Amber McLaughlin was pronounced dead at 6:51 p. m. on January 3, 2023, inside the execution chamber at the Eastern Reception, Diagnostic and Correctional Center in Bon Terre, Missouri, becoming the first openly transgender person ever executed in the United States.
The 49-year-old, who spent nearly 17 years on death row, was put to death by lethal injection after a final meal of a cheeseburger, french fries, a strawberry milkshake and peanut M&M’s. But the historic nature of this execution masks a deeply controversial legal journey: the jury that convicted McLaughlin of first-degree murder and rape never voted for the death penalty. Missouri law allowed a judge to impose the sentence when the jury deadlocked on punishment.
The story of Amber McLaughlin did not begin with the murder of Beverly Gunther in 2003. It began decades earlier with a childhood that lawyers, judges and even former foster parents described as a nightmare. Born on January 13, 1973, to a mother who was a prostitute and a father who was an alcoholic, McLaughlin was placed into the foster care system as a toddler.
At age five, she was adopted by the McLaughlin family. On paper, this was a fresh start. In reality, according to court testimony and a clemency petition filed in the weeks before her execution, the adoptive father—a police officer—beat the children with a paddle and a nightstick, used a taser on them, and locked the cabinets so they could not access food.
A foster parent reportedly rubbed feces in Amber’s face when she was a toddler. Children who grew up in that house called it the “house of horrors.”
By the time she was eight years old, an elementary school counselor noted that her psychological situation was “extremely serious.” At nine, she was tested and found to have an IQ of 82, with diagnoses of ADHD and borderline intellectual disability. Her clemency petition later revealed brain damage, fetal alcohol syndrome, and a lifelong history of severe trauma.
But layered beneath all of this was a secret she could not safely share. Around the age of 12, she knew she was a woman. She would wear women’s clothing in private, hidden from her adoptive parents, knowing that discovery would bring consequences.
She kept that secret for decades. In her own words, “I knew then this is what I wanted to be. But I had to always do it secretly.”
The trauma of her childhood began to manifest in other ways. In 1992, at age 19 and still living as Scott McLaughlin, she was convicted of sexual assault against a 14-year-old girl. She was placed on the 𝒔𝒆𝒙 offender registry, a conviction that would follow her for the rest of her life and color how the legal system perceived her.
Fast forward to 2002. McLaughlin, still presenting as Scott, began a relationship with a woman named Beverly Gunther in St. Louis County, Missouri.
Beverly was 45 years old, recently divorced, rebuilding her life, finding her independence, establishing herself professionally. By the spring of 2003, that relationship had ended. And that is where the story turned dark.
After the breakup, McLaughlin began showing up at Beverly Gunther’s workplace, an office building in the Earth City area of suburban St. Louis. Court records show she would sometimes hide inside the building, waiting.
Beverly became frightened enough to obtain a restraining order. Police became involved, and officers began escorting her to her car at the end of each workday. She was trying to feel safe.
She was trying to get back to normal. On the night of November 20, 2003, she did not come home. Her neighbors noticed and called the police.
Officers went to her office building and found a trail of blood and a broken knife handle near her car, physical evidence consistent with a violent struggle.
McLaughlin was located and led police to a spot along the Mississippi River in St. Louis where Beverly Gunther’s body had been dumped in the underbrush. Prosecutors laid out the sequence of events: McLaughlin had driven to Beverly’s office, waited for her to leave work, forced her to the ground in the parking lot, raped her, stabbed her repeatedly with a steak knife, dragged her body to the car, placed it in the back seat, and drove to the river.
The next day, the day after the murder, McLaughlin cleaned the inside of her car with bleach. Then, according to reports, she became increasingly agitated and asked a friend to take her to a hospital, citing a mental disorder.
Beverly Gunther’s brother, Al Wetpol, later described her as “the best sister anybody could ask for, a charismatic woman, an animal lover, someone who paid her bills and easily won over friends. A woman who had been through the depression of a divorce and was finally starting to bring herself back on track.” Her family’s grief did not stop on the day of McLaughlin’s execution.
It had been going on for 20 years. The conviction for first-degree murder, forcible rape, and armed criminal action was not contested; the evidence was overwhelming. But the sentencing phase is where the case took a turn that would echo through the courts for nearly two decades.
After finding McLaughlin guilty, the jury was asked to decide the sentence: life in prison without parole or death. They could not agree. The jury deadlocked.
In the vast majority of U. S. states that have the death penalty, a deadlocked jury on sentencing automatically results in life in prison.
Missouri is not one of those states. Along with Indiana, Missouri gives a judge the legal authority to step in and impose the death sentence when a jury cannot reach a unanimous decision. Judge Steven H.
Goldman handed down the death sentence on November 3, 2006. Critically, before becoming a judge, Goldman had worked as a prosecutor and had helped draft the very statutory language that gave him the authority to override a deadlocked jury and impose death.
There was another issue that McLaughlin’s legal team would fight over for the next decade. During the sentencing phase, the defense attorney promised in his opening statement that the jury would hear expert mental health testimony about the childhood 𝓪𝓫𝓾𝓼𝓮, intellectual disability, brain damage, and trauma that shaped McLaughlin’s life. That testimony was pulled at the last minute.
The jury never heard it. In 2016, a federal district court judge ruled that this failure constituted ineffective assistance of counsel, vacated the death sentence, and called it a “grievous error” that had prejudiced the outcome. For a moment, it seemed McLaughlin’s sentence might be changed to life in prison.
Then the U. S. Court of Appeals for the 8th Circuit reversed that ruling and reinstated the death penalty.
The U. S. Supreme Court declined to hear the case.
The execution was back on schedule.
While the legal battles played out, something significant was happening inside Potosi Correctional Center in Washington County, Missouri. About three years before her execution, McLaughlin began to transition. She started receiving hormone therapy, which became available to transgender inmates in Missouri following a landmark 2018 lawsuit filed by another transgender prisoner named Jessica Hicklin.
Hicklin had challenged the state’s refusal to provide gender-affirming care, arguing it constituted cruel and unusual punishment. She won. That victory opened a door for McLaughlin.
Hicklin, who became McLaughlin’s friend in prison, recalled the moment she was first introduced to Amber. “Now, this makes sense,” Hicklin thought. “I’ve known you for a long time.
You didn’t necessarily seem very comfortable in your skin and now you’re smiling.”
McLaughlin had said she knew she wanted to be a woman from the time she was 12 years old. Decades of hiding, fear, 𝓪𝓫𝓾𝓼𝓮, and shame ended only in the final years of her life inside a prison cell. Hicklin described her as a vulnerable person, someone who feared being victimized inside the prison system, a fear that is unfortunately more common for transgender inmates.
But she also described McLaughlin as a mentor to other transgender prisoners, someone who used her own experience to help others navigate a system rarely built with them in mind. As the January 3, 2023 execution date approached, a growing clemency campaign emerged, drawing backing from unexpected voices.
A 27-page application filed on December 12, 2022 detailed McLaughlin’s history of childhood 𝓪𝓫𝓾𝓼𝓮, mental health diagnoses, and argued that critical evidence originally promised to the jury but never presented could have challenged the basis for her death sentence. The effort gained support from seven former Missouri judges, including retired Chief Justice Michael A. Wolff, who argued she had effectively been denied a jury decision on her fate.
Two members of Congress, Cori Bush and Emanuel Cleaver, also urged clemency, emphasizing that justice and the sanctity of life are not mutually exclusive. An online petition gathered thousands of signatures. Dozens of protesters gathered outside the prison on the day of the execution.
But on January 3, 2023, Governor Mike Parson denied the request, stating that justice would be carried out.
On the morning of her execution, McLaughlin was served her final meal. She asked for a cheeseburger, french fries, a strawberry milkshake, and peanut M&M’s. Two days earlier, on New Year’s Day, she had submitted her final written statement to the Missouri Department of Corrections.
It read: “I am sorry for what I did. I am a loving and caring person.” She signed it as Scott.
Her legal name had never been formally changed. In her death warrant, in the prison records, in the governor’s post-execution statement, she was referred to by her birth name. Her attorneys and supporters used Amber.
At 6:39 p. m. on January 3, 2023, the lethal injection process began.
McLaughlin lay in a small, white room on a hospital-style bed. A strap visible beneath the white linen held her in place. Her spiritual advisor, a woman named Lauren Bennett, sat by her side.
Witnesses included state representatives, members of the media, two individuals representing Beverly Gunther’s family, and two individuals there on McLaughlin’s behalf. None of the witnesses chose to speak to the press afterward.
Five milligrams of pentobarbital were administered. Bennett appeared to speak quietly to McLaughlin, to sing to her. McLaughlin breathed heavily once, twice.
Her eyes closed. At 6:51 p. m.
, she was declared dead. Amber McLaughlin became the first openly transgender person executed in the United States. She was the 17th woman executed since the U.
S. Supreme Court reinstated the death penalty in 1976. She was the second woman executed in the state of Missouri, the first since Bonnie Heady in 1953, who had been put to death for the kidnapping and murder of a 6-year-old child.
She was 49 years old.
In the weeks and days surrounding the execution, Beverly Gunther’s family watched as coverage focused almost entirely on Amber McLaughlin, on her identity, on the historic nature of the execution, on the clemency campaign. Beverly’s younger brother, Al Wedepohl, was one of the two people who witnessed the execution, specifically because he wanted someone there to represent Beverly, to be present for her, because in his view, she had been lost in the story. He was right to feel that way.
Beverly Gunther was 45 years old when she was killed. She was rebuilding her life after a difficult divorce. She had been afraid, afraid enough to get a restraining order, afraid enough to need a police escort to her car at night.
She had been trying to protect herself. She did not make it home on November 20, 2003.
Her family has described the shopping trips they have not been able to take with her, the lunch dates that never happened, the phone calls that stopped, the pedicures, the weddings, the holidays, all of it gone. An absence that has stretched for more than 20 years. One family member said simply that no one should die the way Beverly died.
They made clear that while the death penalty does not bring Beverly back, they believed McLaughlin needed to be held accountable. They were relieved when the clemency request was denied. Their grief is not a footnote.
It is the foundation of this entire story.
Amber McLaughlin was executed on January 3, 2023. She had lived a life marked by severe trauma, serious crime, a historic legal battle, and a personal identity she was only able to fully claim in the final years of her life. Beverly Gunther was murdered on November 20, 2003.
She had been rebuilding her life, trying to feel safe, trying to move forward. She deserved to make it home that night. The state of Missouri said it delivered justice on January 3, 2023.
Whether you agree with that conclusion depends on what you believe justice looks like. That is a question this case will leave open for a very long time. The debate over the death penalty, the role of judicial override, the treatment of transgender inmates, and the weight of childhood trauma will continue to reverberate long after the last witness stepped out of that quiet prison chamber in Bon Terre.
Amber McLaughlin is gone. Beverly Gunther is gone. The questions they leave behind are not.