse if she was going to die.
Doctors explained the treatments they were trying: skin grafts, medications, supportive care. But when she heard all of that, Harris shook her head. She did not want to fight anymore.
Her family respected her wishes and followed what she had written in her living will.
Five days after the attack, Nancy Harris passed away from her burns. She had worked at the convenience store for more than 10 years and lived only about a block and a half away. She left behind four sons, 11 grandchildren, and seven great-grandchildren.
Johnson was charged with capital murder. The case did not rely on speculation. The surveillance footage was clear.
The bottle of lighter fluid was found. He confessed to pouring it over her. He had a lighter in hand.
He robbed her and then set her on fire.
At trial, Johnson did not deny any of it. He explained where he had been the night before the attack. He attended a wedding reception at his brother’s house, not far from the Whipin store.
There, he drank heavily, and by the time the party ended, he was drunk.
Around midnight, a family member gave him $30. The money was supposed to go toward fixing his car, but Johnson had other plans. He walked a few blocks, found a dealer, and spent it all on crack cocaine.
He smoked some right away, then sold a portion so he could buy more.By 4:00 a. m. , he said, he had gone through ten rocks of crack.
Between 4 and 5 a. m. , he took a Xanax, claiming it was to calm himself down before heading home to watch his daughter.
But instead of going home, he drifted back to his brother’s place around 6 a. m.
On the patio, he found a bottle of wine, sat down, and drank the whole thing. That is when the craving came back. He wanted more crack and did not have the money to get it.
So he made a choice: grab a plastic bottle, fill it with lighter fluid, and take a cigarette lighter.
His plan, he later said, was not to hurt anyone. He wanted to scare someone, pour a little fluid, wave the flame, make them nervous enough to hand over the cash, then leave. That plan ended with a 76-year-old grandmother burning alive behind her own counter.
Johnson took the stand at trial. He did not sugarcoat anything and called himself scum. In front of the jury, he said he deserved to die for what he did to Nancy Harris.
He even told them he should be set on fire just like her.
But in the same breath, he asked them for mercy. Not for himself, he said, but for his three young daughters. As broken as he was, he did not want them growing up knowing their father had been executed.
He asked the jury to spare his life for them. It did not work.
On December 10, 2013, the jury found him guilty and sentenced him to death. Their decision was not based solely on one act of violence. They had seen a long and troubling history, a pattern that told them this was not a man who made one mistake.
Johnson had been convicted before for robbery, assault, and violating protective orders. He had carjacked a woman, threatened to grab a police officer’s gun, set his girlfriend’s rug on fire, and exposed himself to a hotel maid while grabbing her hand.
Prison did not change him. If anything, it proved the jury right. He attacked his cellmate so badly the man needed nine staples in his head.
On another occasion, he stood naked in his cell doorway, masturbating while staring at a female guard.
His lawyers tried everything after the trial. They argued he had been abused as a child, that drug addiction had wrecked his thinking, that he was so high that morning he did not fully understand what he was doing. Appeal after appeal failed.
Nothing changed the outcome.
Then came the date. May 20, 2025, exactly 13 years to the day since Nancy Harris was set on fire. After more than a decade on death row, Johnson’s time ran out.
Under Texas law, inmates can no longer request a special last meal. Johnson was served the same standard tray as everyone else. When asked if he had any last words, he turned to the victim’s family and spoke.
“To Mrs. Harris’s family. As I look at each and every one of you, I see her on that day,” he said.
“I just please ask for y’all’s forgiveness. I never meant to hurt her. I pray that she’s the first person that I see when I open my eyes, and I will spend eternity with her.”
He continued, praising God and thanking him for the life he had been given. Then he addressed the men he had spent years with on death row, calling them brothers, and told them he loved them. He also thanked the prison staff for treating him with dignity.
He said they gave him, in his words, the opportunity to get in right standings with my Lord. Then came his apology to his wife and daughters. “Just know that it’s nothing that you all did.
I made wrong choices. I’ve made wrong decisions. And now I pay the consequences.”
He ended with a prayer of gratitude. “I thank the Lord for the last 13 years. He has given me the opportunity to ask for his forgiveness and I thank him for his redemption.”
He said, “Welcome me, father. Thank each and every one of you for being here. I’m done.”
Johnson received the lethal injection shortly after 6 p. m. inside the Huntsville Unit.
He gasped several times, then began making low snoring-like sounds. Within a minute, all movement stopped. He was pronounced dead at 6:53 p.
m. He was 49 years old.
The execution closes a case that haunted Garland for more than a decade, one defined by a grandmother’s final plea for help and a death sentence delivered 13 years to the day after she was consumed by flames.
