Texas executes man for killing pregnant ex-girlfriend, her 7-year-old son in Fort Worth

An Azle man who was seeking to stop his execution because he claimed religious freedom violations and indifference to his medical needs was executed Wednesday for strangling his pregnant ex-girlfriend and her 7-year-old son in Fort Worth in 2005.

Stephen Barbee, 55, was killed by lethal injection Wednesday evening at the Texas state penitentiary in Huntsville. He was pronounced dead in Huntsville at 7:35 p.m.

All executions in Texas take place any time after 6 p.m. and all executions are carried out at the Huntsville Unit of the Texas Department of Criminal Justice.

Barbee was convicted of capital murder in the 2005 killings of 34-year-old Lisa Underwood, who was pregnant, and her son, 7-year-old Jayden, in their Fort Worth home. Their bodies were later found in a shallow grave in Denton County.

Fort Worth police have said Barbee admitted to the killings, but Barbee has since said he was coerced into the confession.

Barbee’s attorneys asked the courts to stay his execution, arguing his religious rights are being violated because the state prison system, in the wake of a ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court on what spiritual advisers can do while in the execution chamber, did not create a written policy on the issue, according to an Associated Press report.

The SCOTUS blog, an official source for information on rulings and Supreme Court activity, announced Wednesday afternoon the Supreme Court rejected his request to postpone his execution. Prison officials have said Barbee’s spiritual adviser, a Salvation Army minister, would be allowed to touch his foot and leg and hold his hand while praying aloud in the execution chamber.

Investigators said that Barbee killed Underwood while believing the unborn child was his and would ruin his new marriage. DNA evidence later proved the baby wasn’t Barbee’s.

He was accused by prosecutors of suffocating Underwood and then doing the same to Jayden when Jayden heard the attack and walked in on it.

When detectives first brought him in for questioning, Barbee said he hadn’t seen Underwood for months. But when he went to the bathroom alone with a detective, police said that he admitted to the killing. The conversation wasn’t recorded, and Barbee later said it was coerced.

An order to stay the execution last year left Underwood’s mother, Sheila, who was planning on attending the execution in 2021, questioning when she, and her family, will “finally receive justice.”

“I’ve forgiven Stephen. I really have in my heart, but there’s a difference between forgiveness and justice, and my family deserves justice,” Sheila Underwood told the Star-Telegram in 2021. “My thinking was, he watched my family take their last breath, I will watch him take his last breath.”

This report contains information from the Star-Telegram’s archives.