Kelly Gissendaner Executed for Murdering Her Husband for Money | Final Meal & Last Words

“I’m hoping he’ll walk in this door or at least pick up the phone and call.”

The woman you’re seeing on screen was one of the most ruthless criminals ever executed. Someone capable of planning the death of the husband who loved her, all for money. In this video, I’m going to tell you the story of Kelly Gissendaner’s execution, her trial, her last words, and even what she chose for her final meal. But before we continue, I want to know something: Is the death penalty legal in your country or state?

“I am so sorry. That amazing man lost his life because of me. And if I could take it back, if this would change it, I would have done it a long time ago.”

Kelly Renee Brookshire was born into a low-income family dedicated to cotton farming in Lawrenceville. Her childhood was shaped by the absence of any parental guidance, and her teenage years unfolded in chaos, filled with unstable relationships, infidelities, and breakups that appeared as quickly as they ended. Before getting married for the first time, Kelly was already the mother of one child. In 1987, at just 19 years old, she decided to marry Jeff Banks, her first husband. With him, she had her second child. But that marriage never found stability. Between constant arguments and growing tensions, the relationship barely survived 6 months before collapsing completely.

In July 1989, Kelly just wanted to meet new people. Her friends convinced her to go on a blind date. And there, sitting across the table, was Douglas Gissendaner. From the very first moment, the connection between them was undeniable. They talked, laughed, and for a moment, everything seemed to fall perfectly into place. But behind that initial spark, something darker was beginning to take shape. The romance moved quickly. Douglas didn’t mind that Kelly already had a daughter, and just 2 months later, on September 2nd, 1989, they decided to get married.

They had a daughter together, and although they tried to build a stable life, the hardships came one after another. They both lost their jobs and ended up living with Kelly’s mother. With no options left, Douglas joined the army and the family was sent to Germany. But what seemed like a fresh start only opened the door to more problems. In Germany, the relationship became even more strained. Kelly had an affair and she became pregnant by another man. It was a breaking point. After years of arguments, distance, and impulsive decisions, the couple finally divorced in 1993.

Despite everything they had been through, Kelly and Douglas found their way back to each other. In February 1995, they started seeing each other again, and by May, they were married once more. It seemed like another attempt to save what was left of their relationship, but the reconciliation was brief. In September of that same year, the couple separated again. Even so, it still wasn’t the end. In May 1996, they tried once more and got back together. Months later, in December 1996, they took an even bigger step. They moved together to Auburn, Georgia, and bought a house. It was their final attempt to rebuild what had been broken so many times, hoping to create a stable home for their three children.

But this time, something had changed. During that last period of separation, Kelly had met another man, Gregory Bruce Owen, a co-worker. What began as a friendship eventually turned into a romantic relationship, one that continued even after Kelly decided to return to Douglas. When Gregory asked her why she stayed with Douglas if she was already involved with him, Kelly’s answer was cold and direct. She said she was only with Douglas to take advantage of his credit and his money, especially so she could buy a house.

As time went on, Kelly began to push Owen toward an idea that became more and more disturbing. She kept telling him that if he truly wanted the life he dreamed of, he needed to get rid of her husband. She wasn’t talking about divorce. She was talking directly about murder. According to prosecutors, Kelly was convinced she could collect Douglas’s life insurance policies and also feared that he wouldn’t leave her alone if they legally separated.

That mix of money and fear fueled a macabre plan. Little by little, Kelly managed to break down any hesitation Owen might have had. The pressure was constant, and together they began to plan. In the days leading up to the crime, their communication was frantic. Kelly called him 47 times and sent him 18 additional messages. On the day of the murder, they were even seen together near some payphones, finalizing the last details before putting the plan into motion.

On the night of February 7th, 1997, Kelly pulled up in front of the family home and dropped Gregory off. Before he stepped out of the car, she handed him two items: a baton and a large knife. Then she drove away. She wasn’t going to stay to see anything. Instead, she drove to a friend’s house and later went to a nightclub, pretending it was just another Friday night. She smiled, drank, danced—every gesture carefully calculated to build her alibi.

Meanwhile, Owen was hiding inside the house, waiting silently. A little after 10:00 p.m., Douglas arrived, completely unaware of what was about to happen. As soon as he shut the door behind him, Gregory stepped out of the shadows with the knife in his hand. No yelling, no warning, just a cold order: “Drive.”

The drive was silent. Miles of darkness with not a single witness, until Gregory told him to pull over in a wooded area in Gwinnett County, a place where no one would hear what was about to happen there. He forced him out of the car, deeper into the trees, and told him to kneel. Gregory began hitting him with the baton over and over. When Douglas collapsed, he pulled out the knife and stabbed him repeatedly in the back and neck until he stopped moving. Then, leaning over the body, he removed Douglas’s watch and wedding ring. Kelly had told him to do it, so it would look like a simple robbery.

At the same time, Kelly left the nightclub and returned home. By then, Douglas was already dying on the forest floor, his blood soaking into the soil, his lungs collapsing, his body shutting down. But Kelly didn’t call anyone. She didn’t ask for help. Instead, she sent a coded message to Greg and drove straight to the meeting point. When she arrived, there was no panic, no tears, no shaking. She simply asked one question: “Is he dead?” Gregory said yes. That was all she needed.

Kelly grabbed a flashlight, walked into the woods, and looked at her husband’s body as if she were inspecting one more detail of the plan. No remorse, no hesitation, just confirmation. Then, as if closing the final step of the deal, they doused Douglas’s car in kerosene and set it on fire. They didn’t run. They didn’t hide. They simply drove back to town, and Kelly dropped Greg off at his house. There, he threw the knife, the baton, his jeans, and Douglas’s wedding ring into the trash, but he left a trace that would later become key: a pair of sweatpants stained with blood. Investigators found them and, after analyzing the material, discovered that the blood matched both Douglas and Greg.

The next morning, Kelly picked up the phone and called the police. She pretended to be worried. She said Douglas had left the night before around 7:00 p.m. to help a friend with a car and never returned. She suggested he might have gotten lost or that something had happened to him on his way home. At first, no one suspected anything. Everything looked like a typical missing person case. Officers followed standard procedure. They called hospitals, checked impound lots, reviewed his credit card activity, and searched the area. Nothing seemed out of place.

But as they dug deeper into his personal life, the picture began to change. What they found was a stable, responsible man. Someone who loved his family and his job as a mechanic. He had no debts, no enemies, no reason to walk away from his life. Nothing aligned with the idea that he had simply vanished. And then Kelly’s story began to fall apart. For 11 days, she repeated the same lie, insisting she had no idea where Douglas was. She hid the fact that her marriage was on the verge of collapse. She hid that she had a lover. And most importantly, she hid that none of this had been an accident, but a meticulously crafted plan long before police ever knocked on her door.

But the most chilling part came later. In the middle of the search, a news outlet interviewed her. Kelly appeared on camera crying, her voice trembling, saying she just wanted her husband to come back home safely. She faked concern. She faked pain. All while knowing every detail of what had actually happened.

“He does not drink. He does not do drugs. He’s very family-oriented. If he’s not with me, he’s with his kids.” When asked, “What’s your hope?” she replied, “I’m hoping he’ll walk in this door or at least pick up the phone and call.”

Douglas’s body was discovered almost a week later on February 20th, 1997. And with it, everything unraveled. Deep in the woods, a ranger found the remains of a completely charred car. No plates, no windows, no paint, just a twisted metal shell in the middle of nowhere. The fire had been so intense that when investigators arrived, they couldn’t even determine the make or model of the vehicle. The only way to identify it was through the vehicle identification number engraved on the chassis. And when the results came back, everyone was stunned. It was Douglas’s car. Yet Douglas was nowhere to be found.

With no body and few clues, detectives focused on the people closest to him. They started asking hard questions about his home life, his relationship with Kelly, and whether their seemingly perfect marriage was really what it appeared to be. They combed through bank records, cell tower data, anything that could speak louder than the interviews. And then, buried under layers of silence, they found something no one had mentioned before. Something that changed everything.

During one of Kelly and Douglas’s separations, she had been seeing another man, Gregory Owen. They met while she was still technically married, but living apart from Douglas. And when police asked her why she had never mentioned Gregory, she initially said she was embarrassed. But that explanation didn’t last long. Her story changed. Kelly told investigators that when she informed Gregory she planned to reconcile with Douglas, he became furious and threatened to kill him. With that information in hand, agents shifted their focus and made Gregory the new primary suspect.

Police tracked him down and confronted him, but Gregory denied everything. He claimed he had an alibi for the night Douglas disappeared, and a man named Ricky Lee Barrett backed him up. For the moment, there wasn’t enough evidence to arrest him.

But 2 weeks later, the case completely broke open. About 3/4 of a mile from where Douglas’s car had been found, a search team came across a body lying face down in the woods. A crime scene technician reached into the back pocket, pulled out a wallet, and opened it. The credit cards were still there, as well as the cash and a driver’s license. It was Douglas. Nothing had been stolen. They hadn’t even touched his wallet, which meant this wasn’t a robbery gone wrong. Someone had killed him intentionally, and not for the money he was carrying.

Police began investigating motives. Douglas’s family already had a theory. They told investigators that Kelly, his wife, had just taken out a $100,000 life insurance policy, and that detail changed everything. Suddenly, money was back on the table, but not in the way anyone expected.

Detectives moved fast. They secured Kelly’s phone records, and what they saw placed her at the center of everything. On the night Douglas disappeared, Kelly exchanged more than 40 calls with Gregory. Back and forth non-stop. Their timelines were now tangled, and Gregory’s alibi began to crumble. When detectives re-interviewed his friend Ricky Barrett, his story changed. Ricky admitted that Greg had left his house around 9:00 p.m. that night and didn’t return until early the next morning. And even worse, Gregory had asked him to lie about it.

That was all they needed. The next time Gregory sat down with detectives, they slid the phone records across the table. Then came Ricky’s new statement. He had nowhere to hide, and Gregory broke. He told them everything: that he and Kelly had never truly been separated; that the entire plan, every detail, the timing, the motive had been her idea. Kelly wanted Douglas dead so she could collect the life insurance, keep the house, and avoid risking everything in an expensive divorce. She proposed it, planned it, pushed it, and Greg simply followed her orders.

Kelly was arrested and taken into custody. Her first phone call from jail was to her best friend. In that call, she confessed. She said she had helped plan it, that she wanted Douglas gone. But just a few hours later, she called again to change her story. Now, she claimed Greg had forced her, that she had been coerced, and that she never had a choice. But instead of backing down after her arrest, Kelly raised the stakes. While awaiting trial in prison, she wrote a letter. In it, she tried to hire someone to lie under oath. She also wanted witnesses to be robbed and beaten, anything to silence them before they could testify. But by then, the truth was moving faster than she could control.

Before the trial began, both Kelly and Greg were offered the same deal: life in prison with the possibility of parole after 25 years, but only if they provided testimony. Greg accepted. Kelly did not. She believed she could beat the odds. She thought a jury might understand her side of the story, but it was a gamble that would cost her life.

In exchange for his testimony, Greg took the stand against Kelly. He told the jury that she had planned the murder for 3 months, that she had only gotten back together with Douglas to keep the house and collect the insurance money once he was dead. He said she had mentioned it months before the crime, calling it the only way to be rid of him forever. And this, along with the letter in which Kelly threatened witnesses, was enough for the jury. In 1998, she was sentenced to death.

She was first sent to Metro State Prison and later transferred to Arrendale. Inside prison, something shifted. She turned to faith. Through a program connected to Emory University, she enrolled in theology classes and began reading Christian thinkers like Dietrich Bonhoeffer. Over time, she began writing letters to theologian Jürgen Moltmann, and the two maintained correspondence for years. The inmates around her noticed the change. They said Kelly encouraged others, that she convinced some women not to take their own lives. A group of them later called themselves the “Struggle Sisters,” saying Kelly had helped them find something they didn’t have before: a reason to keep going, a reason to live.

But faith and good deeds weren’t enough to change her fate. Her execution was originally scheduled for February 2015, but weather delays and concerns about the lethal injection drugs pushed it back. What followed were waves of pleas for clemency from her children, religious leaders, former judges, and even the Vatican. Supporters argued that her sentence did not match the crime. Greg, the man who actually killed Douglas, received life in prison, and Kelly, who only planned it, was going to die. But Georgia law allows the death penalty even for those who did not directly carry out the murder. So, a new date was set: September 30th, 2015.

Just after midnight, Kelly was taken to the execution chamber at the Georgia Diagnostic and Classification Prison. For her last night, she asked for a feast. For her final meal, she requested two Whoppers, two large orders of fries, lemonade, cherry vanilla ice cream, popcorn, cornbread, and a salad with boiled eggs, tomatoes, peppers, onion, carrots, cheese, and buttermilk dressing.

When they strapped her to the gurney, Kelly became very emotional. She started crying and sobbing. Then, through tears, she began to sing “Amazing Grace.” When she wasn’t singing, she was praying. When they asked her for her final words, she stopped crying just long enough to speak clearly:

“I just want to tell my children that I love them and I’m proud of them. And no matter what happens tonight, love always overcomes hate. And I love you, Sally. And I love you, Susan. Tell my kids that I left singing ‘Amazing Grace,’ and tell the Gissendaner family that I am so sorry. That incredible man lost his life because of me. And if I could take it back, if this would change it, I would have done that a long time ago. But it doesn’t. And I just hope you find peace and find some happiness. God bless you.”

She was pronounced dead at 12:21 a.m. Kelly Renee Gissendaner was 47 years old. At that time, she was the only woman on Georgia’s death row. Her execution marked a historic moment: it was the first time in 70 years, since 1945, that the state executed a woman. Her co-defendant, Gregory Owen, who testified against her, was released in early 2023.

And this has been the video about this monster. Tell me what you think in the comments.