[somber music]
- The farther you got away from downtown atlanta,
The more rural it got,
And that's where dacula was.
Dacula still had dirt roads.
- Police up here were still responding
To cows that escaped from pastures.
- Doug was a great guy, a friend to everybody.
He would give you the shirt off his back if he could.
After we heard doug was missing--
- He just has dropped off the face of the earth.
- Maybe he was out walking and hit-and-run,
Maybe kidnapped, I don't know.
[tense music]
I had no clue that he'd been murdered.
- When they found the vehicle burned inside and out,
We knew something wasn't right.
- Somebody took my father in the woods
And stabbed him in the back seven times
And left him for dead.
- The murder really shook the community.
♪ ♪
- Everybody started speculating.
Kelly looks like she's involved with this.
- Well, he got really angry and threatened to kill doug
So that they could be together.
The jury imposed the death sentence.
- Georgia had not executed a woman in 70 years.
- It ranks right up at the top with the coldest,
Most calculating planned murder.
♪ ♪
[dramatic music]
♪ ♪
[sirens wailing]
[tense music]
♪ ♪
- Just 45 miles northeast
Of the bustle of downtown atlanta,
Cows still outnumber people in the rural town of dacula.
♪ ♪
In 1997, as the rest of gwinnett county develops
Into atlanta suburbs,
Dacula remains a rural holdout.
- Dacula was one of the last areas
Of the county to be heavily developed.
It was extremely rural.
There were some roads up here that weren't even paved.
People lived on farms.
It wasn't even just a small town.
It was a tiny town.
- Dacula is a close-knit community,
Their connection rooted
In the three large baptist churches in town.
- Here in dacula, a lot of the people are related.
There's families, and families tend to stay here.
They go to the same church.
- But on February 8th, 1997,
A desperate 911 call sends one family
In this god-fearing hamlet into their own living hell.
- Kelly gissendaner called
To report her husband, doug, missing.
And she described at that time
That she had gone out with some friends
On the night before.
- When she woke up the next morning,
Doug, her husband, was not in bed with her.
And then she called her friends and relatives
To see if they knew where he's at.
- She couldn't locate him,
So finally she called in to the police
To report him as a missing person.
- Detectives ask kelly to take them through the last time
She heard from doug.
- Kelly was the worried spouse.
She was emotional
In her dealings with the police.
And he said that he had gone over to their friends
Named nesbit to work on a car.
- And it was completely out of character
That he didn't come home.
- Investigators immediately head over
To speak with the nesbits.
- What we found out from interviewing the nesbits
Is that doug had come over there after work
Around 6:00 or 7:00 in the evening.
- He came over there to help mr. Nesbit fix his car,
Change the spark plugs out.
They went in the house and had dinner,
And after dinner, doug said he needed to go home.
- Doug left his friends' house sometime around 10:00 or so
That night to go home.
- The nesbits reiterate what kelly told police,
That doug would never just disappear.
- Doug was everybody's friend.
If you wanted somebody that was gonna be there
For you in any way,
You wanted doug gissendaner.
- Nothin' bad about him whatsoever,
Been in any trouble, anything like that.
Good family man.
[melancholic music]
- He was a man who went to work
And came home and took care of his family.
They didn't think that anybody
That they knew could hurt him.
That wasn't the kind of people
That they surrounded themselves with.
- The police started the usual procedures
Of a missing person investigation.
They contacted the hospitals,
Basically did background work and called around
To see if he was somewhere that kelly hadn't thought of.
- So at this point,
There's really nothing to go on.
It could be anything.
It could be a man who was just fed up
And tired of his life
And wanted a new start someplace.
Maybe there was an accident.
Maybe his car was in a ditch someplace
And he was unable to communicate.
There's nothing on any kind of credit cards.
He just has dropped off the face of the earth.
♪ ♪
- Baffled by doug's disappearance
And desperate for answers,
Detectives press kelly for details about doug's life.
- She said doug was a mechanic
For a company that made shock absorbers.
- He was one of the employees who never called out.
He enjoyed going to work every day.
- By the time of this incident,
He and kelly, they had been married three years.
- Kelly explains that she and doug met
On a blind date in 1989.
It was love at first sight.
- She was very interesting to him
Because she was everything he wasn't.
She was vivacious and fun,
And he was kind of down-to-earth, and, you know,
Kind of go-along-to-get-along kind of guy,
And there was something about her that was exciting.
But she also had a bonus.
She had a son, and he took to that little boy
And really thought this could be the family
He always wanted.
- The two fell madly in love and were married.
Soon after, they had a daughter together.
But their relationship hit a rough patch,
And they divorced.
But two short years later, doug and kelly reconciled.
- When they were separated, kelly got pregnant
By someone else,
And so there were three children.
- Doug never treated me nor my brother any different
Than he treated our sister, and we were--
We were his kids.
No matter who we came from,
He was always tuckin' us in at night.
We tried to go to church every Sunday.
You know, he wanted our family to grow up in the church also.
- As investigators hurriedly search for answers,
Doug's family and friends
Immediately spring into action.
- They took to the streets
And started driving up and down every route
That they could imagine between the friends' house
And doug's house for hours on end
Looking everywhere.
- As the first day he's reported missing comes
To a close, doug's loved ones fail to track him down.
But a concerned member of the community
Makes a disturbing find
As he searches all the rural areas
Where doug might've driven.
- We still had fish and wildlife enforcement
Patrolling the north end of the county,
Which will give you an idea of how rural
Gwinnett county was.
A department of natural resources ranger
Found a burned-out car.
[ominous music]
And he reported it to gwinnett county police.
It was totally destroyed by the fire.
The tires were flat. The interior was gone.
There really wasn't much in the car left.
But he was able to recover the vin number off the frame.
The police ran the vehicle id number
And discovered it was registered
To a doug gissendaner.
- We knew something wasn't right then.
We didn't know if he had went out and killed himself.
We didn't know what had happened to him.
[dramatic music]
♪ ♪
- It's obvious that something nefarious has happened to doug.
- He got really angry and threatened to kill doug
So that they could be together.
This is a homicide. It's not a suicide
Or an accident.
♪ ♪
- Family man doug gissendaner has disappeared
From his home in dacula,
A rural hamlet just outside atlanta.
[dramatic music]
The tight-knit community has banded together
To find doug to no avail.
But 36 hours after he was last seen,
Doug's car has just been discovered in the woods,
Completely burnt-out.
- He looked in the trunk and searched the car
And didn't find doug.
- I received a radio call from a subordinate officer.
He requested that I come to the scene.
When I got out of the car,
I saw a 1984 chevrolet caprice
That was sitting just off to the side of the road.
It was completely burned-out, completely gutted.
I took my pictures of the vehicle,
Walked around the vehicle,
Taking different angle shots
Of the roadway.
It was pretty rough country out there,
Pretty overgrown, a lot of rocks, trees, some garbage.
[tense music]
- There was nothing in the car of evidentiary value
That was found that would aid in the investigation
Or would aid in helping find doug.
- And the interior portion of the vehicle being,
You know, completely burned-out,
We're talkin' about seats, carpet, headliner,
It would indicate to me that
That was the origin of the fire.
- The one information that they came away with
Was that it was set on fire intentionally.
It's obvious that there's something
Nefarious has happened to doug.
- They searched the immediate area,
About 100 yards on each side of the road,
But they didn't find a body at that point.
There were really only three theories
That you could work with from a police standpoint--
Is one, doug had taken off on his own
And burned the car to sort of hide his tracks.
The second one was that he had been kidnapped
And the car had been burned to destroy evidence,
Or, finally, that he had been murdered
And that they were already gearing up
Looking for possible suspects
In anticipation of finding his body.
- Something happened to doug.
Exactly what, we don't know.
We don't know if he walked off in the woods somewhere
And killed himself or somebody killed him.
We don't know.
♪ ♪
After we find the vehicle,
Our next goal is to find doug.
And we're just basically startin' from the ground up.
- Detectives head to the gissendaner home
To deliver the news
And ask the family for insights
As to what could have happened to doug.
- There was a large crowd of family and friends there,
And I told her that we had found the car.
They were all stunned.
- He tells them, "but we still don't know where doug is."
Kelly is beside herself, crying, hysterical.
"what's happened to doug?"
- If you're suspecting a homicide,
Your first suspects are family and close friends.
And then the first question to ask:
"what's the state of your marriage?"
She said that doug had been a great father
To her children, that everything was great.
- I'm hoping he'll walk in this door
Or at least pick up the phone and call us.
[sighs, sniffles]
[somber music]
- And she told the detective
That they had a loving marriage,
There was nothing wrong with their life.
- 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.
- Detective davis asked kelly,
"did doug have a life insurance policy?"
And kelly said, "no, he didn't."
- It's now 48 hours since anyone heard
From doug gissendaner, and fearing the worst,
Authorities ramp up their efforts
To track him down.
- At that time, gwinnett county
Had helicopters, and they deployed that
In searching the area around the burnt car.
♪ ♪
- Friends and family have been
Working tirelessly, they tell me, since learning
That doug gissendaner has been missing.
They've been posting flyers in cars
And every place they can possibly put one up.
- But during that time, there was no discovery
Of doug gissendaner.
- In the 48 hours since doug went missing,
The search comes up empty, and the teams go home.
But detective davis continues his investigative work.
He reaches out beyond doug's inner circle
To other friends who might offer a new perspective.
- We start talkin' to folks,
Interviewin' her friends, doug's friends,
And the gissendaner family.
- Detective davis learns from a friend of kelly's
That there was a man that she was involved with
While and kelly and doug were separated,
And she described the man
As being infatuated with kelly.
That man was greg owen.
- The friend then provides more unsavory details
About kelly's ex.
- She said he had a bad temper.
He clearly has a drinking problem.
He is essentially unemployed
Or bounces from job to job.
- We needed to find greg owen.
We started running background checks on him.
I found one that he had been arrested
By the city of lawrenceville for dui.
- Once detective davis learns about greg owen,
He thinks, "finally, a lead to finding doug."
- Before reaching out to greg owen,
Davis asks kelly about the relationship.
- Kelly was confronted with the statements
Of the people that had indicated
That she was seeing gregory owen.
She finally admitted that she had seen him.
- And kelly responds that it was somebody
That she met while she was separated from doug,
That it was the brother of a coworker.
- Detectives learn that kelly and doug
Had a brief separation after they remarried,
And that's when she met greg.
- Kelly told the police that she broke up with greg
Because she felt like that he wasn't gonna be
A good father to her kids.
Davis just simply wants to know,
"why didn't you tell me this in the first place?"
And kelly said she was embarrassed
By the relationship.
- She said that when she told greg
She was getting back together with doug,
He got really angry, and she said
That gregory owen threatened to kill doug
So that they could be together.
He becomes suspect number one.
[dramatic music]
♪ ♪
[suspenseful music]
- It's been two days since anyone
In the atlanta suburb of dacula
Last saw father of three doug gissendaner.
♪ ♪
Detectives have just learned
That while doug and kelly were briefly separated
A year earlier, kelly dated a man named greg owen.
The two called it quits, but now she says
Owen recently threatened to kill doug.
- After I found out that greg owen was a friend
And a lover of kelly's, we wanted to speak with him.
♪ ♪
We find greg livin' in a woodshed barn
In a trailer park.
- Investigators ask if owen can account
For his whereabouts the night doug disappeared.
- They confronted him with kelly's statement.
He said that he had an alibi for the night of the 7th,
And he provided the name ricky lee barrett.
- Greg's alibi was, on that Friday night
That he was hanging out with lee in lee's house,
Where greg lived then.
We talked to lee and asked him about everything.
He said yes, that greg stayed with him that night.
- With ricky lee confirming owen's alibi
And no evidence tying him to doug's disappearance,
Investigators have no choice but to move on
Despite their suspicions.
They turn their focus to trying to locate
The missing family man.
- What we need to do is find doug gissendaner's body or him
And go from there and find out what happened to him.
♪ ♪
- As time went on, hope began to fade.
I kind of knew by the end of two weeks
That something bad had happened.
- It ruined our family.
It put a big stress on our family.
It put a big stress on us kids.
- Two weeks pass with no signs of doug.
But game warden sergeant james bell refuses
To give up the search.
He meticulously scours the wooded area
Where doug's car was found on a daily basis.
- It seemed almost personal to him
Because it was just so unusual
For this young man to be missing.
He was searching every day.
And he drove down, and something caught his eye.
It looked almost like a blue garbage bag.
He stopped, walked up into the woods about 100 feet.
And there was the body.
♪ ♪
- The body was facedown in the wooded area.
He did note that the clothes the body was wearing
Were similar or matched the description of the clothes
That doug gissendaner had been described as wearing
The night of the 7th.
And when the crime scene technicians came,
They removed a wallet from the jeans
That were on the body, and inside the wallet
Was a driver's license for doug gissendaner.
He had found doug gissendaner.
- I walked over to where his body was
And saw what looked like some stab wounds
In the back of the jacket.
- The body was in a wooded area
About 100 yards off a dirt road.
- The body had been found approximately 7/10 of a mile
Away from where the burned vehicle
Was originally discovered.
It indicates that most likely the perpetrator and the victim
Had to transport themselves by walking
Through a pretty rough area almost a mile
Through scrub country.
- This is a homicide.
It's not a suicide or an accident.
- Our crime scene technicians took swabs, a process
That detects gunpowder residue on a person's hand
Or blood or any kind of dna substance,
Send 'em off for analysis.
They have fingerprint--
People who are trained in fingerprint identification
And blood splatter.
- There is no jewelry.
The credit cards are in his wallet.
There was no money taken.
We ruled out any kind of a robbery.
- The team searches the area around the body for any clues
That could lead them to doug's killer.
- We conducted a 360-degree perimeter search
Approximately 50 yards deep into the surrounding area
For the purpose of looking for additional evidence.
- There was a pretty fair amount of decomposition.
There wasn't any evidence around the body
That would lead you to the identify of the killer.
- With the crime scene failing to yield any leads,
Doug's body is sent to the medical examiner,
Who uncovers the brutal manner in which doug was killed.
- The medical examiner found a combination
Of blunt trauma to the head, knife wounds or stab wounds
In the neck and chest area.
This is one of those murders that are at the top
Of the list for anger.
He was just sort of a general nice guy.
Why would somebody do something to a guy like him?
♪ ♪
Now, I don't know how or what the best way
To grieve for a loved one is, but whatever it was,
She wasn't doin' it.
They were suspicious.
They learned that during the time that doug was missing,
That they had been in contact more than 40 times,
Most importantly, on the night of the murder.
♪ ♪
- In the rural atlanta suburb of dacula,
Authorities have just found the body
Of father of three doug gissendaner
Stabbed and bludgeoned to death in the woods.
After an exhaustive two-week search,
The team must now break the devastating news
To his family.
- That was the only dad I ever knew.
When I was four years old, he was always there.
He was the most stable thing that we had in our lives.
We lost our dad.
[dramatic music]
- When law enforcement went and told kelly,
She was distraught that doug had been found dead.
- I went to buford and spoke
To doug gissendaner sr. And ms. Gissendaner,
And told them.
It did not go well. They were very upset.
- Everyone was devastated.
Kelly said that her worst fears had been realized.
She couldn't possibly stand to think about the way
That doug was so viciously killed.
His parents were beside themselves.
- One of the things that we found
During the investigation is that doug had a lot
Of friends and was active in his church,
And there was a lot of emotion when his body was found.
- I think everybody was in shock,
Knowing how gruesome it was, how brutal the murder was.
By then, I'd already given up hope
That they were gonna find him alive,
But I had no clue that he had been murdered.
- Once the body was found, there was a great deal of fear
In terms of, "how did this happen?"
You know, "could it happen to me?"
People began to be concerned
From a personal-safety standpoint.
- People are just kinda at a loss to--
And their imagination is runnin' wild.
They don't know if, you know, this is a serial killer
Out there on the loose or anything like that.
- As doug's funeral approaches,
The team makes the decision to attend,
Both to pay their respects
And watch for anything suspicious.
In a small town like dacula,
The killer very likely lives among them.
- In investigating homicide cases,
It's common for law enforcement
To attend funerals of victims.
They wanna see who comes there.
A lot of times killers will go back to the funeral.
It's part of their-- part of their ritual,
And so the police wanna be there
To observe people's reactions.
- The funeral is packed.
There's people
That they've known all their lifetime.
They're just support through this really tough time.
- Police observed kelly,
And she was described as acting oddly.
Now, I don't know how or what the best way
To grieve for a loved one is,
But whatever it was, she wasn't doin' it.
They were suspicious in that she didn't seem
To be genuine in her grief.
It seemed to be sort of a show.
Even the family noticed it.
- And here there's enough red flags
That they're kind of wondering,
"what did kelly do?
What did kelly know?"
- While kelly's actions during the funeral are unusual,
Doug's parents approach investigators afterward
To explain this isn't the first time
She's made them suspicious.
- Doug's parents learned
That there is a life insurance policy
That had been taken out not too terribly long
Before doug died.
- It's about $15,000 for the insurance policy.
Kelly made sure she was the beneficiary.
- Surprised at this revelation,
Investigators were initially told by kelly
That doug did not have any life insurance.
- As the police learned about the insurance policy,
They learned about her odd behavior at the funeral.
They took the routine step
Of getting a subpoena issued for telephone records.
- As detectives pore through kelly's phone records,
They find a set of calls
From the night doug disappeared
That catches their eye.
- There was quite a few phone calls
Between kelly and greg owen.
[suspenseful music]
- They learned that during the time
That doug was missing that they had been in contact
More than 40 times
And that kelly usually initiated the calls.
- Why would kelly call greg owen,
Someone who allegedly threatened
To hurt her husband dozens of times,
The night doug was killed?
- In fact, she had made numerous calls to him,
And he had made numerous calls,
Most importantly, on the night of the murder.
The insurance policy just adds to the potential motive
For the crime.
- Armed with damning phone records
And a clear motive,
Police move kelly gissendaner
To the top of the suspect list.
- My thoughts were that she's involved
In this somehow.
♪ ♪
[unsettling music]
♪ ♪
- Detectives investigating the murder
Of doug gissendaner,
Who was killed in the woods just outside atlanta,
Have learned that his wife, kelly,
Was in constant communication with her ex-boyfriend,
Greg owen, the night doug was killed.
- They knew that somebody was not tellin' 'em the truth.
They decided which of these three targets,
Kelly, gregory owen, or ricky lee barrett,
Is the best to approach
And show them the evidence that we had so far
And why we thought they were lying.
[tense music]
- Ricky lee barrett had served as owen's alibi
For the night doug was killed,
So detectives bring him back in
And demand he come clean
Or risk being charged with lying to police.
- After some time, he eventually broke down
And said that the alibi that he had provided
For gregory owen was false.
Specifically, ricky lee barrett said
That greg owen left the house around 9:00 p.M.
And didn't come home until 8:00 a.M.--
And, of course, we knew
That the murder had occurred after 9:00 on the 7th--
And that when he came back,
He was acting kind of oddly,
And so that cracked that.
- And the friend further said
Greg asked for the lie to be told to the police.
- Once ricky lee barrett gave up on the alibi,
Then the next step was to bring gregory owen in
And confront him with the fact that he didn't have an alibi.
By that time, they had
A lot more ammunition to work with.
They had the phone records.
- Two detectives went and got greg owen
And brought him to the police department
And got the phone records and put 'em all together
In front of him.
- Faced with ricky lee's statement
And kelly's phone records,
Owen tells detectives he'll come clean
And tell them what really happened.
- Greg owen confessed to killing doug gissendaner.
♪ ♪
- Greg said that he and kelly had never broken up.
- Greg maintains that kelly got back with doug
Simply because she wanted money.
She wanted him to buy her a house.
She wanted to have all sorts of stuff
With his life insurance policy.
- He said that the whole idea was kelly's,
That the way that they could be together was
To get rid of doug.
She was afraid that there was gonna be
Some custodial issues with the kids.
She was afraid she was gonna lose the house
If they divorced, and so for some reason,
She decided that divorce was not an option
And that she had greg owen,
Who was willing to kill doug.
- Owen then takes detectives through the night
Of the murder.
- It was kind of a half-assed plan
That they pulled together that night
And then pulled it off.
- What he told us is that kelly went
And picked him up in his trailer
And brought him back to her house,
And she got dressed and went out with the girls
And left greg in their house by himself.
- And he sat there in the dark until doug came home.
And once doug came home,
He pulled a knife on him...
And held it to his throat
And marched him back to the car.
Once he got him in the car,
He made him drive up to the location
Where the car was found.
Then he made doug get out of the car
And walk into the woods,
At which point he had a nightstick.
♪ ♪
He hit him several times with the nightstick,
And he went to his knees.
And then he stabbed him.
♪ ♪
- And then he left doug up in the woods,
Came back with doug's car,
And went to a pay phone
And dialed kelly that everything had been done.
So she told him to get some gasoline
And set the car on fire.
♪ ♪
Kelly had picked him up and took him back to the house.
- Owen explains that kelly was not only the mastermind,
But she provided him with the weapons used
To kill her husband.
- She's the one who brought up the nightstick,
And she said, "I have the nightstick.
Why don't you use that on him?"
And he said, "well, I have a pocketknife."
- She was this grieving wife
Concerned about her husband.
It is unthinkable to imagine
That a wife would kill her husband
For as little as kelly did.
- My mother finally found that good, stable person
In doug, but she still wanted the bad boy,
And that's what she found in greg.
And I guess that just took over a little more
Than actually having a stable life.
- We arrested greg for murder and kidnapping.
- After owen made his confession,
The police went and obtained an arrest warrant
And a search warrant for her home
And arrested kelly gissendaner
For the murder of doug gissendaner.
♪ ♪
- With kelly gissendaner under arrest
For the murder of her husband,
Investigators confront her with owen's statement
That she masterminded doug's murder,
But kelly tells a vastly different tale than owen.
- Kelly's basic posture was that she wasn't involved,
That greg did it on his own.
She didn't have anything to do with it.
She didn't tell him to do it.
She didn't encourage him to do it.
She didn't help plan it.
- While kelly insists she played no role
In her husband's murder,
Detectives aren't buying it.
- Kelly was the brains of the outfit.
She's the one who put it together.
Gregory owen is not the sharpest pencil in the box.
- As prosecutors build their case
Against kelly gissendaner and greg owen,
They uncover several witnesses with damning testimony.
- They had some of the statements
That different people had made,
Both that kelly had made and that owen had made.
She made a statement to one of her friends
That she was gonna use doug's credit and money
To buy the house,
And then she was gonna "get rid of him."
The insurance money would just be a bonus.
- As da danny porter approaches trial,
He knows the evidence he had against kelly,
The alleged mastermind, may not be enough
To secure a conviction.
- What we had at that point was a strong case
Against gregory owen,
But a much weaker case against kelly gissendaner.
Greg was just the bullet.
Kelly was the gun.
And so we decided
That the lesser of two evils would be
To make an agreement with gregory owen
To testify against kelly, 'cause she was the one
That really needed to be convicted.
- Greg owen pleads guilty to murder
And is sentenced to life in prison
With a possibility of parole.
With owen serving as a key witness,
The da's office informs kelly's defense team
That if convicted,
She could face the death penalty.
- I felt like given the fact
That doug gissendaner was the perfect example
Of an innocent victim,
Kelly had so many other options other than murder,
And that she dragged greg owen into it,
I thought that the case qualified
For the death penalty.
♪ ♪
- In November 1998,
Kelly gissendaner goes on trial
For the murder of her husband.
- The jurors were people who could relate
To kelly gissendaner.
They were women and they were white.
- The jury goes back.
It doesn't take long to deliberate
Before kelly is convicted of murdering her husband.
- In that moment, that was the biggest pill to swallow,
Was to know that she actually did it.
- But the sentencing phase proves to be more complicated.
- She and her lawyers believed that a gwinnett county jury
Would never, ever, ever sentence a mom of three
To death.
- Kelly gissendaner's relatives were visibly upset
As they left the courtroom.
They had spent the day begging jurors
To spare the 30-year-old mother's life
For the sake of her three kids.
- I'll be the first one to tell somebody
She should've spent the rest of her life in prison.
Do I think she should be executed?
No.
- There were a lot of reasons
That people were interested in this.
She was a mother.
She had not committed the crime herself.
She had planned it, and she was a woman.
The united states doesn't execute women.
Only 14 women out of, you know, 15,000 people executed
Had been women,
And georgia had not executed a woman in 70 years.
[suspenseful music]
♪ ♪
- Mother of three kelly gissendaner
Has just been convicted
Of masterminding the murder of her husband, doug.
[ominous music]
♪ ♪
She now awaits her sentencing,
Where a gwinnett county jury
Could give her the death penalty.
- Georgia just had not executed a woman in a long time,
So I knew it was gonna get a lot of attention
Nationally and internationally.
- On November 20th, 1998,
Two days after kelly gissendaner
Was found guilty of murder,
The court receives word
That the jury has reached a verdict on her sentence.
- At the end of the day after trial,
The jury found the aggravating circumstance,
And they imposed the sentence of death on kelly gissendaner.
- I do remember that day.
It was my fifth birthday.
I just couldn't believe it, man.
Like, to sit there and watch tv
And to know that that's my mother.
Like, I gotta live the rest of my life with this.
- When sentencing came around,
Death penalty,
You know, we all went, "good call."
And then, you know, let it go,
'cause we knew it was gonna be years down the road
Till the sentence was carried out.
- In the united states, all death sentences by law
Are granted an automatic appeal.
- And once the death sentence was imposed,
There's an automatic appeal
To the georgia supreme court,
And the georgia supreme court upheld her death sentence.
- While kelly gissendaner sits on death row,
Waiting for her sentence to be carried out,
Her children must deal with the fallout.
- I hated her because I looked at it
As, "you pretty much ruined my life.
"you were selfish. You did what you did,
"but only solely for you,
Not carin' about the three kids you had at home."
- Kelly remains on death row for 18 years.
- All of kelly's appeals were denied,
And the death date was set.
- We're 24 hours away from the planned execution
Of the only woman on georgia's death row.
- Shortly before kelly gissendaner
Is scheduled to be executed,
Her children visit her for the last time.
- An officer kept comin' in. "y'all got five minutes,
Y'all got three minutes," you know, to let us know
That we didn't have much time left with her.
[somber music]
[sighs] I looked my mother in the face.
And I said, "it's been 15 years."
I said, "you've pled innocent all the way up until
"this point, mother.
"do you really want us goin' the rest of our lives
Without knowin' the truth?"
She looked us all three in the face
And told us everything that they said that she did,
Everything that they said that she had a part of,
She did it.
She finally fessed up and told us the truth.
In that moment, there was a lot of emotions that hit me:
Relief, anger, hatred.
Like, in that moment, I'm literally sitting there
Like, "you've lied to me my whole life.
My whole life, I've been lied to by you."
- The warden reads out the order of execution,
And then asked if she had any final words,
And she began to sing "amazing grace."
And they began administering the lethal chemical.
- She started to sing,
And it was a-- it was a sweet, high voice.
And she got through the first stanza,
And then it stopped.
It drifted away as she died,
But she got through one verse of "amazing grace"
Before she passed on,
And I'd never witnessed anything like that.
- The pain I felt those two days,
I mean, I wouldn't wish that on my worst enemy.
I had my mother taken from me
By the state of georgia.
But losing my father was probably one
Of the hardest things.
♪ ♪
- My feelings on this case is, if kelly did not want
To be married to doug gissendaner,
All she had to do was divorce him.
What this ended up doin'-- leavin' three orphaned kids
To be raised by their family
And with no mother and father.
- If you would have ever met doug,
You would've been his friend.
He would have helped anybody out
With any situation that he possibly could.
He would give you the shirt off his back.
You know, 26 years later,
I still think about how much...
Of a friend doug was
And how much we actually sat there and just talked.
I miss those talks.
♪ ♪