Donald Eugene Harding (March 1, 1949 – April 6, 1992) was an American serial robber, serial killer, and spree killer who committed at least six murders between December 1979 and January 1980. Harding was executed in 1992 by the state of Arizona by gas chamber for two murders he committed there. Harding became the first person to be executed in Arizona since 1976 when the death penalty was reinstated nationwide. His execution was particularly noteworthy and controversial due to the fact that his death in the gas chamber took eleven minutes and was reportedly gruesome. Harding's execution ultimately provided momentum for the movement to provide Arizona death row inmates with a choice between the gas chamber and lethal injection. Early life Harding was born in his house in a small, rural Arkansas community called Goodrich, located within Augusta. By the time a physician arrived to assist with the birth, Harding was struggling for air; this resulted in Harding incurring organic brain syndrome. He also suffered from neonatal jaundice. Harding's father was an alcoholic who abandoned Harding, his older brother Darryl, and their mother Maycle. When Harding was a toddler, he was admitted to the Child Guidance Clinic in Little Rock, Arkansas, where a doctor treating him wrote in a report that his mother was "very immature and narcissistic" and unfit to care for her sons. When Harding's mother remarried to a man named Fred Brown who contracted tuberculosis, the family relocated to a sanatorium, where Harding alleged that nurses and staff regularly beat and mistreated him. One specific allegation involved a nurse dunking Harding's face in a toilet after he wet his bed. The family stayed at the sanatorium for approximately 2 years before leaving, after which Harding moved repeatedly between living with his mother and his grandparents. Ultimately, he settled with his mother in an impoverished area of North Little Rock. Harding witnessed Brown beating his mother; while he was in school, he struggled with behavioral issues, including defiance and truancy. A doctor reported in February 1960, shortly before Harding turned 11, that Harding displayed suicidal tendencies when he was 9 years old, slashing his wrists and leaving a suicide note in which he threatened to "jump in a river." That same doctor noted that while Harding's brother Darryl displayed none of the problematic behaviors Harding did, Donald Harding had "expressed the desire to kill and choke people. .