JACKSON, Georgia – Kelly Renee Gissendaner, the first woman executed in Georgia in 70 years, was pronounced dead by lethal injection at 12:29 a.m. Wednesday, September 30, 2015, inside the Georgia Diagnostic and Classification Prison, ending a 47-year life marked by a chilling murder plot, a failed love 𝒶𝒻𝒻𝒶𝒾𝓇, and a final, trembling hymn.
She had entered the execution chamber crying, her voice breaking as she sang “Amazing Grace” between shallow breaths, witnesses said. Her final words, delivered with tears streaming down her face, were: “Tell my children I love them. Tell the Gissendaner family I’m so sorry.
That amazing man lost his life because of me. And I hope they can find peace.”
Gissendaner, mother of three, had spent the last hours of her life with her children, her pastor, and a chaplain, reading scripture and singing hymns. Her last meal – cheese dip with chips, Texas toast, cornbread, buttermilk pie, and a Sprite – went largely untouched as the clock ticked toward 7 p. m.
, the original execution time.
But delays stretched the process. After multiple legal battles that reached the U. S.
Supreme Court – and a last-minute plea from Pope Francis – the state of Georgia moved forward. At 12:21 a. m.
, the lethal injection began flowing. She sang softly, then stopped. At 12:29 a.
m. , she was gone.
The execution ended a saga that began on a bone-cold February night in 1997, when Gissendaner handed her lover, Gregory Owen, a steel bat and a hunting knife, then drove off to establish an alibi at a local bar. Owen, acting on her orders, ambushed her husband, Douglas Gissendaner, as he returned home from work, forced him into his own car, drove to a remote clearing in Gwinnett County, and beat and stabbed him to death.
Douglas Gissendaner, 33, a mechanic and devoted stepfather to Kelly’s children from previous relationships, was told to kneel before the attack. Owen stripped the body of a watch and wedding ring to stage a robbery, then torched the car. Kelly, upon learning it was done, asked simply: “Is it done?”
No tears. No prayer. Just the cold calculation of a woman who believed murder was easier than divorce.
The motive, prosecutors proved, was a $250,000 life insurance policy – a policy Douglas never knew existed, with Kelly’s name forged on the documents. She had moved back into the family home weeks before the murder, taking smiling family photos and cooking dinners while secretly plotting his death.
Investigators cracked the case when a park ranger discovered the burned car. Kelly’s performance as a grieving widow collapsed under phone records revealing dozens of calls to Owen and her own jailhouse letters, in which she floated plans to silence witnesses. “Rob them, scare them, hurt them if needed,” she wrote with calm detachment.
At trial, Owen, who accepted a life-without-parole plea deal in exchange for testifying, said: “She planned it all. Every step. When I hesitated, she told me we were doing it for us, for love, for the money, for our future.”
The jury took just five hours to convict Gissendaner of first-degree murder. When the death sentence was read, she did not flinch. No tears, no gasp – only an icy stare forward.
For 18 years she sat on Georgia’s death row – the only woman there – isolated, alone, with no other female inmates to talk to. Inside her cell, she underwent a transformation. She studied theology, ministered to other inmates, wrote long letters of remorse to her children, and sang hymns with the prison chaplain.
More than 60,000 people signed petitions pleading for clemency. Pope Francis personally urged the state to spare her life.
But Douglas’s family never forgave her. His sister told reporters outside the courthouse: “She thought she could outsmart all of us – 𝓀𝒾𝓁𝓁 him and dance around justice. Not today.
Not ever.”
Kelly Gissendaner was born Kelly Brooksher in 1968 into a chaotic household in rural Georgia. By 15 she was pregnant; by 17 she had two children. She bounced between toxic relationships, alcohol, and despair.
Then came Douglas – a steady, patient man who offered structure and stability. They married, divorced, remarried. But Kelly never found peace.
In the late 1990s, she fell for Gregory Owen – a younger, dangerous man – and the 𝒶𝒻𝒻𝒶𝒾𝓇 became the fuse that would destroy three lives.
Her lawyers argued her childhood shaped her, but the courts were unmoved. The evidence of premeditation was overwhelming: she refused a life-in-prison plea deal, confident she could charm a jury. She couldn’t.
As the drugs entered her veins Wednesday, witnesses said she sobbed and sang. Her final meal – cheese dip, chips, Texas toast, cornbread, buttermilk pie – remained half-eaten. She had no appetite.
The execution chamber was sterile, quiet. Guards, a chaplain, and two witnesses from the victim’s family stood behind a pane of glass, watching. Gissendaner’s children had left hours earlier, having said their goodbyes.
“I just want my kids to know that love still beats out hate,” she said in a statement earlier that evening, her voice recorded at 5:16 p. m. Tuesday.
“And because of me, a good man lost his life.”
That statement was part of a final declaration read by prison officials. “She was very strong,” an official said. “She handled herself with poise beyond belief.”
But in the final moments, that poise cracked. The hymn faded. The shallow breaths stopped.
At 12:29 a. m. , Kelly Renee Gissendaner became the first woman executed in Georgia since 1945.
The case will forever stand as a grim testament to a broken love triangle, a $250,000 life insurance policy, and a woman who chose murder over divorce. Gregory Owen remains in prison for life – alive, but burdened by the guilt of carrying out her plan.
For Douglas Gissendaner’s family, there is no closure. Only the hollow echo of a son, a father, a brother whose life was traded for a few thousand dollars and a lover’s fantasy.
And for the state of Georgia, this chapter closes with a final, chilling image: a woman strapped to a gurney, sobbing, singing “Amazing Grace,” and telling the world she was sorry.