The Bad Wife : Kelly Gissendaner

In February 1997, 30-year-old Douglas Gissendaner left a friend’s house after working on cars and drove home to the house he shared with his wife, Kelly, in Auburn, Georgia. He never made it back alive. What looked at first like a robbery gone wrong in a remote wooded area of Gwinnett County was anything but random. Douglas was forced at knifepoint into his own car, driven deep into the woods near Harbins Park, ordered to his knees, beaten with a nightstick, and stabbed repeatedly in the neck. His watch and wedding ring were taken to stage a robbery.

His body was left for animals to find. The real architect of the crime was not the man who wielded the knife—Gregory Owen, Kelly’s lover—but Kelly herself. She had planned the murder for months, rejected divorce as an option because she believed Douglas would “never leave her alone,” and wanted the house and the life insurance money. On the night of the killing she drove Owen to the house, handed him a nightstick and a hunting knife, then went out dancing with friends to create her alibi. She later returned to the scene as the murder was being carried out.

Timestamps
05:12 A New Family Forms
11:28 Army Life Unravels
18:41 Doug Goes Missing
28:14 Suspects Surface
38:14 The Body Is Found
50:43 The Murder Plot

Speaker 1: Welcome to Unspeakable, a true crime podcast. Or I tell

stories of real crimes with real victims, whose cases are

so shocking that many are left wondering how is this

even real? I use my experiences in law enforcement corrections,

and combined with my years as a criminal justice educator,

dig deep into complex cases of evil acts, some so

evil many feel they are unspeakable. Warning Unspeakable as intended

for mature audiences. If you are easily offended, then I'm

not your girl. Listening discretion is advised. Hey, y'all, it's

kJ You're back with another episode of Unspeakable. How's your

week go? And you know I'm gonna ask you that

I can tell you this. It's so damn hot outside.

I have just been walking around mad and thirsty all

damn day. I don't know about you, but I can't

catch your break. I need football season. I need a

big cold icy and a good deep tissue massage before

I just get into a bad attitude. Can I get

a n ame in for that someone out there? I'm

just tired of being hot. But it's Wednesday, We're halfway

through the week, and you're gonna get a banging episode.

And so I want to jump right into it, and

we're gonna head to the great state of Georgia, and

this is where a little peach named Kelly lived. I

know it's a great name, right, you love it? Well.

Kelly was born in Georgia and her early years weren't

the greatest. So things that you would expect whenever I

follow up with that sentence, things like poverty was a

consistent issue. And with that came the unfortunate common instance

of abuse. And that abuse was in multiple forms, not

just one Kelly. He was a subject to boomshit. Kelly

was subjected to physical abuse, mental abuse, as well as

sexual abuse as a little girl. And according to sworn affidavits,

which I did not read myself, I want to be

clear on this, but they were reasonably sourced, she had

been molested by multiple men throughout her youth. Her father

and her mother had divorced whenever she was really young,

but her mom amazingly met and married a new man

just eight days after her divorce. So I'm sure that

her picking skills were good and she was just making

good decisions for old Kelly girl. And as the story goes,

as you can probably imagine, Kelly was then molested by

her now stepfather when she turned about ten years old.

So his whole shtick on this was he complained that

they had gotten a new mattress and he said that

it was on comfortable, and so he would go and

sleep in Kelly's bed with her. This went on for

about six months, under the guys that her mattress leg

didn't hurt his back and it was more comfortable, and

this was obviously a ploy to have access to the

child without raising any eyebrows. And on top of that,

the adults in the home fought constantly in front of Kelly.

There was just chaos and this just never ending cycle

of abuse and misery and dysfunction underneath that roof. By

the time that she was in high school, she did

secretly dream of a way out to get far away

from this life that she was in and to go

and create a life of her own, but those dreams

were kept quiet as her days in school weren't much

fun either. According to Kelly, she wasn't the most popular kid,

as you can imagine, facing what she's already facing. She

was bullied, she wore glasses, she was picked on because

her clothes were old and and they just hand me

downs were common. She didn't have the cool gear to

wear to school. And then when her senior year rolled around,

there were mumblings that Kelly might be pregnant. It wasn't

until she was about six months long that she couldn't

hide it anymore, and all of those rumors seemed to

be true. So when the other students found out about

it for sure, that was whenever the laughing and the

bullying only intensified. Not to mention that she would never

say who the baby's dad was. Now. One report claimed

that she was date raped and so that's why she

didn't share who the baby's father was, but another report

said she just didn't want anyone to know who the

father was, while yet another one that I read said

that it was either another student or a guy that

she knew. So I don't know the answer of who

her baby daddy was, but my guess in this situation

is that she probably wasn't sure. She she probably did

not know. Again, I can't stand on that, but it

just seems to be what the situation was. But with

all of that and facing everything that she had to date,

Kelly would graduate from high school, which was a huge

win for her, and then just two weeks after graduation

in nineteen eighty six, she gave birth to that first baby,

a baby boy that she would name Brandon. Now, obviously

it goes without saying the dad wasn't involved, because we

don't even know who the dad was. So Kelly continued

to live at home with her mom, and with that,

even though the huge accomplishment of high school graduation, it

kind of just went thud from there because she was

a single mom. She's living in an impoverished home, she

was struggling not only to work but to make money,

and then no real means for outside care for the

baby made that even more complicated. She did, however, start

dating a classmate of hers, and his name was Jeff Banks,

who very soon after that they started dating, asked her

to marry him, which they did just a few months

after that, but the marriage would only last about six months.

And when Kelly's dad, whom she had somewhat rekindled her

own relationship with, because remember her parents divorced when she

was very young and he never really came around at

that point from that point forward, but she had rekindled

a relationship with her bio dad, and that relationship with

this new husband she had was cut really short whenever

allegedly her dad went after Jeff with a shotgun because

he didn't pass bread at dinner. Okay, there was a

big uproar about bread. So it was over. That relationship

in that marriage went coudput and that was the end

of that. So Kelly moved back home. She was now

nineteen years old, and she wasn't really thriving. She was broke, single,

and she wasn't going anywhere fast. But in March of

nineteen eighty nine, Kelly's life would take an unexpected turn

for the better. Through a chance meeting with friends, Kelly

would be introduced to a guy named Doug, and Doug

was different than anyone that Kelly had ever met. Let's

start with the fact that he was so nice. It

made me think of that song that's popular right now,

because I like it when you're nice, like it when

nice to me. You know that song Stella Lefty or

something like that sings it. He was just so nice.

She was used to being surrounded by people that weren't nice,

and that we're always yelling and fighting and carrying on,

and he just had this air of calm about him.

He also came from a good family and he had values.

He had morals and values along with the fact that

he also had goals for himself. He had aspirations. He

worked as a mechanic, He was a hard worker, and

he had a plan for himself. Handsome and tall were

also two things to add that check check on that list. Right,

he was a tall, handsome dude. And considering that Kelly

was six feet tall herself, she was a big girl.

This was awesome. She had a guy taller than her

and he was nice and smart and driven. Another thing

like he almost sounds too good to be true, but

he also didn't drink and he didn't do drugs. His

favorite commitment was church. Yeah, he went to church a lot. Well.

Doug was very smitten, very fast with Kelly, And like

something out of a fairy tale was the fact that

Kelly's baby boy that she had had already took to

Doug just as quickly as Doug took to him. Little

Brandon became Doug's number one pal right from the start.

He loved toting that boy around, being the father figure

that that baby needed. And no mind that he wasn't

biologically his child. If you asked, Doug, Brandon was his

boy from day one, and everyone could see it, the

love for both mom and son. It was real and

it was genuine. And Douve also brought about good changes

in Kelly's life, and one of those being church. That

became something that was now a new routine for her.

She would go in every Wednesday and every Sunday. That

was their routine. They would go in, they would be

in the pew, listening to the Word and growing in

faith together. For God so loved the world that he

gave his only son, and in the same breath did

Doug so love Kelly's only son that he was willing

to give her his entire world. So when Doug asked

her to marry him, it was a no brainer. Absolutely yes,

Oh my gosh, Yes, the wedding bells would ring and

love would be celebrated. Not only had Doug found his soulmate,

but the man would now become Brandon's official dad. He

had a son, and as you can probably guess, two

pink lines showed up very soon, and Doug was now

even more thrilled. He was ecstatic. He was over the

moon when he found out that he was now gonna

have a biological child. He swept Brandon up in his arms.

He hugged that little boy tight. Did you hear that, Bubba?

You're gonna be a big brother and I'm gonna be

a daddy again. This is great. Times could not have

been any more exciting. It was August of nineteen ninety

when their daughter, Kayla was born, and they had settled

into a home in the Atlanta suburb of Beauford. Originally

that area had served as the railway line between Atlanta

and Charlotte, North Carolina, but now it was a growing city,

and as the kids grew, you would be hard pressed

to know which kid was Doug's bio kid and which

one was because he loved those children equally, and he

loved them both with a fierceness. The kids both also

knew him as daddy. There was no difference. Brandon knew

no other man in his life that would be the

father figure. He was always there to tuck them and

at night. He woke them up in the morning, and

he gave them kisses and hugs before he left for work.

If they had a special event, he was there. No

questions asked, but in nineteen ninety one, there would be

a new stress that would be added to the marriage,

and that was the fact that Doug lost his job.

Now Doug was the primary breadwinner of the home, so

this was a huge blow to the family. Things had

gotten so bad financially that they had to sell their home,

and from what I understand, they may have even moved

in with Kelly's mom for a short period, if I

remember that correctly. But Doug was a man's man, and

he knew, all right, I got to pull myself up

by the bootstraps, make some changes here, and I may

have to sacrifice, But he was going to do what

he had to do for his little family, and in

this case, he decided that he was going to join

the army. Now, why why would he run off and

join the army while you know he's got a family

at home. Well, it's because the steady income and the

benefits that would the army would provide him is exactly

the stability that he would be able to pass on

and give his wife and his kids. The trade in

his mind, was worth his time away from his family

so long as they were taken care of. So shortly

after he joined the army, he got the news that

he was going to be shipped off to Germany, halfway

around the world. Oh man, right, so far? Why did

they have to send you so far away? But he

had to do what he had to do, and he

was committed to doing that. But on the bright side,

he fit in really well with army life. His fellow

soldiers liked him, his supervisors gave their out of approval

to him, and so he was just really succeeding and

he was doing well. A month after he was stationed

in Germany, Kelly and the kids followed suit because they

didn't want to be apart from him that long, and

even if that meant they had to travel halfway around

the world, Kelly still wanted to be close to her husband.

So Doug was consistent in the fact that he would

make his money and then give his earnings to Kelly

for her and the kids. And things were okay for

a while, but Doug would still be away from them

for days and sometimes weeks at a time, even after

they had moved to Germany. So whether it was boredom

or just poor decision making, I don't know you can

decide on this one. But Kelly would throw parties at

the house, and Doug was not a big fan of that.

While he was gone, no one, I would argue, no man,

at least in the military once their wife gallivant and

around with other fellow soldiers while they're gone. I just

think it made him very uncomfortable and so draw annoyance

on both sides in the marriage. Because of this, Kelly said,

you know what, maybe I should just go back home

with the kids. You finish your tour here and we'll

just have to do this long distance. So she moved

back home to Georgia with the kids while Doug was

completing his service requirements. Now it was the following year,

in nineteen ninety one, whenever Doug would come back home stateside,

and when he got back it was pretty evident that

the damage had already been done to their marriage. Kelly

decided that she felt maybe it was her time and

that maybe she should now join the army. Maybe I

should go do it. You went and did it, now

I'll go do it. But at that point Doug was

really just fed up with the whole situation and how

they weren't communicating, they weren't getting along, and He's like,

look if you don't want our family and you think

you need to go and leave. Now, you know, I

did this as a sacrifice for us. If you think

it's your time to leave, then why don't we just

not have a family if that's how you want to be.

But he was wasn't dropping the kids though, okay, just her.

He still was a very devoted father to his children.

But by nineteen ninety three, their divorce was final and

they were done. So Kelly was still in her army life,

but she hated it. It was not what she thought

it would be when she was the one actually there,

and she figured that she had to do something to

get out of there. And the only thing that she

could really think to do to get out of there

would be to get pregnant. And guess what, that's exactly

what she did. She ended up getting pregnant by a

fellow soldier. So when that happened, Kelly was sent back

home to finish out her pregnancy. When she found out

just a few months shy of giving birth that the

father of this new baby ended up passing away. So

he had been diagnosed with cancer and he succumbed to

that before the baby was even born. A few months later,

which was that following November, she would give birth to

a baby boy that she named Jonathan Dakota, which they

lovingly would call Cody. So she was now a single

mom and she was trying to move on with life,

as was Doug. And you know, they're divorced and they're

doing their own thing. Well, they both had some unimportant

dating relationships respectively, but it's in this situation that they

found that the heart wants with the heart wants, even

when it's tough, and amazingly, Doug was still thinking about

his ex wife. Had they not tried hard enough? Did

we really give it our all? We were dealing with

a lot of stress. There was a lot of things

that was happening. Was it really over over or did

we just flash out and end things before we should have?

And it turned out Kelly was actually thinking about Doug too,

the same thoughts of maybe we could have done more,

maybe we should have worked things out. So Douve decided

one day he couldn't take it anymore. He picked with

the phone and he called Kelly just to talk. Okay,

no arguing, just talk. There's a lot of history and

children were impacted by the breakup of their family, and

so they got to talking, and sure enough that talking

turned into hanging out, which turned into a rekindled spark,

and the things just were going well when just like that,

marriage number two came for the both of them, but

with the original spouse. So they're both on their second

marriage but with the same spouse. That's kind of funny.

It kind of made me wonder too. I said to myself,

I'm like, do you say that this is my second

husband if he's actually the same as your first husband,

or you just say this is my husband. I don't know,

but maybe wonder for a second. But what about that

random third child that was now in the family. Made

you kind of wonder about that, right because they got

divorced and then she has this baby. Well, hopefully from

what I've told you so far, you should know Doug

by now, and he did the mature thing. That child

was brought into this world fatherless, and Doug was never

going to treat that baby any different. It wasn't his fault,

and so Doug took on that child as his own too.

The family unit was back together. He had a bonus

son to boot, and as far as Doug was concerned

more love to share. What a great guy, What a

great great guy. So by nineteen ninety seven they had

been married a total of about seven years. They had

these three children between them, and life was lifing when

on Saturday, February seventh, Kelly and Doug had different plans

for the evening. The kids were going to be staying

with a sitter, and Kelly had plans to go out

with some friends, some dinner, maybe some dancing, and just

go blow off some steam and have a girl's night. Well,

Doug had this couple that he was friends with. They

were called the Nesbits, and they lived nearby, and he

had promised them that he would go over there and

he would help them work on a vehicle that was

having some trouble that night, which was something that Doug

liked to do. Tinkering was his jam, and Doug wasn't

afraid to get greasy. So they decided that they would

go do their own thing that night and they would

meet up that evening. So after the fun of the

night ended, Kelly returned back home and she was kind

of surprised to find that Doug was still over at

the Nesbit's house. So she got into her Jammy's, and

she took her sleeping pill and before she fell asleep,

she slipped into bed and was hanging out and she

dozed off and went to sleep. So the next morning

rolls around and when she woke up, she reaches over

and Doug wasn't in the bed. So she got up

and she looked for him, Doug, Doug, you know, are

you here, Doug? Are you outside? Where did he go?

Because he wasn't in the bed, he wasn't in the house.

After she checked all the rooms, she went outside, his

car was not in the driveway. So she figured, well,

maybe he stayed at his friend's house. Maybe they stayed

up late drinking or something and he stayed there. But

that really wasn't normal, okay, So she was worried about

this because he didn't typically do that. So she grabs

the phone and she calls over to the Nesbits to

see if Doug was there, but they said, no, he's

not here, and she said, oh, well, what time did

he leave and they said no, he left about ten

o'clock last night. He was headed home last night. So

alarmed by this, she hangs up the phone and she's like,

oh my god, I gotta call his parents. Maybe he

went to his parents' house. Maybe, you know, that's the case,

that makes sense. So she called his parents. But when

she explained that Doug hadn't come home and he wasn't home,

his parents said, well, we haven't seen him or heard

from him either today. At least he's not here. Well,

by one pm, Kelly was frantic. She did not know

where he went. She couldn't find him anywhere any of

his normal stomping ground. So she made a call to police.

And this is when she faced the typical setback that

is mentioned a lot in true crime cases. It's that

it hasn't been twenty four hours yet. He's a grown man.

He can do whatever he wants to do. And there

was no emergency. There was no circumstances that would lend

anyone to believe that something had happened to him. He

just didn't come home. So she would wait the additional

twenty four hours. Doug would not show up, and so

she would call the police again and she would report

him missing. So it's been long enough now, no word

from him. Nothing. Police were now looking for a thirty

year old Doug. He was classified as a missing person

and so they go through all the regular things that

they're going to go to. You know, what was he

last seen wearing, She says, he when I saw him leave,

he had on a black jacket, his jeans, a watch,

he had on his wedding ring. And police are kind

of wondering, could he have had an accident? Did he

maybe wreck because it had been raining the night before.

They go looking for him. They don't find him. They

don't even find his car, nothing, no sign of him.

So two days later, a heavily heavily wooded area would

be being patrolled by a park ranger. So this morning

was cool, it was brisk, and this Georgia ranger was

patrolling out in his area. Whenever he came down this

road and he saw a car that was stopped and

parked off to the side. So he pulls up and

he parks his unit. He gets out to go check

on the vehicle, and as he's walking up, the exterior

of the car looks fine. It hasn't been in a wreck,

nothing huge. But as he got up on it, he realized,

oh my god, the interior of the car was completely

and totally burned out. It was destroyed. Even the tag

was destroyed. So he went around and he looked at

the windshield and he was still able to make out

the VEN number. So he calls into the sheriff's office

gives them this VEN number, and that's whenever police tell

him that the listed owner of this vehicle was Kelly's husband, Doug.

Their last name was Gisson Danner. So, realizing that something

bad has happened for sure, now I mean this car

is burned up, a detective was called in to come

to the area of the burned out car. So the

area was noted that it was parked in a pretty

desolate wooded area. You would not be traveling down this

road for just no reason. Believing that to be the case,

Doug should have been right there in that area if

something had happened to him. So search parties were put

together and they go out searching for Doug. They are

walking the terrain, and they even put a heat seeking

helicopter in the air and that was deployed that was

flying around trying to see if they could locate him.

But with all of this effort and these people in

time that was put in, they still did not find Doug. Well,

no one likes to be the bearer of bad news.

But police had to notify Kelly about the car, and

not only that they found it, but the condition of it.

So when they go to the house and they tell

her we found the car, but listen, it's been burned up.

Kelly became inconsolable, an absolute wreck, because this did not

make sense. Life was going good, you know, we were

just going out for a good time. He was going

to work on a car. You know, Doug's a responsible person.

He didn't take risks. How the hell could his car

end up burned on a rural roadside. So she's panicking,

she's freaking out, but the kids are at home. So

an investigator pulls her to the side and it's like,

come here, let's come talk over here. And he's like, look,

you know, I don't want to alarm any other people

or the kids or anything, but is there anything going

on that someone may want him dead or anything bad

to happen to him? Well that just ramped Kelly up

even more, and she was adamant, No, absolutely not. He

is a good man and he is a good dad.

He takes care of all of our kids, he takes

care of me. He has no enemies that I could

even name. Okay, this is completely and totally out of

left field. She told the police. The last people that

saw Doug would have been the Nesbits. I called them.

They told me that he was at their house. He

didn't come home from their house. So the police tracked

the Nesbits down and went to go have a word

with them and asked some questions. So the Nesbits did

confirm exactly what Kelly had told them, that he was

last at their house. But they said we saw him

leaving around ten o'clock. They said, expand on that we

need more than that. What exactly was going on? And

they say, okay, well, he ate some dinner with us,

and after they you know, they worked on the car.

He ate some dinner with us, and then we were

walking him out. We were chatting, and then the husband Nesbit,

mister Nesbit, said yeah, oh yeah, we got some spark plugs.

I pulled some spark plugs that I had that were

extra and I gave them to Doug his car and

he was like, oh, thanks, whatever, and then he got

in his car and he drove off. That was it.

We didn't see him after I gave him the spark plugs.

So police mapped the Nesbits home to Doug and Kelly's home,

and what they realized is that it was really kind

of a straight shot giver or take from one house

to the other. And the reason that that mattered was

that Doug said he was going home. But Doug's car

was found five miles roughly off course of that route,

so he obviously was not going straight home. Considering where

the car turned up. Now, had he gotten you have

to ask yourself a lot of questions, even things that

are uncomfortable when you're trying to figure this out. If

he had gotten that far off course, had he done

so possibly to hurt himself. Well, detectives didn't really think

that was the case, because he still would have been

at least close by. You know, you go, maybe he

burned up his car and then went and shot himself

or something. Well, he wasn't there. So the fact that

he wasn't there and the condition of the car being

burned up really was telling police that someone must have

harmed him. This just didn't look like anything else. So

the search parties would continue to go out day after

day after day looking for him out in the woods,

but they weren't coming up with anything, So, feeling that

more coverage was better, Kelly decided she was going to

contact the news and have them come make a story

about this. Please put it out there. My husband didn't

come home. I want to plead for a safer turn.

Whatever I can do, I want people to know. They say, sure,

no problem, and so the media shows up, they set

up their cameras and they decide to do the interview

and what looks to be their daughter's bedroom because there's light,

pink walls or stuffed animals atop the headboard, and Kelly

is just sitting on the side of the bed kind

of with this far stare, and they're asking her kind

of explain what's going on, and she she got really

choked up, and she said, look, I just want him

to walk back through the door. I just want him

to call That's all I need. But you know, if

anybody has seen him or knows where he is, please

just I need him to call home. Something. So as

the investigation and this news coverage continued, it really started

to bring about more questions than answers. And I say

this because after those first initial findings, Doug's parents reached

out to detectives and Doug's senior. He was named after

his dad. Doug Senior told police that he just didn't

think that the marriage was that good and it had

gotten bad since they remarried, and when he was pressed

on that, Doug Senior said specifically that he felt like

they were drowning financially, that she spent too much money,

he had ruined his son's credit. She would go out

partying and she went to bars, and his son was

the one that was always taking care of the kids.

But Kelly did not see it that way at all.

She's you know. They argued like any other couple, and

yes they had divorced once in the past, but they

were back together, they had gotten married, and it was

like his parents were just still bitter about the first

divorce because it had gotten kind of ugly. So police

wanted to go check out other aspects of their life,

and so they went to Kelly's work. After that discussion

that they had with Doug's parents and co workers, when

they were kind of questioned they would shed some insight

to what they described as a formally contemplated or complicated

rather situation. The man that Kelly had moved on with

after the birth of her second child was supposedly still

in contact with Kelly when she had first started back

dating Doug again, but as far as they knew, all

of that had since settled. They had cut things off

after Kelly and Doug made it official that they were

back together. So police wanted to know what was his name?

Who was this guy? And that's whenever they gave the

name Greg Owen, And it just so happened that Greg

was the brother of one of Kelly's coworkers. So the

story goes that Kelly had was at work one day

and she had seen a picture of Greg on his

sister's desk and said, who's that And her coworker said, Oh,

that's my brother. You know, I'll set y'all up if

y'all want to go on a date. And she was like, sure,

that sounds fun. And that's where that relationship had originally

taken off from. Kelly and Greg seemed to get together

well and go together well because they had similar upbringings,

which that made them really be able to relate to

one another. And this is kind of on the Misery

Understands misery spectrum. Domestic violence was something that was chronic

the in Greg's home growing up, and Greg wasn't somebody

that had really launched in life. He didn't ever, his

name was never in the drawing for success in relationships

or you know, big time wins or anything like that.

So when he found Kelly and they had all of

this in common and they understood one another, this became

something rather fresh for him, something really new. Kelly was fun,

she was outgoing, which was something that he really liked.

She commanded a room, and she drew attention, which to

him was never anything that he had a lot of

experience entertaining. So to him, Kelly was just a total catch. Really,

he felt like he was dating up whenever they were dating,

because the truth about Greg was that he was an alcoholic,

He did not make good drinking decisions, and he didn't

even have his own car. So he was the total

opposite of Doug when Kelly met him. But since things

had gone so bad with Doug, who did have it

all together, it didn't really matter to Kelly back when

she was dating him that Greg didn't. Stability didn't always

mean better in Kelly's eyes, and this was proof of that.

It was just different. The reason he didn't have a

car too, By the way was that he had gotten

a DWI arrest for some time prior, but Kelly didn't care.

You know, they had a lot of fun together and

getting to know one another. But after a while, stability

really seemed to be something that Kelly had messed up

in the long run, and you know, it was a

better choice in the long run to be with someone

who was stable. I think we all know that. But

but Greg had been fun. It had been fun for

a while to drink and party and do all those things.

But you can't do that all the time. And that's

kind of what they were doing. And Greg would never

be able to give her nor her kids the life

at the level that Doug really had. It is just

the way it was. And that was the time when

Kelly had started to kind of think about Doug Moore,

and Dug called her and so she was starting awaigh

her options. Doug was wanting to win her back at

this point, and so Kelly finally made her choice, and

she chose Doug. Doug is the better choice in my life. Well,

as police learned about all of this, it got them wondering,

probably the same thing that you're wondering, is did Greg

possibly have something to do with Doug's disappearance because there

may have been anger or jealousy or any of those

factors between two men and a woman who they're fighting over.

So police went back, but first they wanted to speak

with Kelly. Their plan here was they wanted to ask

her who was Greg, and they really wanted to see

if she would lie about that, would she come clean

with the fact that that was a lover and that

she may have been talking to him at the same

time she was dating Doug again, or what she would do.

So they brought it up, but she didn't lie. She

told him the truth. She said we had dated in

the past, but she had ended the relationship. She decided

that she wanted to get back with her ex husband,

but Greg simply could not let it go. Greg, according

to Kelly, became obsessed and threatened to get back at

her for the breakup and it really had gone very

very bad whenever the breakup happened. So this was the

first real solid lead for right now. She was clear,

I'm scared of Greg, though I don't want to be

near him, I don't want to have anything to do

with him. I'm so afraid of it. Matter of fact,

I went and bought a gun to protect me and

my children from him, Like he's dangerous, so please don't

have him come over here or anything like that. And

they're like, no, of course not, we'll go talk to him.

So they look up Greg's record before they go to

talk to him, and he had no serious criminal record.

We're not looking at a guy who was doing arm

robberies and burglary and all that other stuff. He was

actually rather soft spoken and mild. He made poor decisions,

no doubt, but he wasn't He had no history of

violence against to others. He was living in a trailer

park by himself. Whenever they went to go find him,

and whenever he was asked about Kelly, he said, yeah,

we dated in the past, but we broke up whatever,

And so police then mentioned that Doug was missing. They

couldn't find him, and it was kind of interesting that

Kelly had an ex and he's like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa.

I'm a lot of things. You know, I'm a drunk,

but i am not. I don't hurt people. I've never

hurt anybody. That's not something that's even in my wheelhouse

of thinking. And if you're trying to say I had

something to do with that. I do not, and I

don't want to be a part of that. So they

asked him. All right, they give him the date and

they say what were you doing this night? And so

Doug kind of checks into it and he's like, oh,

I was at my friend Lee's house that night. You

can ask him. I was there. We were watching a

movie and I never left the house. I was with

him that night. So police go and they contact Lee,

and when Lee was questioned, he vouched, yes, that is

it's true. My buddy Greg was over here. We were

watching a movie all night, We had fun. Whatever. So

they're kind of stumped at this point. They don't have

a lot to go on. And twelve more days would

go by with no sighting of Doug. Twelve days of

those children not getting tucked in at night by their daddy,

not getting woken up by him in the morning. He

wasn't going to any of their little events. I mean,

it's a huge hole in all of their lives, not

to mention Kelly doesn't have her husband. Twelve days. Well,

that initial ranger, the one that had found his vehicle,

it really started to bother him. The more he kept

thinking about that car. He would go home at night

and he would continuously think about it, but not for

the reason of just oh that car that was weird,

it was burned up. It was that Doug. The more

he learned about the guy that was missing, Doug reminded

this ranger of himself, and he was putting himself in

Doug's shoes. Now, the only difference between Doug and this

ranger was that Doug was white and this ranger was black. Okay,

But other than that, they had a lot in common.

They had both served in the army, they both had

three kids, and so this ranger really pondered it. You know,

where was this man? They never served together, but it

was like this unspoken drive to find a fellow soldier,

almost like no guy left behind. You know, I didn't

know him, but I want to know what happened to him.

And so daily he would do his job, but with

added purpose. At this time, he wanted to find the

gentleman who owned that burned out car and get him

back home to his kids. It just bothered him. So

twelve days had passed and he's continuously doing his job

and looking for this guy. Whenever he turns down a

dirt road out in this area and he's going in

the woods and he's looking upward where there's kind of

like a hill area while he's driving. When he looked

up while he was patrolling, he noticed that there was

an old it looked like a trash bag that caught

his attention up in the brush, and he said, it

looked like a trash bag that had been out in

the sun so long that the color of it had

started to change. How it's you know, trash bag's black,

but then it almost turned like a blue, hazy kind

of color once it has been out so long. So

he decided to get out and inspect it and see

what it was. So he was about fifty seventy five

yards from the road and he had to walk up

and approach it. And as he got close, he realized

quickly that that is not a bag, It was a person,

and that person was not moving and that bluish blackish

that he was seeing was that person who had been

there for a while, and the clothing that he was

seeing there. So immediately he got on the phone and

he called for police. Police come and they mark off

the scene. So they come up to the victim, and

I say victim because he's clearly dead out in the

middle of the woods where he doesn't belong. And they

could tell a few things initially that this was a male,

he was white, and he had met a very very

violent death. Whatever had happened to him. The man was

laying face down whenever they first got to him. Well,

when it came time to roll him over, they grab

him from one side and they roll him up. They

were horrified when they did it to find that one

whole side of this man's face and neck were gone.

There were multiple stab wounds that were believed to be

the cause of death, but due to all of the

animal and insect activity that had gone on over the

last twelve days, it really wasn't very clear what had

happened to him. The animals had consumed portions of him.

He had been decomposing for twelve days, which also now

meant that the bugs were using his body as a

home for them to lay their eggs, which brought maggots

and all the nastiness that comes with the territory. So

the police decided, now that they've assessed the wounds and

what they think happened here they reach into his pockets,

and when they reached into his front pocket, they pull

out a set of spark plugs. And that's whenever they

reached into his back pocket where a wallet was still there,

and whenever they pulled that out and opened it up,

they found the ID of the missing Doug Gisenberg. Now

Doug wore glasses normally, but he didn't have him on,

so that was kind of curious. But they were soon

located nearby where his body was. This man was Doug,

and not only that, he was dressed in the very

same clothing that his wife remembered him to be wearing

when she last saw him, so that, you know, we

have a pretty good timeline here that it had to

have happened to him after ten pm, but before about

eight am the next day. So a very large funeral

was held for Doug about three days after he was found,

and there was a massive turnout because Doug was a

very well liked guy. His family was well known and

they were well liked people too, super nice ceremony. Everybody

there was repeating the same thing, you know, what a

great guy this. I can't believe this happened. He's such

a good guy, Kelly, you know what's happening there. She

is overwhelmed. She threw herself on top of the casket

and just sobbed. She had just you know, they had

just gotten back together basically, you know, they just rekindled

this marriage, and now he's gone forever. Just didn't seem fair. Well,

detectives did go and attend the funeral in not police clothing,

but you know, in regular clothing because they wanted to

watch and see who all was there as well as

who wasn't there, and just to watch behavior. Well, Kelly's

grief was profound and she was very clearly dishoveled. And

sometimes killers will be someone close to the victim and

they'll go to the funeral. But overall, no one really

stood out as someone that would have been an enemy

or someone that they were eyeing that may could have

done this. When the autopsy report came back, Doug's cause

of death would be shown to be it was a homicide.

He had been stabbed four times and this was in

the neck and in the back as well as beaten

about the head with a blunt force object. So his

death was clearly not a suicide. It was clearly a homicide,

and Doug did appear to have been killed at the

spot where his body lay. This was not a secondary

location for his body to have been brought or something

like that. So now everyone's just dumbfounded. They don't know

how this could have happened, why this could have happened.

But a few more days would pass. More days would pass,

and somebody in the commune was starting to feel some

type of way. Someone who knew Kelly, knew her pretty

well and felt like she needed to come forward to

the police and come clean. Who was this person, Well,

it was actually a very very good friend of Kelly's,

but what she had to share was less than friendly.

She told police that she knew that Greg was still

or that Kelly was still seeing Greg while still married

to Doug. And they're like, well, we know that they

were talking still, but once they got remarried, that they

had cut it off. No, no, no, no, no, she said, no,

they were still seeing each other. Police said, oh, really,

like currently right now? She says, yeah, And you know,

I'm pretty confident that I know what I'm talking about,

because she said it wasn't just a gut feeling. I

can pretty much confirm they were sleeping together because I

am the one who dropped Kelly off at a hotel

to meet him, and she was married to Doug, so

I think she was kind of feeling bad for her

role and dropping her off. So please go really well,

let's check into this and just see how true it is.

So they pull the phone records, and sure enough, they

find that there were a lot of calls between Kelly

and Greg, and especially near the date of Doug's death.

So it really did seem that a secret affair was

seemingly being uncovered here. Well, based on the phone records alone,

Kelly's description of her and Doug's or Greg's relationship, or

lack thereof, was kind of shot to hell now, right,

because if Kelly was as afraid of Greg as she

had made it out to be when she said I'm

scared of him. I even got a gun because I'm

so afraid of him, then why would they have spoken

over forty times in the last few weeks. It's an

obvious question, But what really raised eyebrows was that a

majority of the phone calls between the two of them

were initiated by Kelly herself. She was calling him, So

police had an issue, though they could not get past

the fact that Kelly's alibi was solid. If she had

something to do with this, I don't know how she

could have been there because people who were out with

her put her there the entire time that night. I

mean she was out with them when the murder took place.

Greg his alibi was also solid. Remember his friend Lee.

Greg's friend Lee was interviewed and he confirmed that he

was there with him all night. So even if they

were having an affair, they had alibies. So how do

we figure this out of what might have happened. Well,

that's when they decided, they being police, decided to go

back and speak to that friend Lee, and they really

wanted to apply the pressure hard on him, and they said,

we just want to interview again you again to kind

of firm up some stuff. Well, when he was reinterviewed

and the pressure really started being applied, Lee's story started

to change just a little bit, and once the crack

was started, it fell apart. And that's when he admitted

that he lied about Greg being there the entire time

that night, because he said Greg did leave at one

point to go buy beer and he was gone for

a good while. So Okay, well how did he Where

did he go? Because he doesn't have a car, y'all

remember the DWI. How would he get from A to B?

And that's when Lee said someone came and picked him up.

I don't know who it was, but someone came and

picked him up. So police are like, oh, okay, well

now we may have two people here, two suspects. So

that's when they go back to Greg and they say, Greg,

we got we gotta have another discussion with you, another talk.

And this time when they were talking to him, he

was faced with some obvious problems in his origin claim,

like the fact that your friend who said you were

there all night now kind of told us you weren't.

So he now admitted to police once all of this

was kind of broken down, that he had been seeing

Kelly and that they had continued the affair after Doug

and Kelly had remarried. All right, at least he's being

honest and he's telling us this. But he did tell

police this. He said, I asked Kelly, why don't you

just divorce Doug again? Like why are we having to

play this game of back and forth? And Kelly told

him that she couldn't because he just kept coming back.

He would just keep coming back to her. She couldn't

get rid of him. The only way she would probably

ever be able to get rid of him would be

to kill him. Well, Greg thought that she was joking,

but came to learn very quickly that she was serious.

That she would have to kill him if she wanted

to get rid of him. That's whenever she asked Greg

if he would help her do it. In her mind,

the only way that she and Greg could be together

forever would be if Doug was out of the picture.

So it's like, well, why would she even remarry him? Then,

if y'all were going to continue this relationship, why would

she even remarry him? And that's when another bomb was

dropped right then on police and Greg pretty much lays

it out. Kelly had been planning Doug's death since before

she and Doug even got back together married officially. This

wasn't just regret over getting back with him. This was

an actual plan and it had a lot of benefits

to it. Kelly never intended to end things with her

lover Greg from the jump. While Doug was wanting and

his family back and was working hard to get his

family back, Kelly's intentions were less than noble. She went

along with the idea of getting back together and even

went to the extent of remarrying Doug for a completely

different reason than missing and loving him. She had a plan.

Her plan was to get back with Doug and convince him, yes,

let's get married again. Let's start our life over again.

We were meant to be when they got married. That's

whenever she would take out a life insurance policy on him,

which she did. I'm not sure if it was ten

or fifteen thousand dollars because I saw it multiple places

and it was different numbers in both, but we'll say

up to fifteen thousand dollars. And she also knew that

if she married him, Doug was going to take care

of the family. And part of that plan that they

worked together was that Doug would buy them a house

that they were going to live in together, and then

she would have Doug killed. She would cash that life

insurance policy, she'd get to keep the house because her

name is on it, and then she and Greg would

be able to run off in the sunset together. So

as they started to make this plan together to kill Doug,

she wanted to make sure that it looked like a robbery,

which is exactly why she told the police. Whenever they

said what was he last seen wearing? She was kind

of general about his jeans and his shirt, but she

made sure to say he was wearing his wedding ring

and that watch, because if Greg was to kill him,

then Greg would take those items and this would really

validate this claim that it must have been a robbery

gone wrong. February seventh was not a date by chance

that this had taken place either. February seventh was chosen

pretty quickly as the must kill by date because he

was going to be out of the house and Kelly

got invited to go out with friends that night for dancing.

When she got that invite, that is whenever it sealed

Doug's fate. But how could this be done if Greg

didn't have a car and she needed to go out

and be seen by everybody, how could that have worked out? Well?

That was easy, because all Kelly felt she had to

do was bring her killer to her husband. Kelly picked

up Greg and brought him to her marital home with Doug.

After he left the house to go help his buddy

fix the car, she went and picked him up and

brought him home. They went inside together and Doug. She

gave Doug a night stick and a knife, and Doug

found a place to hide and he lay in wait

in that house until Doug got back home. So Kelly

was out dancing and partying and all the while knew

that someone was going to kill her husband, and she

he never said a thing. She was just out there

dancing and tearing up the floor. When her poor husband

arrived back home around ten thirty that night after helping

a friend, he unlocked the door and he walked inside

of the house where Greg was hiding there in the darkness.

Dug none the wiser, and as he stepped inside of

the house without any notice, Doug instantly felt a man

grab him around the neck and put a knife to

his throat, and the man tipped the blade up into

his neck, underneath his chin, and he was very pushy

putting that knife up underneath the neck. The man who

was holding this knife was not kidding, and he made

the commands very clear, get in your car and don't

do anything stupid. Greg then kidnapped Doug at knife point

and forced him into his own car and had him

drive himself into that wooded area at this predesignated spot

that he was going to go to.

Speaker 2: Now.

Speaker 1: According to Greg, not a word was spoken during that

horrifying ride. I'm gonna guess that Doug remained calm, no doubt,

in hopes that he would be able to at least

think of a way to maybe get away at some

point eyes on the road. He's got a cold blade

shoved up underneath his neck the entire time. This is

clearly not a joke, and he was trying to remain

calm so that he didn't spook the guy with the knife.

But based on what I've read, I believe that the

two men knew one another more than was being brought up,

because there is some speculation that Doug may have known

that his wife was messing around on him. Again, because

another witness from Doug's work said that one time he

heard Doug having a conversation on his phone and they

were yelling back and forth, and he was mad, and

he hung up and someone said, who is that? He goes, Oh,

I guess my wife's boyfriend. That makes me think that

he might have known something, And so I think once

he was taken hostage here Doug knew what was up.

So once they drive, or they Doug drives himself to

his final destination, he's forced to pull over. He puts

the car in park, and he gets out. The entire

time the knife was kept to his throat. Doug complied,

he got out of the car, and then Greg still

kept the knife to his throat and walked him up

the hill off the side of the road. And then

when they got to the spot he wanted, he told

him to stop right here. Doug stopped. He said, get

down on your knees. Doug did as told, He got

down on his knees. And when he got down on

his knees, that's whenever Greg pulled out that night stick

and started bashing him over the head, over and over

again until he collapsed, falling forward from the blows to

his head. Once Doug slammed down face first into the ground,

Greg then jumped on top of him and he pulled

out the knife that he's had this whole time, and

he started just raining down blows into Doug's face and

into his neck until Doug eventually just stopped moving, happy

and convinced that he was dead. At this point, he

got up and that's whenever he took the wedding ring,

and he took the watch just as he was instructed

by Kelly to steal before leaving him in the woods.

And Greg then ran back and got in Doug's car,

making his way to a nearby payphone, where he then

paged Kelly that it was time to pick him up.

He text, I believe he paged the code one two three,

which means it's done.

Speaker 2: Well.

Speaker 1: It was at that point Kelly's out dancing with the

friends right, having a good time parting it up. When

she gets that page, she knew it was over, her

husband was dead, and she feigned a reason to leave

the party that night. I don't know, guys, I just

feel like I should go home. I got a bad feeling.

I'm just going to go home for the night. And

so she tells all her girlfriends goodbye and she leaves,

but she's not headed home. She goes to pick up Greg.

Speaker 2: Well.

Speaker 1: When Kelly got there, it wasn't enough that Greg told

her that Doug was dead. She said no, she demanded,

I want to see his body. I want you to

take him to me. So they go back over to

the area where he was murdered. They stop both cars

because they're both in different in their own cars. Greg

is in Dougs and she's in hers. When they get out,

Greg leads her over to where Doug's bloodied and battered

and stabbed body is laying face down, mutilated on the ground,

and Kelly walks over and leans over and kind of

takes it in for a moment, checks it out, and

then she said, okay, cool, let's go. That is what

she said about the man who is not only the

father of her biological child, but the only father that

any of her children ever knew. Okay, let's go. Not

an ounce of remorse, not a tear, no shock even

We just wanted to make sure that it was done.

And then they walked away from him, leaving him in

the woods. When they got back to the cars, Greg

drove Doug's car, Kelly again drove her own, and that's

when they went to that second location of Luke Edwards Road,

which is where the car was found. They park, Kelly

gets out of her car. She brought a coke bottle

that she had filled with gas, goes over there, dowses

the car, the inside of the car with the gasoline

and then it was torched. That's whenever they both go

back and get in Kelly's car and they went back

to Greg's house. When they get there, Kelly's in control.

She undresses him. She takes his clothes, his tools, his knife,

everything that was used for all of this, and she

puts it into a garbage bag. And then they just

kind of wipe their hands. It's a done deal. High five.

Now we just have to go play the part. Well,

Greg didn't even get rid of the garbage bag for

a couple of days. He was like whatever, He just

left it at the house before where he went and

dumped it into a dumpster at a convenience store days later. Well,

once this confession has been received and they confirmed everything

that was said, Greg was placed under arrest and he

was charged with felony murder at that same time, and

arrest warrant for Kelly was issued. When she's arrested, the

jig is up. She knows that it is. But after

she was mirandized, she agreed to talk to the police.

But the story would take a turn here because she

would start revealing even more. Kelly would then tell the

police not and that is not true. Greg did this alone.

I had nothing to do with this, She said. I

told you that Greg and I were talking, but that

was because the threats that he had been making to

me forced me to have to talk to him. And

he told me, if I don't continue to have these

conversations and we're not talking on the phone and we're

not doing all these things, then you know he's gonna

he's going to kill her and he's going to kill

the kids. But while they're breaking all of this down,

and I'm not going to go into all the minutia

of it, but she basically gets caught in multiple lives

and things that she's saying just don't add up. So

while this is going on and it's kind of getting

muddy on what exactly went which way and who did what,

Greg then agrees, you know what, give me a deal

and I'll testify against her. This lover has turned. So

they say, fine, we'll do that. So Greg agrees to

a deal of life with parole after twenty years. And

he agreed also in that agreement to not seek it

as part of the deal, which means he would confirm

that would confirm that he got at least twenty years

before he would try to go get parole. So police

felt like, all right, good, if we can get her too,

we're willing to go with that. He took the deal.

Kelly was also offered kind of a deal to confess

and do all of these things, but she decided she

wasn't gonna take it. She wasn't gonna do that. And

the thought process here was that because no one, no jury,

is gonna convict a mother of this who didn't even

actually do the murder herself. So she was willing to

roll the dice and she was like, I'm just gonna

go to trial because I don't think that I'll be convicted.

I didn't stab him, I didn't do this, and so

I'm gonna I'm gonna take my chances. So November the second,

nineteen ninety eight, that's whenever the trial starts. She has

pled not guilty, and Greg took the stand, and from

every report from that, he was very believable in all

of his testimony. The defense would attack this and they

would try to pain him out to be a liar

with no credibility. But that's whenever Kelly kind of got

slapped a little bit because her close friend Pam also

took the stand. Now why would this matter, Well, Kelly

had been calling Pam since she went to jail, right

she was reaching out to her friends and talking to people,

and she had called Kelly from jail and in one

phone call, she admitted to Pam that she did it,

and Pam's mind was blown. She could not believe that

she admitted to it. And an inmate that did time

with Kelly testified to that fact that after the confession

and after Kelly had told her friend Pam that that

she had done it, then Kelly started to rethink it

and was like, oh shit, I shouldn't have done that.

I probably shouldn't have said that. So while she's behind bars,

after she's con confessed to her friend Kelly, she then

starts trying to solicit somebody from behind bars to go

beat the ever living shit out of Pam, beat her,

beat her within an inch of her life. I e.

Witness intimidation so that she wouldn't tell anybody about the

confession that she had had told her, And to sweeten

the pot, she also told whoever would go beat the

crap out of Pam that she would give them ten

thousand dollars if they would take the fall for her. Well,

as you can imagine, all of this gets shown in court.

Kelly's done, she's cooked, she smoked, and she has found

guilty of felony murder. But guess what the jury decides

to sentence her to the death penalty. They give her

death and a juror that was on the jury was

quoted after the trials over as saying, quote, that is

the meanest woman alive. Quote. So, Kelly was now the

only woman on death row in the state of Georgia.

And while she was there, the argument became that she

would change over time and that she would try to

help other inmates. She would have years of being a

model inmate, and she was even able to establish a

relationship with her children. Again, while she was spending these

years behind bars, they would start to visit her and

they would really want start petitioning to please have her

her sentence commuted because they felt that she had changed. Dakota,

her youngest son, he agreed that over time she had

changed too, and that she was starting. You know, she

was helping people, he said, she even was being a

mom to us, Like you could tell that there was

a real change. And Dakota said in the last meeting

that he had with her that he begged her to

please tell the truth. If you have changed, please tell

the truth. And in that meeting, Kelly made a full

confession to her children that she was guilty as charged.

She did not try to deny it. She had been

there a long time and she wanted to come clean

and admit it and all of that. So she did

call her kids before her execution date came, and she

wanted to tell the kids that she loved them now.

Kelly would sit on death row until March second of

twenty fifteen, whenever she was brought over to the death

house to be executed. That was the date that this

was all supposed to go down. But there was a

hiccup when the day came because right before she was

brought in to be put to death, a doctor and

a pharmacist who were inspecting the lethal injection drugs that

they were supposed to use, they took issue with it.

They were looking at the drug and they go, I

don't know, these look cloudy, they don't look they don't

look right. Well. Because of the way that they looked,

there was an issue and there was concerns about the

effectiveness of the drugs and the safety and all of that,

and because of that, they debated her fate. The State

of Georgia debated her fate roughly thirteen more hours before

choosing to not proceed with the execution. So Kelly gets

told she's being put to death, tells everybody goodbye, and

then gets taken back and says, never mind, we're not

going to execute you. Well, she took somewhat of offense

to this because she felt like these thirteen hours of

unknowns violated her Eighth Amendment right and qualified as cruel

and unusual punishment. She said that it put her under

undue stress and she felt immense fear and anxiety. Now

to that, I do want to say, I wonder if

that's exactly what Doug felt with a knife pressed to

his throat and being walked through the woods, placed on

his knees and then you know, killed. You know, I

think that may have possibly brought about some undue stress.

But what he didn't get to do also is Doug

didn't get to write a thirty page complaint to submit

to his killers and have them contemplated, did he. He

didn't get any of that. She complained of the stress

of waiting thirteen hours, but she didn't have shit to

say whenever Doug layout there being mutilated by animals for

twelve days while she hunk her down with her lover

who had just beaten his brains in and stabbed him

to death. She didn't take any offense to that twelve days,

but she was upset about those thirteen hours unbelievable. So

while she didn't die the day that she was originally scheduled,

there were more days in the calendar to choose from,

so six months would pass. She would live an additional

six months, and a lot of people showed up on

her behalf to show support and to try to stop

the execution from going forward. These people were expressing how

much Kelly had changed and that her life was worth saving.

And this was pretty wild to me, but even the Pope.

The Pope spoke out against her being put to death

while visiting the US during this time, this incredible push

to not execute her was being put on full display.

And I'm gonna go a little bit personal here, and

if you don't want to hear eating fast forward, that's fine.

But I've always been raised to believe that respect should

be given to people in power positions religious figures included

you give respect to these people, they have earned it. Now,

I'll tell you I'm not Catholic, but I certainly respect

and appreciate the role of the Pope as a religious leader.

And it really got me thinking while I was writing this.

You know, I was digging really deep while I was

thinking this through. And that said, it feels intrinsically wrong

to say that you disagree with the Pope on something,

even if I'm not Catholic, to say I don't agree

with the Pope, it just it just feels wrong. You know,

who am I to say such a thing that I

don't agree with the Pope. The core qualities of the

Pope exude, you know, they're supposed to exude things that

I pray to myself that one day I could be

as christ Like as possible, to have complete humility and

unending mercy. But I got to tell you, I'm not

there yet. I'm just not there. I'm thinking about what

Doug and you know what he went through. The terror

of the time as he was taken by knife point

in his home, forced to drive in the dark, kneeling down,

knowing you're about to be killed, I can't get past

that and his family finding out. They found out about

what happened to him later on, but then the grief

that they have to live with, that grief forever. They

don't get mercy, they don't get relief, they don't get anything.

They get nothing. You lose. I feel like, you know,

Willie walk on the chocolate factory. You get nothing, you lose.

That's it. This is how it ends. And so there

must be consequences for what she did and what Greg did.

If you want to get that deep and talk about

the pope, you know in Genesis, whoever sheds human blood

by humans, shall their blood be shed? I know that

that's the Old Testament, but I will say this. I

don't want to go any further into it. But I

am so thankful for people who oppose me on this.

My listeners included. I have people who are against the

death penalty, and I say this in complete earnest. I

am so thankful for people who are against the death penalty,

even though I am for it, because having someone disagree

with me doesn't scare me, and deep down inside I

can truly appreciate what those people on the other side

of the aisle are fighting for whenever they fight in

this regard, if we all agreed that death should be

the answer, it would almost just be too dark of

a place. I know that's odd and contradictory, but it's

the opposition that keeps us in check. It's the opposition

that keeps me in check, keeps me pondering and thinking

if this is the way that we should punish in

the country, Is this the way or should we consider

something else? I do continue to think about it, but

I will tell you I also continue to look from

the lens or through the lens of the loss of

a victim, while people on the other side of the

aisle are looking through the lens of the offender's potential

to change. And either way you look at it, I

think there's beauty on both sides of it. But I

stand for the fact that some people I don't think

deserve to walk this planet. So let's fast forward six

months to September the thirtieth of twenty fifteen, and her

second execution date was set to proceed. Now, I want

to point out Doug died alone, with no time for goodbyes.

He didn't get to kiss his children, he didn't get

to hug them. He didn't get to tell his parents goodbye,

farewell to his friends, nothing. He got nothing, but Kelly

got to address the room and give her final words.

Her kids were not there because they were actively in

that moment doing some last minute petitioning to try to

stop her execution. But whenever Kelly was led into the room,

her final words were recorded, and I love you, set.

Speaker 2: Let my kids go. Everyone else, sing an amazing grace

and tell the Gissan Dana family, I am so sorry

that amazing man lost his life because of me. And

if I could take it back, if this were change it,

I would have done it a long time ago. But

this fu and I just hope they find peace, and

I hope they find some happiness.

Speaker 1: God bless you hearing that. I will say that executions

aren't easy, but I will also add I do respect

the fact that she did finally take ownership and apologize

to the Guts and Danner family, but I apologies are

too late. At this point, the Guts and Danner family

had understandably already released a statement saying as the murderer,

she's been given more rights and opportunity over the last

eighteen years than she ever afforded to Doug, who again

is the real victim here. She had no mercy, gave

him no rights, no choices, nor the opportunity to live

his life. Kelly Gissendaner was then strapped to the table

and the drugs began pumping through her veins. She was

pronounced dead by lethal injection at twelve twenty one am,

and that made Kelly the last woman to be executed

in the US to date. Well, okay, technically, some people

might argue with me that that's not accurate because there

was an offender by the name of Amber McLaughlin who

was executed in twenty twenty three. But Amber was born

a little boy named Scott. So I'll just let you

decide if you want to claim that one or not.

I don't care you, do you, But I'm just giving

you all the info. But I will tell you this,

if you've been a listener for a long time, there's

another female that is already set to be executed in

less than a month from this recording, And I bet

you know her name if you're up to date on episodes,

does Amber Pike ring bells? Well, Miss ma'am is now

tentatively scheduled to meet her maker in September of twenty

twenty six. She will be the next female and will

be the last one after it happens to be executed

in the United States, so I will keep you updated

on that. It's big. Women being executed isn't common. But

after carving a pentagram and her poor victim's body, let's

just see how well she takes her own upcoming demise.

And I know this is probably tacky, but it'd be

fun to take bets on how she behaves, because my

money is on her acting like a totally indignant and

mouthy shrew once she's strapped down. But we shall see.

Maybe we'll do a Facebook Facebook fake bet or something

like that and we'll see what we think is going

to happen there. But as for anyone who would commit

an atrocity, any atrocity upon another to the level that

both Kelly and Amber have, the constitution is clear and

the death penalty is legal so long as it is proportional.

And there is no doubt that Kelly Gisander was responsible

for her husband's death, because without her, Doug would still

be alive today. She didn't complete the act herself, but

it was her plan that was put to action. It's

like a builder using an architect's house plans but then

claiming the architect had nothing to do with the project.

That can't be so. Without the plan, there is no house,

and certainly not one to the exact specs that would

benefit someone the way that Doug's murder benefited both of

his killers. Kelly may have outsourced the murder, but not

the consequences, because those, my dear, aren't something that you

can subcontract. Greg may have been the one to swing

the knife, but in this story, there is no doubt

that Kelly remains the ultimate backstabber.