Meet Kelly Renee Gissendaner

Kelly Renee Gissendaner and Doug Gissendaner had an extremely complicated relationship.Over the course of their relationship they’d been married, divorced, remarried, separated, and reunited between 1989 and 1997. Gissendaner had been in a relationship with Gregory Bruce Owen. On the evening of February 7, 1997, Gissendaner drove Owen to her home, gave him a nightstick and a large knife, and left him inside the home to wait for her husband. Gissendaner then drove to a friend's house, and, upon Gissendaner's insistence that the group keep their plans for the evening, she and her friends went out to a nightclub. The victim arrived home shortly after 10:00 p.m. Owen confronted the him from behind, held a knife to his throat, forced him to drive to a remote location, forced him to walk into the woods and kneel, and then killed him by striking him with the nightstick and then stabbing him repeatedly in the back and neck with the knife. As instructed by Gissendaner, Owen took the victim's watch and wedding ring before killing him to make the murder appear like a robbery. Gissendaner returned home from the nightclub at about the time the murder was being carried out, paged Owen with a numeric signal, and then drove to the crime scene. After asking if her husband was dead, she took a flashlight and went toward the body to inspect it. Owen burned the victim's automobile with kerosene provided by Gissendaner, and the pair returned to their respective homes in Gissendaner's automobile. After her arrest, Gissendaner called her best friend and confessed to her active and willing role in the murder, although she then called a second time and claimed that she was coerced into participating. Gissendaner also wrote a letter while in jail in an effort to hire someone to give perjured testimony and to rob and beat witnesses. Gissendaner was convicted in 1998 of recruiting her lover to kill her husband. Gregory Owen, testified against her as part of a plea bargain that landed him a life sentence but spared him from the death penalty.  Kelly Renee Gissendaner was executed by lethal injection on Tuesday, September 29.