Inside the Final Hours of Wendell Arden Grissom | last meal & words Oklahoma Death Row Documentary
On March 20th, 2025, at 10:13 a.m., 56-year-old Wendel Arden Gryom was executed by lethal injection at the Oklahoma State Penitentiary in Mallister. He became Oklahoma’s first execution of the year. Gryom had spent nearly 17 years on death row, ever since his 2008 conviction for a brutal 2005 home invasion murder.
In this video, we will take you inside the case that led him to death row, the crime itself, the investigation and trial, and the final hours before his execution, including his last meal and the final words he spoke before he died. But before we get into those final moments, let me take you back to where this nightmare began.
Because what happened on a November evening in 2005 was so random, so utterly senseless that it would haunt a rural Oklahoma community for nearly two decades. Welcome to Deadline Files. Picture this. It’s November 2005 in Blaine County, Oklahoma. The landscape is flat and wide, dotted with farms and small houses separated by miles of open prairie.
Near the town of Watanga, a quiet community of fewer than 3,000 people, a young mother named Drew Cop is spending a peaceful evening at home with her two small daughters and a close friend. Drew is in her 20s. She has two precious little girls. Riley, a toddler about 2 years old, and baby Gracie, still an infant.
It’s the kind of home where laughter echoes through the rooms, where toys are scattered on the floor, where the biggest worry is getting the kids to bed on time. Staying with her that night is 23-year-old Amber Matthews. Amber is more than just a friend. She’s practically family. She’s young, vivacious, full of dreams. She wants to be a nurse someday to help people, to make a difference.
Right now though, she’s content to spend time with her best friend and those beautiful children. She’s the kind of person who lights up a room, who makes kids giggle, who remembers the little things that matter. As the evening wears on, the children are settled. Maybe Amber and Drew are watching TV, talking about their plans, enjoying the simple comfort of friendship. Outside, the sun has set.
The house sits relatively isolated, surrounded by the vast Oklahoma landscape. It’s quiet. It’s safe. Or so they think. About a 100 miles away, two men are driving west on Interstate 40. Their names are Wendell Arden Gryom and Jesse Floyd John’s. They’ve been drinking. They’ve been using drugs. And they’re looking for a house to rob.
Not a specific house. Not the home of someone who wronged them or someone they have a grudge against. Just any house. They want money, valuables, whatever they can get their hands on. The choice is completely random. A terrifying lottery where Drew Cop’s home becomes the unlucky winner. Gryom is 37 years old at this point.
He’s got a lengthy criminal record, a history of bad decisions, violent tendencies, run-ins with the law. John’s is younger, drifting, the kind of guy who makes one wrong choice after another until he ends up in a situation he can’t control. According to later testimony, John’s had been hitchhiking when Gryom picked him up.
Somewhere during that ride, they decided impulsively casually as if they were deciding what to have for dinner to commit robberies. Just like that, two strangers making a choice that would destroy multiple lives. They pull off Interstate 40 and start looking for targets. They drive through the darkness until they spot Drew Cop’s house near Watanga.
There’s no particular reason they choose this one. It just happens to be there. It happens to look vulnerable. They approach the house and what happens next is almost too brutal to comprehend. Gryom doesn’t knock. He doesn’t announce himself. He walks up to the patio door and starts shooting. The first bullets shatter the glass.
Drew Cop is hit immediately. She’s struck in the wrist in the hand, but Gryom isn’t done. He keeps firing. One bullet enters her shoulder and travels through her body, lodging in her skull behind her ear. Another bullet hits her hip. And here’s the part that makes it even more horrifying. Witnesses would later testify that Gryom was laughing as he fired.
Laughing, not nervous laughter, not the manic laugh of someone having a breakdown. Cold, cruel laughter. The laughter of someone enjoying what he’s doing. He was just laughing and he just kept shooting and shooting and laughing. Drew would later recall her voice still trembling with the memory even years after the attack.
[ PART 2]
Drew bleeding from multiple gunshot wounds knows she has to survive. She has to get help. Her babies are in the house. Amber is in the house. With every ounce of strength she is left, despite the bullet lodged in her skull, despite the wounds to her hand and hip, Drew Cop runs. She makes it outside. She escapes the carnage.
And in a display of strength that defies comprehension, she manages to drive herself toward help. Convinced that if she doesn’t get away, Gryom will k!ll everyone in that house. Inside, Amber Matthews hears the gunshots. She hears the screaming. She knows something terrible is happening. Her first instinct isn’t to run.
It’s to protect the children. She rushes to the bedroom where Riley and baby Gracie are. She positions herself between them and the door. She becomes their shield. Wendell Gryom follows her. He bursts into the bedroom and finds Amber there, cradling baby Gracie in her arms. Riley is in the crib nearby, terrified, crying.
Amber is begging. She’s pleading for her life. She’s 23 years old and she wants to live. She wants to become a nurse. She wants to see tomorrow, but Gryom doesn’t care. He raises his gun and fires. The first shot hits Amber in the back of the head. She’s still holding Gracie when the bullet enters her skull.
But Gryom isn’t satisfied. He stands over her. This young woman who’s crumpled to the floor, bleeding, dying, and he fires again. This time into her forehead. The room is painted with blood. Baby Gracie and toddler Riley are screaming, their clothes spattered with the blood of the woman who tried to protect them, but they’re physically unharmed.
Amber used her body as a shield and in her final moments she saved those children’s lives. Outside, authorities are already being alerted. Drew Cop, despite her catastrophic injuries, has managed to summon help. Emergency responders race to the scene. What they find when they arrive is a scene of absolute horror. Amber Matthews is on the floor gasping for breath, surrounded by the children.
She’s still alive barely. The paramedics work frantically. They call for a medical helicopter. Amber is airlifted to an Oklahoma City hospital. The medical team fighting desperately to save her. Meanwhile, Riley and Gracie are found in their crib, traumatized, covered in blood, but miraculously uninjured.
They’re taken into protective custody immediately. What those little girls witnessed that night would haunt them and their family forever. At the hospital, doctors fight to save both Drew and Amber. Drew’s injuries are severe. Bullet fragments remain lodged in her body, including the one behind her ear that’s too dangerous to remove. But she survives.
Against all odds, she makes it through. Amber Matthews is not so fortunate despite the best efforts of the trauma team. She succumbs to her wounds. She dies in that Oklahoma City hospital. Her dreams of becoming a nurse dying with her. The official cause of death. Gunshot wounds to the head. The unofficial cause.
Being in the wrong place when two predators decided to destroy innocent lives. Back at the crime scene, investigators are already gathering evidence. Shell casings litter the floor. There’s blood everywhere. Fingerprints. Forensic evidence. The Oklahoma State Bureau of Investigation processes the scene meticulously, knowing they’re looking at a capital murder case.
And what about Gryom and John’s? They fled. After the shooting, they stole a four-wheeler from the property and took off into the darkness. But here’s the thing about rural Oklahoma. There aren’t that many places to hide. The four-wheeler runs out of gas. They are stranded. So, they do what desperate criminals do. They start hitchhiking.
Within hours, literally hours, law enforcement has them. Gryom and John’s are arrested at a local diner where they’d apparently decided to stop for a meal as if they hadn’t just murdered someone and nearly k!lled another. When police search them, they find stolen firearms, items taken from Drew Cop’s home, and other incriminating evidence.
The manhunt is over in less than 24 hours. But for the families of the victims, the nightmare is just beginning. Let’s talk about Amber Dawn Matthews because she deserves to be remembered as more than just a victim. Amber was 23 years old. She had her whole life ahead of her. She was described by everyone who knew her as kind, vivacious, caring.
She didn’t just want to be a nurse. She was touched by the idea of helping others, of making a real difference in people’s lives. The night she died, she was doing what she loved, spending time with her best friend and those beautiful children. She wasn’t in the wrong place at the wrong time.
She was exactly where she wanted to be, doing exactly what brought her joy. When Wendell Gryom burst into that house, Amber had a choice. She could have tried to run. She could have tried to save herself. Instead, she ran toward the children. She put herself between them and a mad man with a gun. She died protecting babies who weren’t even her own.
Her family would later say that Amber’s final act defined who she was. Selfless to the very end. And Drew Cop, what she survived is almost incomprehensible. Shot at least three times with a bullet lodged in her skull, she managed to escape and get help. But survival came at a tremendous cost. In the years that followed, Drew lived with constant fear.
The bullet fragments couldn’t be safely removed. They remained in her body as permanent reminders of that night. She reported living in a heightened state of fear at all times. She called 911 when strangers appeared near her property. Simple things that most people take for granted.
answering the door, hearing unexpected noises became sources of terror. Her children, Riley and Gracie, grew up with the knowledge of what happened that night. How do you explain to your daughters that they survived something that k!lled the woman who tried to protect them? How do you help them process trauma they were too young to fully understand, but old enough to remember in nightmares and fragments? The emotional toll on the entire family would last a lifetime.
Healing, as Drew would later say, wasn’t really possible. You just learn to live with it. In January 2006, a Blaine County grand jury indicted both Gryom and John’s on multiple counts. The charges were severe. first-degree murder, shooting with intent to k!ll, grand lararseny, possession of a firearm after felony conviction, and more.
Jesse Floyd John’s, facing the overwhelming evidence, and perhaps recognizing the horror of what they’d done, decided to plead guilty. He accepted a deal. Life in prison without the possibility of parole. He would spend the rest of his life behind bars, never again seeing freedom, never again making choices that could hurt innocent people.
But Wendel Gryom chose to fight the charges. His trial began in late 2007 in Blaine County. The prosecution’s case was devastating. They had eyewitness testimony from Drew Cop, who could identify Gryom as the shooter. They had forensic evidence linking the bullets to Gryom’s weapon. They had the stolen items found in his possession.
They had his own statements to the police. The defense didn’t try to claim innocence. The evidence was too overwhelming. Instead, they built their case around intoxication and mental impairment. Gryom’s attorneys argued that he was severely intoxicated at the time of the crime, that his judgment was impaired, that he suffered from brain damage from a previous car accident.
They painted a picture of a man whose impulse control was compromised, who wasn’t fully responsible for his actions. They presented brain scans showing abnormalities. They brought in expert witnesses to testify about the effects of substance abuse and traumatic brain injury. They argued that while the crime was terrible, Gryom’s mental state should be considered.
But here’s what the jury saw. Surveillance footage and evidence showing a man who was coherent enough to drive, coherent enough to select a target, coherent enough to load a weapon and fire it repeatedly. They heard testimony about how he laughed while shooting. They saw the crime scene photos showing where Amber Matthews died protecting children.
After deliberation, the Blaine County jury returned their verdict. Guilty on all counts. First-degree murder for k!lling Amber Matthews. Shooting with intent to k!ll for the attack Andrew Cop. Grand lararseny weapons charges. And then came the sentencing phase. In capital cases, there’s a separate proceeding where the jury decides whether the defendant should receive life in prison or the death penalty.
The prosecution argued that Gryom’s crime was particularly heinous, that he showed no mercy, that he laughed while k!lling, that he shot a woman who was begging for her life while holding a baby. The defense brought in family members who testified that Gryom could be a different person, that his brain injury and substance abuse had changed him, that somewhere inside was a human being capable of remorse.
The jury wasn’t moved. They recommended death. In April 2008, the judge formally sentenced Wendel Ardan Gryom to death by lethal injection for the murder of Amber Matthews, plus additional lengthy prison terms for the other charges. He was 40 years old. He would spend the rest of his life on Oklahoma’s death row.
Gryom was transferred to the Oklahoma State Penitentiary in Mallister, home to Oklahoma’s death row. He was placed in a cell where he would spend 23 hours a day every day for years. 1 hour of recreation time, minimal human contact, meals delivered to his cell, the slow, grinding monotony of waiting to die, and the appeals began.
His attorneys filed motion after motion, working their way through Oklahoma’s court system and then into federal courts. They challenged the conviction on multiple grounds. Jury bias, ineffective assistance of council, improper admission of evidence, the impact of his mental impairment. In 2009, the Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals reviewed his case and rejected his claims.
The conviction stood, the sentence stood, but the appeals continued year after year, court after court. 2010 became 2011. 2011 became 2015. Gryom’s life became a routine of appeals hearings, legal briefs, and waiting. During this time, he reportedly expressed remorse for what he’d done. He wrote letters apologizing to the victim’s families.
He accepted responsibility, calling himself ashamed of his actions. Meanwhile, outside those prison walls, Drew Cop was trying to rebuild her life. Amber Matthews family was trying to cope with a loss that could never be filled. Riley and Gracie were growing up, dealing with trauma they were too young to fully understand when it happened. The years dragged on.
2015 became 2020. Then 2021, 2022, 2023. nearly 17 years on death row. In 2019, Gryom’s case reached the US Supreme Court. His attorneys argued that the jury’s decision was flawed, that his intoxication should have been given more weight, but the Supreme Court refused to hear the case.
They let the conviction and sentence stand. By early 2025, Gryom had exhausted virtually all his legal options. There was one final avenue, clemency. In February 2025, Gryom’s attorneys appeared before the Oklahoma Pardon and Parole Board. This was a lastditch effort. They weren’t trying to prove innocence. They were asking for mercy.
They wanted his sentence commuted to life in prison without parole. They presented the brain scan evidence again. They talked about his acceptance of responsibility. They emphasized that he’d been a model prisoner for nearly 17 years. No violence, no incidents. They argued that executing him now after all these years wouldn’t serve justice.
The board listened. They reviewed the case. And then they voted. The decision was 4 to one. Clemency denied. Governor Kevin Stit had the power to override that decision, but he chose not to intervene. The execution would proceed. The date was set, March 20th, 2025. Exactly the day Gryom would die. In the days leading up to his execution, Gryom was moved to a special holding area at the prison.
He was allowed final visits from family members, though it’s unclear who came to see him. He met with his attorneys one last time. He spoke with prison chaplain and he was offered the opportunity to request a special last meal. Unlike Texas, which abolished special last meal requests in 2011, Oklahoma still allows condemned prisoners to choose their final meal within certain guidelines.
Nothing too expensive, nothing requiring excessive preparation, but essentially whatever the prison kitchen can reasonably provide. Gryom’s request was simple, almost humble. A medium thick crust pizza with Canadian bacon, a pint of vanilla ice cream, and a pint of Coca-Cola. That’s it. No elaborate feast, no exotic foods, just pizza, ice cream, and Coke.
the kind of meal a person might order on a regular Friday night. Prison records indicate that Gryom ate the meal on March 19th, the day before his execution. On March 19th, Gryom also wrote a final letter to the Matthews and Cop families. In it, he reiterated his apologies, expressed his shame, and acknowledged the pain he’d caused. It wasn’t his first apology.
He’d been saying sorry for years. but it was his last. The morning of March 20th, 2025 arrived. It was a Thursday. In other parts of the country, people were going to work, dropping kids off at school, living normal lives. But in Mallister, Oklahoma, at the state penitentiary, preparations were underway for a state sanctioned execution.
Wendell Gryom was awakened early. He was given time with a chaplain if he wanted it. He was prepared for what was coming. At 10:13 a.m., the process began. Gryom was strapped to a gurnie in the execution chamber. In a witness room, separated by a window, more than two dozen family members and friends of Amber Matthews were gathered.
Droo Cop was there, too. The woman who survived three gunshot wounds, who lived with bullet fragments in her body, who’d endured nearly two decades of trauma and fear. She insisted on watching the man who destroyed so many lives take his final breath. Before the execution began, Gryom was given the opportunity to make a final statement.
A minister stood nearby, placing a hand on Gryom’s shoulder. Gryom turned his head slightly, looking toward the witness window where the families could see him. His voice was low but audible. I apologize to all of you that I’ve hurt. I regret so much that I’ve put that hatred in your heart for me. Those were his last words.
Not a proclamation of innocence, not a curse against the system, just an apology. Then the warden gave the signal. The first drug began flowing through the eye. V. Gryom took several deep breaths. His body began to relax as the sedative took effect. Then something happened that witnesses found unsettling. He began snoring loudly.
It’s a common reaction to the drugs, but for those watching, it was jarring. This wasn’t the peaceful drift into sleep that people imagine. It was harsh, guttural, the sound of a body shutting down. The snoring continued for several minutes. Then gradually it faded. Gryom’s chest stopped rising and falling. His body went still.
At approximately 10:18 a.m., a prison doctor checked his vital signs and declared him unconscious. The process continued. The paralytic was administered. Then the final drug at 10:13 a.m. Though some reports list slightly different times due to when various checks occurred, Wendel Arden Gryom was officially pronounced dead.
From the first injection to the final pronouncement, the entire process took roughly 13 minutes. Drew Cop watching through the glass would later make a haunting observation. It took him a total of 13 minutes to die. And it took him a total of 2 minutes to k!ll my best friend. 13 minutes versus 2 minutes.
The math of justice, if you can call it that. In the witness room, some of Amber’s family members wept. Others remained stoic. Some had stepped out before the final moment, unable to watch. But Drew Cop stayed. She watched every second. And when it was over, when the doctor called the time of death, tears filled her eyes.
“Justice has been done,” she said. Oklahoma Attorney General Get Gentner Drummond, who had pushed for the execution, released a statement calling Amber Matthews murder monstrous and affirming that the sentence had been appropriately carried out. Wendel Arden Gryom became the 127th person executed in Oklahoma since the death penalty was reinstated in 1976.
He was the first execution in the state in 2025. But he wouldn’t be the last for the Matthews family. The execution marked the end of a nearly 20-year ordeal. But it didn’t bring Amber back. It didn’t undo the trauma. It didn’t erase the nightmares or fill the empty seat at family gatherings. Did it bring closure? That’s a question each family member had to answer for themselves.
For Drew Cop and her daughters, it meant the man who haunted their nightmares was gone. He would never hurt anyone again. But the scars, physical and emotional, would remain forever. On a November night in 2005, Amber Matthews died protecting children. On March 20th, 2025, Wendell Gryom died for k!lling her.
And in between those two dates, countless lives were forever changed by 2 minutes of senseless violence. That’s where this story ends. But the questions it raises about crime, punishment, redemption, and forgiveness, those questions remain waiting for each of us to wrestle with in our own Hey.
