Media Frenzy Gnaws Away on Death Row : Punishment: Woman awaiting execution in Texas says, 'I do want to feel like I'm a human being and not just a number . . . '

Media Frenzy Gnaws Away on Death Row : Punishment: Woman awaiting execution in Texas says, ‘I do want to feel like I’m a human being and not just a number . . . ‘

By MICHAEL GRACZYK

July 30, 1995 12 AM PT

ASSOCIATED PRESS

GATESVILLE, Tex. — Pam Perillo is more than a little tired of the interview requests from tabloids and the letters from strangers.

“Everybody wants exclusive rights to my life story. I’m beginning to feel like my name is ‘Money’ instead of Pam. It’s getting pretty frustrating,” she said.

Perillo, 39, is in line to become the first woman to be executed in Texas in more than a century and just the second in the nation since the U.S. Supreme Court allowed resumption of capital punishment.

“Everybody wants the story,” she told The Associated Press recently in her first interview about her case. “I don’t feel like I’m anything special because I’m sitting on Death Row. But I do want to feel like I’m a human being and not just a number . . . or for somebody to make money off of.”

She had faced a Sept. 12 date for lethal injection, but her lawyers won at least a temporary reprieve from the U.S. Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals last month. No hearing is scheduled and no new execution date has been set.

Perillo, who grew up in Los Angeles and turned to burglary and robbery to support a heroin habit, is on Death Row for a 1980 murder in a Houston house.

On a drug-induced high and eager to flee with $800 stolen from the place, she yanked the end of a rope wrapped around two men’s necks while a friend yanked the other end.

When her high wore off, she was in Denver. She surrendered and was tried and convicted. Her friend is also on Death Row; his ex-wife got five years’ probation.

Nationally, Perillo is among 49 women scheduled to die. One woman, Velma Barfield, was executed in North Carolina in 1984. Texas, California and Florida each have six women on Death Row.

“I know it’s big news that a female will be executed,” Perillo said. “But I don’t ever want to be a star. I have no control over that, but I don’t want cameras flashing off in my face when I’m going in.

“All I can say is it’s hard to live knowing what I did. I took two people’s lives. I’m sorry it happened.”

“Mostly, the main thing is I don’t think it’s fair to the victims’ families to rehash, rehash, rehash,” she said.