JUST IN: Mississippi Moves to Execute First Woman Since 1944 | Lisa Jo Chamberlin
On a future date yet to be set, Lisa Joe Chamberlain, the only woman on Mississippi’s death row, is set to become the first woman executed in the state since 1944. She has spent nearly two decades waiting in a prison cell while courts argue over her fate. Some see her as a willing participant in a double murder.
Others see her as a deeply damaged woman shaped by abuse and controlled by the man who committed the worst of the violence and who will never face execution. In this video, we are going to examine the full story. What happened, what the courts decided, and why this case continues to raise difficult questions about fairness, responsibility, and justice.
But to understand how Lisa Joe Chamberlain ended up here, we have to go back to March 2004. To a quiet street in Hattisburg, Mississippi, and how two people ended up dismembered in a freezer. You have to understand who Lisa Joe Chamberlain and Roger Lee Gilllet were before they arrived in Hattisburg. They were fugitives.
In early 2004, Lisa and Roger were living in Russell County, Kansas, a rural area, flat plains stretching to the horizon, small towns where everyone knows everyone, the kind of place where strangers stand out and secrets do not stay buried for long. Lisa and Roger had been together for some time.
She had met him in Oregon, where she was born and raised. Their relationship was turbulent from the start. According to later court documents and affidavit, Roger was controlling, violent. He allegedly beat Lisa unconscious on at least two occasions. He once tried to drown her at his brother’s pond in Colorado. He would choke her with his hands until she blacked out.
He intentionally overdosed her with methamphetamine. Lisa was 31 years old. She had already been married three times. She had three children from different relationships. Her life had been marked by chaos and abuse since the day she was born. Roger was 29. He came from Russell County. His family had roots there.
His grandfather owned a farm outside of town, an abandoned property that would later become infamous. By February of 2004, Lisa and Roger were in trouble with the law. They were wanted on drug charges in Russell County. Methampetamine. They were cooking it, using it, selling it. The police were closing in. They needed to disappear.
Roger had an idea. His cousin Vernon Hulet lived in Hattisburg, Mississippi, over a thousand miles away. A different state, a fresh start, at least temporarily. They could hide out with Vernon, get some money together, and then flee to Mexico. That was the plan. hide in Mississippi, get cash, escape to Mexico.
So Lisa and Roger loaded up their blue Mitsubishi Eclipse and drove south over a thousand miles through Kansas, Oklahoma, Texas, Louisiana, and finally into Mississippi. They arrived in Hattisburg at the end of February 2004. Vernon Hulet welcomed them into his home. He was 34 years old. He lived in a modest house at 908 South Gulfport Street with his girlfriend Linda Marie Heinselman. She was 37 about to turn 38.
Vernon and Roger were cousins. They had grown up together. Family blood. That blood would soon be spilled. For the first few weeks, things were relatively calm at the house on South Gulfport Street. Four adults living under one roof. Vernon and Linda, Roger and Lisa. They cooked meals together. They drank beer.
They passed the time the way people do when they have nowhere else to be. But tension was building beneath the surface. On March 6th, 2004, just days after Lisa and Roger arrived, there was a car accident. The four of them were driving to the Mississippi Gulf Coast. Vernon and Linda were in Linda’s white Dodge Dakota pickup truck.
Lisa and Roger followed behind in their blue Mitsubishi. According to Lisa’s later account, Linda changed lanes too quickly, cutting them off and forcing them into a ditch. The Mitsubishi was badly damaged, nearly undrivable. Linda’s truck sustained only minor damage. Roger was furious. He later told Vernon’s mother that he wanted to take Linda and push her through a plate glass window.
The anger was immediate, visceral, disproportionate. But Linda made a promise. She would file an insurance claim for the accident. When the money came through, she would split the proceeds with Lisa and Roger. It would cover the damage to their car. Weeks passed. Linda never filed the claim. Roger’s anger festered.
He was stuck in Hattisburg with a broken car, wanted by police in Kansas, dependent on the hospitality of his cousin, and now cheated out of insurance money by Linda. The resentment grew. Meanwhile, Lisa and Roger were not contributing to the household. They had no jobs. They had no money. They were eating Vernon and Linda’s food, sleeping under their roof, and giving nothing in return.
By mid-March, Vernon and Linda had had enough. They told Lisa and Roger it was time to find their own place. Lisa agreed. She was ready to move on. Roger was not. He did not want to leave. He had nowhere else to go. No car, no money, no options. The disagreement between Lisa and Roger about moving out led to an argument.
Lisa left the house on foot, walking away to clear her head. She could not drive. The Mitsubishi was still damaged. When she returned that evening, Roger was standing on the front porch smoking a cigarette. Something had changed. The air felt different. Lisa did not know it yet, but the events that would lead to her death sentence had already been set in motion.
What happened inside that house on the night of March 20th, 2004 would be described in court documents as especially heinous, atrocious, and cruel. Lisa and Roger entered the house together. According to Lisa’s later confession to Kansas Bureau of Investigation officers, Roger immediately became violent with Linda.
He accused her of lying about the insurance claim, of cheating them out of money they were owed. The confrontation escalated. Roger pulled out a gun. He fired one round inside the house. Not at anyone. Into the air, a warning shot, a display of power, a message that he was in control now. Vernon and Linda were terrified.
Roger turned his attention to Vernon. There was a safe in the house. Vernon’s safe. Roger wanted what was inside. He demanded the combination. Vernon refused. Roger began to beat him, punching him, hitting him, demanding the code to the safe. Vernon would not give it up. At some point during this chaos, Lisa left the house.
She went to get more beer. All the beer in the house had been consumed. She walked to a nearby store and bought more. When she returned, everything had changed. Linda was bent over the safe. She was not wearing any pants. Lisa asked Roger what had happened. Had he raped her? Roger’s answer was chilling. He said he wanted to break her.
He had forced Linda to remove her clothes. Then he had violated her with a beer bottle. Linda Heinselman, a 37year-old woman who had done nothing more than fail to file an insurance claim, was being tortured in her own home. And still neither she nor Vernon would open the safe. This is the moment that would seal Lisa Joe Chamberlain’s fate.
According to her own confession, Lisa became impatient. She looked at Roger and said something to the effect of, “Let us just kill them and get out of here.” The prosecution would later argue that this statement proved Lisa was not a passive participant, not a victim of Roger’s control. She was an instigator, a co-conspirator, equally responsible for what came next.
Roger picked up a hammer. Vernon Hulet was sitting in a chair in the living room, beaten, bloodied, but still alive. Roger swung the hammer. The blow struck Vernon in the left side of his head. Blunt force trauma, the kind of injury that shatters bone and destroys brain tissue. Vernon Hulet died in that chair. But his nightmare was not over and Linda’s was just beginning.
Linda Heinselman was still alive. She had been beaten, stabbed, violated. But she was breathing, lying on the floor of her own home, surrounded by blood, listening to the sounds of violence that had just claimed her boyfriend’s life. According to Lisa’s confession, she went in and out of the house multiple times over the next several hours.
Each time she returned, Linda was still there, still breathing, still alive. Hours passed. Linda would not die. Eventually, Lisa suggested they smother her, end it, put her out of her misery, perhaps, or simply eliminate the witness to their crimes. Lisa and Roger worked together to bind Linda’s hands behind her back. They did not want her to struggle.
They did not want her to fight back. Roger lifted Linda’s head. Lisa placed a plastic bag over it, but Lisa could not finish it. She told investigators that she was unable to complete the esphyxiation. She went outside again, left the house. Left Linda with a bag over her head, hands bound, fighting for breath. When Lisa returned, Linda Heinselman was dead.
The official autopsy would later determine that Linda died from a combination of sharp force injuries to the torso and neck, blunt force injuries to the head, and asphyxiation. She had been stabbed. She had been beaten. She had been suffocated. She was 38 years old. Her birthday had been 2 days earlier on March 18th.
Two people were now dead in the house on South Gulfport Street. The real horror was about to begin. The bodies needed to disappear. Lisa and Roger could not simply leave Vernon and Linda in the house. Someone would come looking eventually. Vernon’s nephew had already stopped by once or twice. Questions would be asked.
They needed to move the bodies. But how do you transport two dead adults without being noticed? Roger had an idea. They would use the freezer. Vernon and Linda owned a large chest freezer, the kind you keep in a garage or basement, big enough to store months worth of meat, big enough to store two human bodies. But there was a problem.
Vernon was a grown man. His body would not fit in the freezer, not intact. So, Roger got to work. According to Lisa’s confession, she helped move the bodies into the bathroom. What happened next is almost impossible to comprehend. Roger took a cutting tool. The exact implement was never definitively established, but the results were clear.
He cut off Vernon Hewlet’s head. He cut off Vernon Hulet’s arms. Lisa stood there. She held open garbage bags while Roger placed Vernon’s severed arms inside. This was her cousin-in-law, a man who had welcomed them into his home, who had given them shelter when they were fugitives, who had shared his food and his roof with them.
Now his dismembered body parts were being stuffed into trash bags. Linda’s body remained intact. She was loaded into the freezer first. Then Vernon’s torso was placed on top of her. His severed head and arms, wrapped in black plastic garbage bags, were stuffed into the remaining space. Lisa helped tape the freezer shut.
She wrapped duct tape around the lid while Roger stood on top of the freezer, pressing down to keep it closed. They used electrical tape as well, layer after layer, sealing the bodies inside. When they were done, the freezer was airtight. Two human beings reduced to cargo, ready for transport. They loaded the freezer onto the back of Linda’s white Dodge Dakota pickup truck.
The same truck that had barely been scratched in the accident that started this nightmare. Lisa and Roger climbed into the cab. They had a long drive ahead of them. The drive from Hattisburg, Mississippi to Russell County, Kansas is approximately 950 mi. It takes about 12 hours if you drive straight through.
Longer if you stop for gas, food, or rest. Lisa Joe Chamberlain and Roger Lee Gilllet made that drive in March of 2004 with two dismembered bodies in a freezer on the back of their stolen truck. Think about that for a moment. 12 hours on the highway, passing other cars, stopping at gas stations, maybe pulling into a rest stop to use the bathroom.
All while the remains of Vernon Hulet and Linda Heinselman sat in a freezer behind them. Did they talk during that drive? Did they discuss what they had done? Did they make plans for what came next? We do not know. What we do know is that they arrived in Russell County, Kansas, and drove to the abandoned farm owned by Roger’s grandfather.
a remote property, isolated, the kind of place where no one would look twice at a truck pulling up in the middle of the night. They unloaded the freezer from the truck. They carried it into a wooden granery on the property. They plugged it in. The bodies would stay frozen, hidden, preserved indefinitely. But Lisa and Roger were not done covering their tracks.
They had brought evidence with them from Hattisburg, items that could link them to the crime. Vernon’s workclo with his name printed on them, wallets containing the victim’s identification, a bloody pillow from the bed, a Hattisburg phone book, the cardboard center of the duct tape roll they had used to seal the freezer.
They drove to the Russell County landfill and disposed of seven garbage bags full of evidence. They also got rid of other items at a public swimming pool. Then they went to stay with Roger’s aunt, Patty Hwlet, at her home on North Ash Street in Russell. For the next nine days, Lisa and Roger walked free. They ate meals. They slept in beds.
They interacted with Roger’s family members. And no one knew that two bodies were decomposing in a freezer less than 10 miles away. Back in Hattisburg, people were starting to notice that Vernon and Linda were missing. Vernon’s nephew stopped by the house on South Gulfport Street on March 20th, the day of the murders.
He found only Lisa and Roger there. Where were Vernon and Linda? Roger had an answer ready. He told the nephew that Vernon and Linda had gone to the coast with a friend, the Gulf Coast. A spontaneous trip, nothing to worry about. The nephew accepted this explanation. He left. He came back the next day, March 21st.
Still no Vernon and Linda. Still just Roger and Lisa. This time, the nephew noticed something strange. The carpeting in the house had been ripped up, pulled from the floor, and rolled up against the wall. He asked about it. Roger had another lie prepared. He said Vernon had asked him to rip up the carpet before he left. Vernon had come into some money and was going to buy new carpeting.
he would bring it back with him from the coast. The nephew accepted this explanation, too. Why would he not? Roger was family, Vernon’s own cousin. There was no reason to suspect that anything sinister had occurred. The nephew saw Roger and Lisa again on March 23rd. They were still in Hattisburg, still staying at Vernon’s house, still pretending that everything was normal.
Shortly after that, Lisa and Roger left Mississippi and drove to Kansas. The nephew had no reason to think he would never see his uncle Vernon again. Meanwhile, in Kansas, Roger was not keeping quiet. He started bragging. To at least two friends, Roger confessed what he had done. He told them he had taken the truck from its owners, that he had killed the owners, that the owners were in the back of the truck.
One of these friends later went to the Gilllet farm. He saw a freezer in one of the sheds. It looked like the same object he had seen under a tarp in the back of Roger’s truck. He did not report it immediately, but someone else would. March 28th, 2004. Roger Gilllet was cooking methamphetamine at his grandfather’s abandoned farm, the same farm where he had stored the freezer containing two bodies. He needed money.
He had agreed to cook a batch of meth for $500. It was what he knew how to do. But Roger had made a critical error. He had threatened his own aunt. Debbie Milm was Roger’s aunt. She lived in Russell County. She knew Roger was in town. She knew he was into drugs. At some point, Roger had pointed a gun at her, threatened her, perhaps demanded something from her.
The exact circumstances are unclear, but the result was decisive. Debbie Milm went to the Russell County Sheriff’s Department on March 29th, 2004. She told them that her nephew had manufactured illegal narcotics at the family farm the previous day. She told them he was in possession of a stolen vehicle, a white pickup truck.
She did not know about the bodies. At least there is no evidence that she did. She was reporting drug activity and a stolen truck, but her tip would lead to the discovery of something far worse. The sheriff’s department contacted the Kansas Bureau of Investigation. A narcotics investigator named Matthew Lion took the lead.
Agent Lion had over 20 years of experience. He knew how to build a case. He obtained two search warrants. One for the residence at 606 North Ash Street, where Roger was staying with his aunt Patty. one for the Gillette farm. At 3:45 in the afternoon on March 29th, officers began executing the search warrant on North Ash Street.
They found methamphetamine, drug paraphernalia, evidence of manufacturing, but they did not find Roger and Lisa. The couple was not at the residence. Officers fanned out to search for them. They were eventually located at a local park and taken into custody. Lisa and Roger were arrested on drug charges. Five felony counts related to methamphetamine.
Bail was set at $500,000 each. They thought they were being arrested for drugs. They had no idea what was about to be discovered at the farm. At approximately 5:15 in the afternoon on March 29th, 2004, officers arrived at the Gilllet farm. The property was remote, abandoned, a collection of old buildings and overgrown fields.
The kind of place that had seen better days decades ago. In a metal shed, officers found a white Dodge Dakota pickup truck with Mississippi plates. The same truck registered to Linda Heinselman, the same truck that Debbie Milum had reported as stolen. But that was not all. In a wooden granery, officers found something else.
A large white chest freezer bound shut with duct tape and electrical tape, plugged into an outlet, humming with electricity. Why would someone tape a freezer shut? The officers approached. They cut through the tape. They lifted the lid. What they saw would haunt them for the rest of their lives. A body, male, dismembered, stuffed into the top of the freezer, missing his head, missing his arms.
Beneath the body, a black plastic garbage bag. Inside the bag, severed human body parts. And beneath all of that, frozen in liquid at the bottom of the freezer, another body, female, intact, her face frozen in an expression of terror. Vernon Hwlet and Linda Heinselman had been found. The officers secured the scene.
They obtained a third search warrant specifically authorizing a homicide investigation. They called for backup. They called for forensic specialists. The bodies were removed from the freezer and prepared for transport to the medical examiner’s office. That evening, Agent Lion received a call from the Russell County Sheriff. Two bodies had been found at the Gillette farm. This was no longer a drug case.
This was a double homicide. Lisa Joe Chamberlain was sitting in the Russell County Jail when the bodies were discovered. She had been arrested on drug charges. She had initially refused to answer questions after being read her Miranda rightites. But over the next two days, everything changed. On March 30th, officers conducted three separate interviews with Lisa.
She talked she talked about how she met Roger in Oregon, how they moved to Kansas together, how they drove to Mississippi to hide from drug charges, how they stayed with Vernon and Linda for about a month. She talked about the car accident, the broken insurance promise, the tension in the house. She talked about the night of March 20th.
She described Roger firing the gun, beating Vernon, demanding the combination to the safe. She described leaving to get beer, coming back to find Linda without her pants, bent over the safe. She described Roger telling her he had violated Linda with a beer bottle because he wanted to break her.
She described telling Roger to just kill them and get out of there. She described watching Roger bash Vernon’s head with a hammer. She described the hours that followed with Linda still alive on the floor, still breathing, refusing to die. She described suggesting they smother her, helping to bind her hands, placing the bag over her head.
She described the dismemberment, holding the garbage bags while Roger cut off Vernon’s head and arms. She described loading the bodies into the freezer, taping it shut, driving 12 hours to Kansas. She described dumping evidence at the landfill. She even agreed to show officers exactly where she and Roger had disposed of the garbage bags.
On the evening of March 30th, Lisa led KBI officers to the Russell County dump. She pointed out where the evidence had been thrown away. The next morning, officers returned and recovered seven plastic garbage bags. Inside, they found Vernon’s work shirt with his name on it. Vernon’s work pants with his name on them.
A pillow heavily stained with blood. A camera. Linda’s purse with her identification. Vernon’s wallet with his identification. A Hattisburg phone book. The cardboard center of a duct tape roll. A pair of New Balance tennis shoes with blood stains. Those shoes would become critical evidence. The Mississippi Crime Laboratory later determined that one of the shoes was the source of a bloody footprint found at the crime scene on South Gulfport Street.
The blood on the shoe was Linda Heinselman’s blood. Lisa Joe Chamberlain had confessed. She had led police to evidence. She had implicated herself in two brutal murders. She had sealed her own fate. While Lisa was confessing in Kansas, officers in Hattisburg were executing their own search warrant. They entered the house at 908 South Gulfport Street, the home where Vernon and Linda had lived, the home where they had died.
What they found confirmed everything Lisa had said. The carpeting had been removed from the floor and rolled up, just as Vernon’s nephew had noticed days earlier. But now the reason was clear. The carpet was soaked with blood evidence that needed to be hidden. There were multiple blood-like stains throughout the house, on the floors, on the walls, everywhere.
The safe had been pried open. Someone had tried to break into it by force. And there was a shoe print, a bloody shoe print in a reddish stain on the floor. That print matched the New Balance shoes found in the Kansas landfill. The shoes with Linda’s blood on them. The forensic evidence was overwhelming.
Vernon Hwlet’s mother, Carolyn Hester, was brought in to identify items found at the Kansas farm. She confirmed that the freezer was the same one that had belonged to Vernon and Linda. She had last seen it at their home in Hattisburg. Fingerprint analysis revealed Roger Gilllet’s prints on the freezer, on the tape that bound it shut, on both the sticky side and the shiny side.
The medical examiner, Dr. Donald Pyman, conducted autopsies on both victims. Vernon Hewlet died from blunt force injuries to the left side of his head, consistent with being struck by a hammer. Linda Heinselman died from sharp force injuries to her torso and neck, blunt force injuries to her head, and asphyxiation.
She had been stabbed, beaten, and suffocated. The case against Lisa Joe Chamberlain and Roger Lee Gilllet was airtight. Both were charged with two counts of capital murder in the state of Mississippi. The underlying felony was robbery. In Mississippi, a murder committed during the course of a robbery is capital murder, a crime punishable by death.
Lisa and Roger were extradited from Kansas to Mississippi to stand trial. Lisa Joe Chamberlain went to trial first in August of 2006. She stood before a Forest County jury in Hattisburg, Mississippi. The same county where Vernon and Linda had lived. The same county where they had been murdered. The trial lasted 3 days. The prosecution presented a mountain of evidence.
Lisa’s own confessions, the forensic evidence from the crime scene, the items recovered from the Kansas landfill, the testimony of medical examiners and crime scene investigators. They painted Lisa as an active participant in the murders, not a passive bystander, not a victim of Roger’s control, but a willing co-conspirator who had urged Roger to kill the victims.
Let us just kill them and get out of here.” Those words echoed through the courtroom. The defense tried to present a different picture. They argued that Lisa should receive life in prison rather than death. They brought in a psychiatrist who had evaluated Lisa. The diagnosis was devastating. Lisa Joe Chamberlain suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder.
She suffered from borderline personality disorder. These conditions were the result of a lifetime of abuse. Her biological father had abused her and her mother when Lisa was a toddler. Her parents divorced when she was 3 or four years old. Her mother, who struggled with alcoholism and bipolar disorder, also abused Lisa.
Her mother remarried. Her stepfather abused Lisa and her stepsister. Lisa was sexually assaulted by her own half-brother. She was abused by a school teacher when she was in fourth grade. She married three times. At least one of her partners was abusive. And then there was Roger Gilllet. The defense argued that Lisa had been dominated by Roger, that she was a follower, not a leader, that she had acted under his influence and control. But the jury was not convinced.
Lisa had confessed multiple times to multiple people. She had never said that Roger made her do anything. She had never expressed fear of him during those confessions, and she had said those words, “Let us just kill them.” On August 4th, 2006, the jury found Lisa Joe Chamberlain guilty on two counts of capital murder.
The same day, they recommended the death penalty. Judge Bob Helfridge made it official. Lisa Joe Chamberlain was sentenced to death by lethal injection. She was 33 years old. Roger Lee Gilllet went to trial. The following year from October 30th to November 2nd, 2007, he stood before a different Forest County jury. Same courthouse, same charges, same victims, but a very different defendant.
Roger was the one who had actually committed most of the violence. He had beaten Vernon. He had sexually assaulted Linda with a beer bottle. He had swung the hammer. He had dismembered the body. His fingerprints were on the freezer. Lisa had assisted. She had suggested smothering Linda.
She had held open the garbage bags. She had helped tape the freezer shut, but Roger was the primary actor, the leader, the one in control. The jury found Roger Lee Gilllet guilty on two counts of capital murder. On November 3rd, 2007, Judge Bob Hellfrick sentenced him to death by lethal injection. Both killers were now on death row.
Justice had been served, or so it seemed. In Mississippi, a death sentence automatically triggers an appeal to the state supreme court. Lisa’s appeal was rejected on July 17th, 2008. The court affirmed her conviction and sentence. She filed a postconviction appeal. Rejected on November 10th, 2010. She petitioned the United States Supreme Court. rejected on October 31st, 2011.
Every door was closing. But then something unexpected happened. In 2015, federal judge Carlton Reeves granted Lisa a new trial. The reason was a legal doctrine called a Batson violation. During Lisa’s trial, the prosecution had used perempter strikes to remove potential jurors. Two of those jurors were African-American.
Lisa argued that these jurors were struck because of their race. Even though Lisa herself is white, she claimed her rights were violated by racially discriminatory jury selection. Judge Reeves agreed. He ordered a new trial. The prosecution appealed. In 2017, a three judge panel of the fifth circuit court of appeals upheld Judge Reeves’ decision.
Two to one, Lisa would get a new trial. For a moment, it looked like Lisa Joe Chamberlain might escape the death penalty, but the prosecution was not finished. They requested an unbank review. A hearing before the full 15 judge panel of the fifth circuit. In March of 2018, the full court ruled 9 to5.
Lisa’s death sentence was reinstated. The court found that the allegations of racial bias were insufficient to reverse her conviction. The prosecution had struck some black jurors and accepted others. They had struck some white jurors and accepted others. There was no pattern of discrimination. Lisa appealed to the Supreme Court again.
In June of 2019, the Supreme Court declined to hear her case. Her death sentence stood. She was running out of options. While Lisa’s appeals were failing, something very different was happening with Roger Gillette. Roger had also been sentenced to death. He had also filed appeals. His direct appeal to the Mississippi Supreme Court was rejected in 2010.
The court affirmed his conviction, but there was a problem with his sentence. During Roger’s sentencing, the prosecution had introduced evidence that Roger had attempted to escape while in Kansas. They argued this showed he was dangerous and deserving of death. The Mississippi Supreme Court disagreed.
Under Kansas law, not every escape attempt is considered a violent crime. The prosecution should not have been allowed to use this evidence during sentencing. In 2014, the Mississippi Supreme Court vacated Roger’s death sentence. They ordered a new sentencing hearing. Roger Lee Gilllet was no longer condemned to die.
The new sentencing hearing was scheduled for 2015. It was delayed, rescheduled, delayed again. The case dragged on for years. Finally, on July 25th, 2018, Roger was resentenced. The prosecution made a decision. To spare the victim’s families from going through another trial, they offered Roger a deal. They would not seek the death penalty a second time.
Roger Lee Gilllet was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole. He will die in prison, but he will not be executed. The man who actually committed most of the violence, who beat Vernon Hewlet, who sexually violated Linda Heinselman with a beer bottle, who swung the hammer, who cut off his cousin’s head and arms.
That man will live. Lisa Joe Chamberlain, who assisted but did not commit the primary acts of violence, will die. Justice or something else entirely? Years passed on death row. Lisa Joe Chamberlain remained at the Central Mississippi Correctional Facility in Pearl, the only woman in the state facing execution.
She continued to fight her conviction. New lawyers, new arguments, new appeals. And then in 2023, something remarkable happened. Roger Lee Gilllet signed an affidavit from his cell at the Mississippi State Penitentiary in Parchman. The man who had escaped the death penalty put his testimony in writing. He had complete control over Lisa. Those were his words.
He stated that Lisa seemed to thrive best under a strong influence, that he had intentionally overdosed her with methamphetamine, that he had beaten her unconscious on at least two occasions. And he said something that cut to the heart of the case. When my attorney told me Lisa was painted as the mastermind behind the homicide, I almost did not believe him.
It is laughable to think that Lisa is the mastermind behind anything. Her involvement was minor and she would not have participated had I not clearly been in control. The man who killed his cousin was now saying that Lisa was not the mastermind, that she only participated because he controlled her, that her involvement was minor.
In August of 2024, another affidavit was filed. This one from Marty Luring, a clinical social worker. Luring described the abuse Lisa had suffered at Roger’s hands. He had attempted to drown her at his brother’s pond in Colorado. He would choke her until she lost consciousness. Lisa’s lawyers argued that this new evidence warranted a new hearing.
The jury had never heard about the extent of Roger’s control over Lisa. If they had, they might have sentenced her differently. In May of 2025, the Mississippi Supreme Court ruled 8 to1. Lisa’s appeal was denied. The court was unpersuaded by Roger’s affidavit. They noted that Lisa had confessed numerous times to numerous people.
She had never said that Roger made her do anything. She had never expressed fear of him, and she had said those words, “Let us just kill them and get out of here.” Justice Robert Chamberlain wrote for the majority. He acknowledged the gravity of capital cases. He said the court did not take its duty lightly, but the evidence was clear.
Lisa had been a willing participant in the robbery and murder of two victims. Her confession made no mention of domination. She had repeatedly advocated killing the victims. Only Justice Leslie King dissented. He called out the court for failing to consider the new evidence. He argued that Roger’s affidavit should warrant a new hearing.
He wrote that the court had a long history of merely paying lip service to heightened standards in capital cases. But his was a lone voice. Lisa Joe Chamberlain remains on death row. Who is Lisa Joe Chamberlain? Is she the cold-blooded killer the prosecution described? The woman who urged her boyfriend to murder two innocent people because she was impatient.
Or is she the victim her defenders portray? A woman with organic brain damage, abused her entire life, controlled by a violent man who escaped the ultimate punishment. The truth, as always, is complicated. Lisa was born in Oregon on September 30th, 1972. Her mother drank during the pregnancy. Recent appeals have raised the issue of fetal alcohol spectrum disorder, FASD, a condition caused by prenatal alcohol exposure that can result in lifelong cognitive and behavioral problems.
Lisa’s jury never heard about FASD. Her original lawyers never raised it. Recent psychological evaluations suggest she may have organic brain damage that affected her judgment and impulse control. From the moment she was born, Lisa’s life was marked by abuse. Her biological father beat her and her mother.
Her parents split up when she was a toddler. Her mother was an alcoholic with bipolar disorder. She abused Lisa. Her mother remarried. Her stepfather abused Lisa and her stepsister. Her half-brother sexually assaulted her. A school teacher abused her when she was in fourth grade. By the time she was an adult, Lisa had been victimized by nearly every authority figure in her life.
Father, mother, stepfather, brother, teacher. She married three times. She had three children. At least one of her husbands was abusive. And then she met Roger Gilllet. Roger, who would beat her unconscious, who would try to drown her, who would choke her until she blacked out, who would intentionally overdose her with drugs.
Roger, who would one day kill his own cousin and escape with his life. Lisa is not innocent. She participated in horrific crimes. She helped dispose of bodies. She suggested smothering a woman who was still breathing. But is she the mastermind, the instigator, the one who deserves to die while the actual killer lives? That is the question that haunts this case.
In all the discussion of legal appeals and criminal culpability, it is easy to forget the people at the center of this case. Vernon Carl Hlet was 34 years old when he died. He was born on November 18th, 1969. He lived his whole life in and around Hattiesburg, Mississippi. His mother, Carolyn Hester, had to identify her son’s belongings at trial.
The freezer where his body was found, his work clothes with his name printed on them. Vernon welcomed his cousin Roger into his home. He gave him shelter when Roger had nowhere else to go. He shared his food, his roof, his life, and Roger killed him for it. Linda Marie Heinselman was 38 years old when she died. She was born on March 18th, 1966.
Her birthday was 2 days before she was murdered. She had a pickup truck, a white Dodge Dakota, the same truck that would transport her body to Kansas. Linda’s last hours were filled with terror. She was beaten. She was sexually violated with a beer bottle by a man who wanted to break her. She was stabbed. She watched her boyfriend die.
She lay on the floor for hours, still breathing, while her killers decided what to do with her. She was suffocated with a plastic bag. Her body was stuffed into a freezer beneath her boyfriend’s dismembered remains. She did not deserve any of it. Neither of them did. They took in two people who needed help. Two fugitives running from drug charges.
They opened their home. They shared their lives. and they paid for that kindness with their lives. As of today, Lisa Joe Chamberlain is the only woman on death row in Mississippi. There have been others over the years. Michelle Byum was sentenced to death in 2000 for soliciting the murder of her husband.
She came close to execution in 2014, but her conviction was overturned on appeal. She was released in 2015 after entering an offered plea to lesser charges. She died in 2019, a free woman. Since Byram’s case was resolved, Lisa stands alone. 37 people sit on death row in Mississippi. 36 of them are men. Lisa is the only woman.
She has been there since August of 2006, 19 years and counting. The average time on death row in Mississippi is over 20 years. Some inmates have been there for more than 40 years. Richard Jordan spent nearly 50 years on death row before his execution in 2025. Lisa could be waiting for decades more. Or she could be next. If Mississippi decides to execute Lisa Joe Chamberlain, she will be the first woman put to death in the state since 1944, over 80 years.
Her case has attracted attention from legal scholars, death penalty opponents, and true crime researchers. The questions are always the same. How did the woman end up on death row while the man who committed most of the violence got life? How did the legal system produce this result? Is this justice? Death Row is not what most people imagine.
There are no chains or darkness, only a small cell, long hours, and endless waiting. Lisa Joe Chamberlain has spent nearly two decades in that space. She arrived at 33. She is now in her early 50s, still waiting to learn whether the state will carry out her sentence. Her lawyers continue to fight. They argue that important evidence about her mental health was never presented to the jury.
They point to new statements suggesting she was controlled by the man who committed the worst of the violence. So far, the courts have not been persuaded, but capital cases can stretch for decades. Laws change, judges change, outcomes can change. Nothing is final until the very end. Mississippi continues to carry out executions.
Lisa could receive a date at any time. If that happens, she will be transferred to Parchman for her final days. She will be allowed final visits, final calls, and a final meal. Then the state will decide her fate. Every death penalty case asks the same thing. Does this person deserve to die? Two innocent people, Vernon Hewlet and Linda Heinselman, lost their lives.
Their families have lived with that loss for more than 20 years. Nothing can undo that. Roger Lee Gilllet, who carried out most of the violence, will spend the rest of his life in prison. Lisa Joe Chamberlain remains under sentence of death. The courts have upheld that outcome, but some judges, advocates, and even Roger himself have questioned whether the punishment fits the roles each person played.
This is not just a story about crime. It is a story about justice, responsibility, and consequence, about who pays the highest price and why. Lisa Joe Chamberlain is still alive for now. The story is not over yet.
