McALESTER, Okla. (AP) — Oklahoma prepared to execute a man on Thursday for fatally shooting a woman during a home-invasion robbery 20 years ago.
Wendell Grissom, 56, will receive a lethal injection at the Oklahoma State Penitentiary in McAlester in Oklahoma’s first execution of 2025, officials said.
Grissom and a co-defendant, Jessie Floyd Johns, were convicted of killing of Amber Matthews, 23, and wounding her friend, Dreu Kopf, at Kopf’s Blaine County residence. Johns was sentenced to life in prison without parole.
Three other executions were scheduled this week around the United States: Louisiana put a man to death Tuesday using nitrogen gas for the first time as it resumed executions after a 15-year hiatus. Arizona on Wednesday executed a man by lethal injection who had kidnapped and murdered his girlfriend’s ex-husband. Another lethal injection was planned Thursday in Florida.
Prosecutors said Grissom, who had a lengthy criminal record, picked up Johns, who was hitchhiking, and the two men were driving west on Interstate 40 when they decided to commit robberies. They randomly selected Kopf’s home near Watonga, where Matthews was visiting Kopf and her two young children.
Matthews was shot twice in the head and left clinging to life on the floor as Kopf, also shot twice and seriously wounded, managed to flee in Grissom’s truck to get help, prosecutors said. Grissom and Johns also fled, on a stolen four-wheeler, but quickly ran out of gas and were captured after hitching a ride to a cafe in a nearby county.
Authorities found Kopf’s children still inside the home, physically unhurt. Matthews died after being flown by helicopter to an Oklahoma City hospital.
Grissom’s attorneys did not dispute his guilt, but argued at a clemency hearing that he suffered from brain damage that was never presented to a jury. The state’s Pardon and Parole Board denied Grissom’s request.
His attorneys told the board Grissom always accepted responsibility, even writing an apology to Matthews’ family during his first interview with police.
“He cannot change the past, but he is now and always has been deeply ashamed and remorseful,” said Kristi Christopher, an attorney with the federal public defender’s office.
Kopf told the board that she still carries deep mental and physical scars from the attack, including bullet fragments that remain in her body. For years thereafter, she said she called 911 when the doorbell rang or a stranger appeared in her neighborhood.
“I lived in a heightened state of fear at all times,” she said tearfully.
Oklahoma Attorney General Gentner Drummond has called Matthew’s killing a “textbook” death penalty case.
“The crimes committed by Grissom, random, brutal attacks on innocent strangers in the sanctity of their own home, are the very kind that keep people awake at night,” Drummond said during last month’s hearing.
The lethal injection in December of Kevin Ray Underwood was the 127th execution by the state of Oklahoma since the U.S. reinstated the death penalty in 1976, state prison records show.
