JUST IN: Arizona Executed Him In The Most Painful Way For 2 Hours | 600 Gasps Before Death

What’s excruciating is seeing your dad laying there in a pool of blood, seeing your sister laying there in a pool of blood. That’s excruciating.  July 23rd, 2014. Florence State Prison, Arizona. A man lies flat on a gurney inside the state’s death chamber. His arms are stretched out. Straps hold him down.

 The room is dead quiet. At 1:52 in the afternoon, the drugs go in and then    nothing works the way it should. One minute passes, then five, then 10, then the gasping starts. Loud, desperate,  relentless. Witnesses in the room freeze. They look at each other. Something is clearly wrong. By the time it is over, that man will have been injected 15 times.

 He will gasp more than 600 times. One reporter in the room will later say his breathing sounded exactly like a fish gulping for air. An execution that should have taken 10 minutes will stretch to 1 hour and 57 minutes.  Inmate put to death.  Joseph Wood had been on death row for the 1989 murder of his girlfriend and her father.

 Witnesses say he was gasping for air for nearly 2 hours.  is what makes this story even harder to believe. Just before the drugs were administered, that same man looked directly at the family of the people he murdered. He smiled at them. Not a single word of remorse, not a single apology, just a smile and a prayer directed at the family whose lives he destroyed.

 What this convicted killer said to his victim’s family in his final moments and the way he said it is something the Deats family will never forget. And what happened inside that death chamber over the next 2 hours is impossible to believe. His name is Joseph Rudolph Wood III, double murderer, bloody death row inmate, and the man at the center of one of the most controversial executions in American history. Welcome back to Red Mark Files.

If you are new here, hit that subscribe button right now because today’s case is one you will not find covered like this anywhere else. Let’s get into it. To understand what happened on August 7th, 1989, you first need to know who was lost. Debra Deats, known to everyone close to her as Debbie, was 29 years old. She lived in Tucson, Arizona.

 By all accounts, she was a young woman full of life, deeply connected to her family, and hardworking by nature. She did not work for a corporation or a stranger. She worked at her family’s own auto body shop, the business her father had built with his bare hands. That shop was not just a place of work.

 It was a place of pride. And Debbie was right there in the middle of it. Her father, Eugene Deats, was 55 years old. A man who worked with his hands his whole life and built something real out of it. That auto body shop in Tucson was his. He showed up every day. He kept it running. And when his daughter started showing up for work beside him, it was a family affair, the kind that holds a community together.

Eugene was also aware of something most fathers dread. He knew that the man his daughter had been romantically involved with, Joseph Rudolph Wood III, was not taking the breakup well, not at all. Eugene saw it. He felt it. And according to those who knew the family, he was worried.

 Because Debbie had made her decision. By the summer of 1989, the relationship was over. She had walked away. She had moved on. In court records, she is described as Wood’s estranged girlfriend. And in cases like this, that word carries tremendous weight. She was not hiding. She was not running. She was doing what any person has every right to do, living her life, going to work, and building her future.

But Wood could not accept it. What he did next on August 7th, 1989, did not just end two lives. It set off a chain of events that would take 25 years to fully reach its conclusion. And that conclusion was anything but clean. So, who exactly was Joseph Rudolph Wood III? On paper, he looked like nobody special.

He was born on December 6th, 1958 in Belton, Texas. At some point, he made his way to Arizona. He settled in. He blended in. To anyone passing by, he was just another man living an ordinary life in an ordinary town. That was the surface. Beneath it was a very different story.

 Court records do not show a long history of violent criminal convictions before the murders. But, the people who knew him and the testimony that later came out at trial painted a clear picture of a man with serious red flags. A man who needed to be in control. A man who did not handle rejection well at all.

 His relationship with Debbie had been marked by escalating possessiveness. As she pulled away, he pushed harder. When she made it clear the relationship was over, something in him refused to accept it. Witnesses who knew him described a temperament that turned dangerously unstable when he felt challenged or dismissed. And here is the detail that matters most.

 The auto body shop where Debbie and her father Eugene worked every single day, Wood knew exactly where it was. He had been in that world. He knew their routine. He knew where to find them. Court records also show no documented evidence of Wood having children of his own. No prominent family network appears in the case files.

 In the story of this crime, Joseph Rudolph Wood III stands largely alone. A man whose entire focus in those final weeks had narrowed down to one thing. A woman who had chosen to walk away from him. And he was not going to let that stand. The summer of 1989 was not a peaceful one for the Deats family. Debbie had ended things with Wood.

 That should have been the end of the story. But, Wood did not see it that way. And as the weeks passed, the tension around the Deats family began to grow. Eugene felt it. A father always does. He watched his daughter go to work every morning. He watched her carry on with her life, quietly, bravely, without giving Wood the reaction he was looking for. And Eugene stayed close.

 He was not going to leave her exposed. That shop was his place of work, yes, but it was also where he could keep an eye on things. Keep an eye on her. Debbie, for her part, refused to shrink. She kept showing up. She kept working. She was not going to let a man who could not accept no take her sense of safety away from her.

 That kind of courage is worth naming because it is real and it cost her everything. Meanwhile, Wood’s behavior was becoming harder to ignore. According to court testimony, his anger was building. The rejection had settled in and instead of walking away, he was moving in the opposite direction. Those who knew him could see that he was reaching a breaking point.

 His mood was volatile. His focus was dangerous. And yet, no restraining order was ever filed. No formal police intervention appears in the records before August 7th. The warning signs were there. The danger was real, but the formal protection that might have changed everything simply was not in place. The days kept moving.

 August arrived and the clock kept ticking. Everyone around them could feel that something was wrong. What they could not know was that by the end of that August afternoon, two people would be dead and the family auto body shop in Tucson would become a crime scene. Here is something that separates this case from many others you will find in true crime.

 There were no accomplices, no middle men, no one Wood recruited or paid or pulled into his plan. Court records confirm it clearly. This was a solo act from beginning to end and that matters because in cases where a second or third person is involved, there is always a chance that someone talks. Someone gets nervous. Someone drops a warning.

 That did not happen here. There was no loose thread for the Deats family to pull. No tip that could have reached them in time. What court records do confirm is this. Wood did not stumble into that auto body shop by accident on August 7th, 1989. He arrived armed with a firearm. He walked in with a weapon already in his possession.

 He had a target, two of them in fact. This was not a confrontation that got out of hand. It was not a fight that turned physical in the heat of the moment. He came prepared. He came to shoot, and that is exactly what he did. Witnesses who knew Wood in the period leading up to the murders later testified about his state of mind. They spoke about his anger, his fixation on Debbie, the things he said, the way he was acting.

 People around him could see where his head was, but none of that testimony stopped what was coming because Wood had already made up his mind alone, quietly, and without anyone to answer to. If you have been following along and this case is hitting differently, drop a comment below. And if you have not subscribed yet, now is the time.

 We are just getting to the part that changes everything. August 7th, 1989. Tucson, Arizona. It was a Tuesday, an ordinary work day. The sun was up. The Deitz family auto body shop was open for business, the same way it had been open countless times before. A place built on hard work. A place that belonged to a family.

 A place that should have been completely safe. Debbie was there, doing what she always did, showing up, working, living her life. Her father Eugene was there, too. 55 years old. His shop, his business, his daughter beside him. Neither of them knew what was coming through the door. Wood arrived armed. He walked into that shop carrying a firearm. He did not come to talk.

 He did not come to argue. Court records confirm he came with one purpose, and he carried it out with devastating speed. He shot Eugene Deitz first, a 55-year-old man, a father, a man at work in the business he built, shot down in his own shop. Then Wood turned the gun on Debbie, 29 years old, his estranged girlfriend, the woman who had simply chosen to end a relationship and move forward with her life.

 She did not get that chance. Court records confirmed both deaths resulted from deliberate, targeted gunshot wounds. This was not random. Every single shot was directed at a specific person. The chaos that followed was immediate. Witnesses at or near the scene reacted. Someone called 911. The call went out. Law enforcement responded and made their way to the auto body shop on what had started as a perfectly normal Tuesday afternoon.

 When first responders arrived, they found two bodies, a father and his daughter, both gone. The shop that Eugene had spent years building was now a crime scene, marked off with tape, surrounded by officers, stripped of everything it once represented. Years later, at Wood’s execution, Debbie’s sister, Jean Brown, put into words what no crime report ever could.

 She said,  “What’s excruciating is seeing your dad lying there in a pool of blood, seeing your sister lying there in a pool of blood.”  Those words, spoken on July 23rd, 2014, drew a straight, unbroken line from that Tuesday afternoon all the way to the death chamber, 25 years apart, the same pain, still raw, still bleeding.

 As for Wood, he did not disappear. He did not vanish into the desert or cross a state line. Court records confirm he was apprehended. He did not evade law enforcement for long. The only question left now was what the state of Arizona was going to do about it. When the shots were fired, everything stopped. For the Deats family, August 7th, 1989 did not just mark the loss of two people.

 It marked the moment their entire world split in two, into the life they had before that Tuesday and the one they were left to carry after it. Jean Brown, Debbie’s sister, lost both her father and her sibling in a single afternoon. One phone call, one moment, gone. The grief that followed was not the kind that fades with time.

 It was the kind that reshapes a person completely. An entire family network, parents, siblings, extended relatives, all thrown into shock and mourning at once. The Tucson community felt it, too. Two members of a working, contributing family, a father and his daughter, had been killed at their own place of business on an ordinary Tuesday.

 That kind of loss does not stay contained to one household. It moves through a community. As for Wood, court records and trial testimony speak to his behavior in the immediate period following the shootings. He was located and taken into custody. He did not resist in a way that extended the investigation significantly.

 Law enforcement moved quickly. Investigators processed the scene. What they found confirmed what the evidence already pointed to, a targeted attack, two victims, one shooter, a firearm, and a motive that had nothing to do with money, property, or gain of any kind. This was not about insurance. It was not about inheritance.

 Court records document no financial motive whatsoever. This was personal. This was about possession, about a man who believed that a woman who had left him had no right to simply walk away. That belief cost two innocent people their lives. This was not a case that kept investigators guessing. Wood had a documented relationship with both Debbie and her father Eugene.

 Witnesses could place him at the scene. The crime scene itself confirmed the rest. Law enforcement moved with purpose, and Wood was identified and arrested in connection with the murders without significant delay. When the formal charges came down, they were serious. Court records show Wood was charged with two counts of first-degree murder, one for Eugene Deats, one for Debra Deats.

But the charges did not stop there. He was also charged with two counts of aggravated assault against a police officer, arising from his conduct and interaction with law enforcement around the time of his arrest. That detail alone speaks to the kind of man investigators were dealing with. The prosecution’s path was clear.

 To secure a first-degree murder conviction, they needed to establish premeditation. Wood planned the attack in advance, and the facts made that argument almost straightforwardly. He had arrived at the shop armed. He had targeted two specific people. He had fired on both of them. That is not a crime of impulse.

 That is a crime of intent, and intent, the prosecution was about to argue, was exactly what the evidence proved beyond any reasonable doubt. As the case moved toward trial, the evidence against Wood was already stacked high. The weapon, the witnesses, the crime scene, the documented relationship between Wood and both victims, the fact that he had walked into that auto body shop armed and walked out having shot two people dead.

 Every piece pointed to the same conclusion, and the prosecution was ready to lay it all out piece by piece in front of a jury. There was no self-defense argument that could hold up here. Eugene Deats and Debbie were at work. They were not threatening anyone. They were not armed. Court records confirmed that both shootings were deliberate and targeted.

 Wood made the choice to walk in armed. He made the choice to pull the trigger twice. The defense faced an uphill battle from the start. When the facts are this direct and the evidence this clear, there is very little room to maneuver. No credible alibi. No alternate suspect. No ambiguity in the physical evidence. Meanwhile, the Deats family sat and waited.

 Jean Brown and those who had lost Debbie and Eugene wanted one thing, accountability. The Tucson community, shaken by the loss of two people at a local family business, watched closely as the legal process moved forward. The courtroom was the last stage, and Wood was about to face it. The jury did not take long.

 And when the verdict came in, it sent Joseph Rudolph Wood III on a journey that would take 25 years and end in a death chamber that became the center of a national controversy. The verdict came back clear. Guilty. Two counts of first-degree murder. Two counts of aggravated assault against a police officer. Every charge confirmed. The jury had looked at the evidence, weighed it carefully, and returned with a verdict that left no room for doubt.

Then came the sentencing. The judge handed down two death sentences. One for the murder of Eugene Dietz. One for the murder of Debra Dietz. In addition, Wood received two 15-year prison sentences for the aggravated assault convictions to run at the same time as each other. The death sentences, however, were the ones that defined what came next.

 The court’s rationale was straightforward. This attack was premeditated. It was targeted. Wood had arrived at that shop armed and with clear intent. The impact on the Dietz family, the grief, the loss, the permanent damage done to an innocent family was placed firmly on the record. But the story did not end in that courtroom.

 Over the next 25 years, Wood’s legal team filed round after round of appeals. They challenged his conviction. They challenged Arizona’s execution procedures. They challenged the constitutionality of how the state plan to carry out his death sentence. Every avenue was explored. Every legal door was knocked on. By the time the 2010s arrived, the argument had shifted entirely.

 Wood’s attorneys were no longer contesting his guilt. The evidence had long settled that question. Instead, they turned their attention to the drugs Arizona planned to use to execute him. A combination of midazolam and hydromorphone. Medical experts had already raised serious concerns. This specific drug combination had rarely been used in executions.

 It was considered experimental. Specialists warned it could cause undue suffering and was not guaranteed to cause death within a reasonable time frame. Those warnings, it turned out, were more accurate than anyone wanted to admit. From 1989 to 2014, Joseph Rudolph Wood III sat on death row in Arizona. 25 years, a quarter of a century.

 Round after round of appeals, legal filing after legal filing. Every challenge ultimately failed. Every door eventually closed. And on July 23rd, 2014, the final date arrived. Florence State Prison, Arizona. The execution was scheduled and there was nothing left to stop it. The night before, Wood was offered what many condemned inmates receive, a special last meal, a final personal request before death.

 He declined. Instead, he ate sausage and mashed potatoes, the same meal served to every other inmate in the prison that evening. No ceremony, no special treatment, just a standard tray of food in a prison cell. The next afternoon, Wood was brought into the death chamber. The Deats family was there, watching, waiting.

 After 25 years, they had come to see it through to the end. Wood looked directly at them and began to speak. He thanked Jesus Christ as his savior. He said his pain was ending. And then, with full composure, he told them, “May God forgive you all.” Then he smiled at them. Jean Brown and the rest of the Deats family were immediately and visibly enraged.

 The audacity of that smile, directed at a family he had destroyed, was something no one in that room forgot. At 1:52 in the afternoon, the drugs were administered. The first dose, 50 mg of midazolam and 50 mg of hydromorphone, went in. According to the state’s protocol, that single dose was supposed to be enough. For about 11 minutes, it seemed to be working.

 Then a witness noticed his lip quiver. Then came a gasp. Then another, and another, and another. A witness told ABC News, “It was loud. It wasn’t just some nice peaceful sleeping sound. Everybody was thinking something went wrong.” The IV team kept going. A second dose at 2:09 in the afternoon. A third at 2:13.

 By 3:09, the 10th drug protocol had been completed. Wood was still gasping. One Associated Press reporter counted more than 600 gasps. A media witness said his breathing looked exactly like a fish gulping for air. Wood’s attorneys, watching in real time, filed an emergency appeal directly to the United States Supreme Court while their client was still alive on the gurney.

 Their motion stated plainly, “He has been gasping and snorting for more than an hour. He is still alive.” Justice Anthony Kennedy denied the appeal. The word came back after Wood was already dead. At 3:46 in the afternoon, the 15th and final drug protocol was completed. In total, Wood had received 750 mg of midazolam and 750 mg of hydromorphone, exactly 15 times the amount the protocol called for.

 At 3:49 in the afternoon, Joseph Rudolph Wood III was pronounced dead. The entire procedure had taken 1 hour and 57 minutes. The response from state officials was immediate and deeply divided. Charles Ryan, director of Arizona’s Department of Corrections, stated that Wood was comatose and never in pain or distress.

 Stephanie Grisham, a spokeswoman for the Arizona Attorney General’s Office who witnessed the execution, said there was no gasping, only snoring, and called it quite peaceful. Wood’s public defender, Dale Baich, saw it entirely differently. He called the execution a direct violation of the United States Constitution’s ban on cruel and unusual punishment and said it could have been prevented.

 The very next day, July 24th, 2014, Arizona suspended all executions pending a full review of its procedures. Executions in the state did not resume for eight years. It was not until May 11th, 2022, that Arizona carried out another execution when Clarence Dixon was put to death for the rape and murder of a 21-year-old woman.

 Eight years of silence because of one afternoon that lasted 1 hour and 57 minutes. After it was all over, Jean Brown stood before the cameras and said what the Deats family had carried for 25 years. What I saw today with him being executed, it is nothing compared to what happened on August 7th, 1989.

 What’s excruciating is seeing your father lying there in a pool of blood, seeing your sister lying in a pool of blood. 1 hour and 57 minutes in a death chamber against a lifetime of grief. That is the weight the Deats family has carried every single day since that Tuesday afternoon in Tucson. Governor Jan Brewer ordered a formal review of Arizona’s execution procedures.

 It was a quiet acknowledgement that something had gone wrong, even as state officials publicly insisted the process had been peaceful. Nationally, Wood’s case did not stand alone. Alongside the deaths of Dennis McGuire in Ohio and Clayton Lockett in Oklahoma, it triggered a wide-reaching federal review of execution protocols across the country.

 His death became a landmark moment in the American debate over capital punishment. The irony is impossible to ignore. A man who walked into a family auto body shop armed and ready to deliver death, spent nearly 2 hours experiencing a death the state of Arizona could not cleanly deliver. What moment in this case hit you the hardest? Was it the murders, the 25-year wait, the execution itself, or Jean Brown’s words? Drop it in the comments.

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