Kelly Gissendaner’s Final Hours on Death Row, Last meal and final words
The following will be a statement made by Kelly Renee Gizender, GDC 357507 on Tuesday, September 29th at approximately 5:16 p.m. I just want my kids to know that love still beats out hate. And I want the Gen G and Danner family to know that I’m sorry. And because of me, a good man lost his life. And I want to tell my kids I love them so much and I’m so proud of them.
And I love you, Sally. And I love you, Susan. You let my kids know I went out singing Amazing Grace. and tell the Gadana family, “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, but it’s not.
And I just hope they find peace. And I hope they find some happiness. God bless you. September 30th, 2015, 12:17 a.m. In the death chamber of Georgia diagnostic and classification prison, a woman’s voice rises through the sterile air. She’s singing, “Amazing grace, how sweet the sound.” Her voice waivers, but doesn’t break.
The witnesses sit frozen watching through the glass as Kelly Gissendainer strapped to a gurnie continues her even as the eye v lines is buried into her arms. For minutes later, she would be dead. But this isn’t where our story begins. To understand how a mother of three became the first woman executed in Georgia in 70 years, we need to go back to a cold February night in 1997 to a betrayal.
so calculated, so cold-blooded that it would spark a debate about justice, mercy, and who truly deserves to die. Welcome to Deadline Files. Please like, comment, and subscribe. Your support means a great deal, and it keeps these important stories alive. February 7th, 1997, Gwynette County, Georgia. Douglas Gissendainer, 30 years old, drove home from work that Friday evening, expecting a quiet night.
His wife, Kelly, had mentioned she’d be out with friends. He didn’t know two things. First, that she’d arranged to be away deliberately. Second, that someone was already inside their home waiting in the darkness with a knife. That someone was Gregory Owen, and he wasn’t there to rob the house. When Douglas opened the door, Owen ambushed him at knife point.
The attack was swift and efficient. Douglas was forced into his own car at weapon point. Confused, terrified. With no idea why this was happening, Owen drove him deep into a remote wooded area, far from any help, any witnesses. There he struck Douglas with a nightstick until he lost consciousness. Then came the stabbing.
Multiple wounds to the neck. Brutal. Final. But here’s what makes this murder different from a typical crime of passion or a burglary gone wrong. Kelly Jindainer wasn’t at home, safe and unaware. She wasn’t out with friends, oblivious to the horror unfolding. She was there. She had driven to the scene as planned, arriving while her husband was being attacked.
Evidence would later show that she sat in her car watching as Gregory Owen ended Douglas’s life. She watched to make sure it was done. After Douglas stopped moving, the cleanup began. Owen set fire to the car, flames licking the night sky, destroying evidence. Together, they concealed Douglas’s body deep in the woods among the trees and shadows where no one would think to look.
Then they went their separate ways following the script they’d written together. February 8th to 9th, 1997, when Kelly Gizendainer reported her husband missing. She gave an Oscar-worthy performance. Concerned wife, worried mother. She even appeared on local television news, her face a mask of anguish, pleading for help finding Douglas.
Please, she begged the cameras. If anyone has seen him, if anyone knows anything, it was a masterclass in deception. But investigators have seen this play before. Something about her story didn’t add up. The timeline had gaps. Her emotions seemed rehearsed. Within 2 weeks, their suspicions crystallized when Gregory Owen broke under questioning. He confessed everything.
PART 2 👏
And he didn’t just admit to k!lling Douglas Dainer. He named the mastermind behind it all, Kelly herself. According to Owen’s testimony, this wasn’t a spontaneous crime. Kelly had been planning it for weeks, maybe months. She’d been having an affair with Owen, and she wanted her husband gone, not divorced, gone, dead.
Why? Prosecutors would later establish two powerful motives, love and money. Kelly wanted to be with Gregory Owen freely without the complications of divorce. And she stood to gain financially life insurance payouts, ownership of the house, a new life funded by her husband’s death. But there was something else Owen revealed, something that would haunt the case for years to come.
He said Kelly had pressured him relentlessly. “Get rid of him,” she told Owen repeatedly. Not I want a divorce. Not I want to leave him. Get rid of him. She’d planted the idea, nurtured it, and ultimately orchestrated the entire murder, even though she never held the knife herself. This distinction, who held the knife versus who ordered the k!lling, would become the central question that would follow Kelly Jissainer all the way to the execution chamber.
Before Kelly Gissendainer’s trial began, prosecutors made both her and Gregory Owen the exact same offer. Plead guilty, get life in prison with the possibility of parole after 25 years. Take the deal, avoid trial, and you’ll never face the death penalty. Gregory Owen, the man who actually stabbed Douglas Gissendainer to death, accepted immediately.
He would testify against Kelly, describe in detail how she’d manipulated him, how she’d been the driving force behind the murder. In exchange, life, not death, eligibility for parole in 2022. Kelly Gissender refused the deal. Perhaps she believed the jury would see her as less culpable since she hadn’t physically committed the murder.
Perhaps she thought she could walk free. Perhaps her lawyers believed no Georgia jury would sentence a woman to death for a crime she didn’t personally carry out. Whatever her reasoning, Kelly Gissendainer rolled the dice and went to trial. It was a catastrophic miscalculation. on November 20th, 1998, after hearing testimony about the calculated nature of the plot about Kelly watching from her car as her husband died about her cold-blooded television appearances figning grief.
The jury found her guilty of malice murder. More shockingly, they sentenced her to death. Even her own defense attorney later admitted he never expected that verdict. Women are rarely sentenced to death in America, and when they are, it’s almost always for crimes they physically committed. But the jury saw something in Kelly Gissendainer that sealed her fate.
They saw a woman who had weaponized another human being, who had turned Gregory Owen into an instrument of murder while keeping her own hands technically clean. In their eyes, that made her not less guilty than Owen. It made her more guilty. She was the architect of evil, the puppet master who’d orchestrated a k!lling and then tried to profit from it.
Gregory Owen would eventually become eligible for parole. Kelly Gissendainer became the only woman on George’s death row. The appeals process began immediately and would drag on for 17 years. Something unexpected happened during Kelly Gissendainer’s years awaiting execution. Behind the walls of her cell, away from the cameras and the courtrooms, she changed. It started with remorse.
Real remorse. Not the performance she’d given on television after the murder, but genuine anguish over what she’d done. She thought about Douglas constantly. She thought about her three children who had lost their father because of her actions and now faced losing their mother to the state. The weight of that guilt, according to those who knew her in prison, nearly destroyed her.
But instead of succumbing to despair, Kelly Gissendainer found something else. Faith. She enrolled in a theology program through Emory University, studying scripture and doctrine with an intensity that surprised even the prison staff. She earned a theological certificate. More importantly, she began using that education to help others.
Fellow inmates in crisis would seek her out. Women on the edge of suicide found counsel in her words. Prison staff watched as Kelly became someone they’d never seen before, a mentor, a source of hope for the hopeless. Her prison warden and numerous correctional officers wrote letters describing her transformation.
They called her a model inmate who reached out to other inmates at their lowest eb of despair and helped them to recognize their worth. These weren’t advocates for criminals or death penalty opponents. These were hardened prison professionals saying that Kelly Gissendainer’s continued life could serve a purpose greater than her death.
But would anyone outside those walls listen? As Kelly’s execution date approached, an extraordinary coalition formed to save her life. Over 500 clergy members in Georgia signed petitions for clemency. Her theology professors at Emory testified to her redemption. Even victim’s rights advocates, people who typically support the death penalty, joined the campaign, arguing that Kelly’s case was different.
The argument was simple but powerful. Georgia hadn’t executed anyone who didn’t personally commit the k!lling since the death penalty was reinstated in 1976. Kelly Jendainer would be the first. Was that justice or was it something else? Former Georgia Supreme Court Chief Justice Norman Fletcher did something almost unheard of.
He wrote to the Board of Pardons and parrolles admitting he’d been wrong. The very man who had once affirmed her death sentence now called it disproportionate. He wrote Kelly Jendainer should not be the first. Then came an intervention that made international headlines, Pope Francis through his diplomatic representative sent a personal letter to George’s parole board.
Fresh from addressing the US Congress about abolishing the death penalty, the Pope pleaded for Kelly’s sentence to be commuted to one that would better express both justice and mercy. The Pope himself was asking Georgia to spare her life. But there was another voice in this debate, one that couldn’t be ignored, Douglas’s family. They wanted the execution to proceed.
For them, this wasn’t about rehabilitation or religious redemption. Their loved one’s son, brother, father had been murdered in cold blood by the woman he’d trusted most. They released a statement emphasizing that Douglas was the true victim, and that Kelly had been given more rights and opportunity over the last 18 years than she ever afforded Doug. She had shown him no mercy.
Why should she receive any? It was a powerful counterargument rooted in raw understandable pain. And then there were Kelly’s children, Douglas’s children, caught in an impossible position. Her daughter Kayla and her two sons faced a nightmare beyond imagination. They had already lost their father to murder.
Now they faced losing their mother to execution. All three had publicly forgiven Kelly. All three begged for her life to be spared. “I can’t fathom losing another parent,” Kayla told the parole board, her voice breaking. “My brothers and I lost one parent. Um I don’t know that I can lose another one. I don’t know that I can handle that.
Um because it’s the most awful feeling to know that they could both be gone. I haven’t done anything wrong. Um, but I feel like I’m the one being punished for something. Um, and it’s hard. On the eve of the execution, Kelly’s children faced an unbearable choice. They could have a final private visit with their mother, or they could attend the clemency hearing to plead one last time for her life.
They couldn’t do both. They chose to plead for her life. Imagine that decision. Imagine choosing between those final hours with your mother and the slim hope, the desperate fading hope that your words might save her. The children made an emotional video appeal. They spoke directly to the parole board, tears streaming, voices raw. It wasn’t enough.
On September 29th, 2015, the Georgia Board of Pardons and Parrolles, the only entity in the state with power to grant clemency in capital cases, denied Kelly Gissendainer’s final appeal. No official reason was given. The courts, including the US Supreme Court, declined to intervene. The execution was scheduled for just after midnight.
Kelly Gissendainer’s final 24 hours followed the grim ritual afforded to all condemned prisoners. She was asked what she wanted for her last meal. Her request was modest. Cheese dipped with chips, Texas nachos with fajita meat and a diet frosted lemonade, comfort food, simple things. Prison officials later reported that she was calm and ate almost everything.
Outside the prison, protesters gathered in the rain, holding vigils, singing hymns, making final pleas to anyone who would listen. Inside, Kelly said goodbye to her spiritual adviser, her lawyers, and the few people allowed to see her in those final hours. She told her attorney to pass a message to her children. Tell them she went out singing Amazing Grace.
At midnight, Kelly Gissendainer was moved to the execution chamber. The witnesses filed in journalists, officials, family members on both sides, separated by pain and impossible divisions. Kelly lay strapped to the gurnie for lines prepared. Through the glass, she could see faces. Some hoped for her death.
Some prayed for a lastm minute stay. Some simply watched, bearing witness to history being made. Kelly used her final words to apologize. “I’m sorry,” she said, her voice steady but thick with emotion. “Because of me, a good man lost his life.” She looked toward where her children’s representative sat. “I just want my kids to know that love still beats out hate.
” She sobbed as she said she loved them. She blessed those who had helped her. She acknowledged Douglas Jissendainer’s family and their pain. And then Kelly Gissendainer began to sing. Amazing grace, how sweet the sound that saved a wretch like me. Her voice filled the death chamber, an ancient hymn of redemption echoing off sterile walls.
The witnesses sat transfixed. Some couldn’t watch. Some couldn’t look away. I once was lost, but now I’m found. Was blind, but now I see. She continued singing as the executioners began the process. She prayed between verses. Her voice grew softer but didn’t stop. Even as the chemicals entered her bloodstream, Kelly justainer sang of grace and salvation, of being lost and found, of blindness and sight.
At 12:21 a.m. on September 30th, 2015, she was pronounced dead, 47 years old. The first woman executed in Georgia in 70 years. The first person executed in the state since 1976 who didn’t personally carry out the k!lling. The singing had stopped. Kelly Jendainer’s death didn’t resolve the fundamental questions her case raised.
It crystallized them. Was justice served? Douglas Jendainer’s family believes it was. They argued that Kelly orchestrated evil and deserved the ultimate punishment. Many others agreed. She may not have held the knife, but she wielded the k!ller. That made her fully culpable, perhaps more culpable than Gregory Owen, who was manipulated into doing her bidding.
But others, including legal scholars, religious leaders, and even the former chief justice who once condemned her, saw something else. They saw the arbitrariness of a system that executed the planner but let the executioner live. They saw a woman who had genuinely transformed, who could have continued serving others and demonstrating that redemption is possible even for the worst among us.
They saw a sentence that seemed somehow disproportionate. Gregory Owen became eligible for parole in 2022. Kelly Jissendainer’s ashes were scattered by her children who had fought until the very end to save her. The debate continues. Should the person who orders a murder be treated more harshly than the person who commits it? Does true remorse and transformation matter in capital cases? Does gender play a role in death penalty decisions? Would a man in Kelly’s position have received the same scrutiny and support? And perhaps
most fundamentally, what is the death penalty for? Retribution, deterrence, justice for victims, or does it sometimes just perpetuate cycles of loss and grief, creating new victims in the process? Kelly Jendainer’s case forces us to confront these questions without easy answers. On that September night in 2015, as witnesses filed out of the death chamber, the sound of Amazing Grace still seemed to linger in the air.
A hymn about redemption, about wretches being saved, about being lost and found. Kelly Jissainer sang it all the way to the end, believing she had found grace even as the state of Georgia decreed she didn’t deserve mercy. The last note faded into silence. The chamber emptied and George’s death row for the first time in 17 years had no women waiting to die.
But Douglas’s grave remains in Gwynette County, a permanent reminder that this story began with a victim, a 30-year-old man who came home from work one Friday night and never made it through his own front door. His life ended in terror and violence in a dark forest. that truth doesn’t change no matter what happened in the 17 years that followed.
Two families destroyed, one by murder, one by execution, and somewhere between justice and mercy, the question remains, was there another way? The answer, like Kelly’s final song, fades into the silence, leaving us only with echoes and the weight of irreversible decisions.
