Gregory Owen and the Kelly Gissendaner Murder Case

Gregory Bruce Owen is the man who stabbed Douglas Gissendaner to death on February 7, 1997, at the direction of the victim’s wife, Kelly Renee Gissendaner. In the Gregory Owen and Kelly Gissendaner case, Owen accepted a plea deal, testified against Kelly, and received life in prison with no parole for 25 years, while Kelly refused the same offer, was convicted of malice murder, and was executed by lethal injection on September 30, 2015. Owen became parole-eligible in 2022 and was released on parole in early 2023.¹

Who Gregory Owen Is

Owen was born on March 17, 1971, in Clinton, Georgia, the second of four children of Bruce and Myrtis Owen. He grew up in a household marked by alcohol abuse and physical violence from his father, and the family moved often. He was small for his age, struggled in school, and dropped out after the eighth grade at 14 to work.²

How He Got Involved With Kelly Gissendaner

Owen met Kelly Gissendaner in September 1995 through his sister, Belinda Leicht, who was Kelly’s boss and close friend. Belinda introduced the two at her home, and they became involved quickly. Owen was described as “completely enamored” with Kelly, though the relationship was volatile.²³

The affair paused in April 1996 and resumed that October, after Kelly contacted Owen’s sister under the pretense of discussing a job and then asked for Owen’s pager number. Phone records later showed 65 contacts initiated by Kelly to Owen between the time they reconnected and the night of the murder.⁴

According to Owen’s later testimony, Kelly first raised the idea of killing her husband in November 1996. Owen suggested divorce instead. Kelly rejected that, saying she believed she would only receive Douglas’s insurance money if he was dead and that he “wouldn’t leave her alone” if they merely divorced. In December 1996, Kelly told Owen’s sister Belinda that she planned to use her husband’s credit to buy a house and then “get rid of him.” The two discussed the plan on four or five occasions, all initiated by Kelly, before reaching a final agreement.⁵⁴

What Happened the Night of the Murder

On the evening of February 7, 1997, Kelly drove Owen to the family’s home in Gwinnett County, handed him a nightstick and a hunting knife six to eight inches long, left a can of kerosene, and told him to wait inside for Douglas. She then went to a nightclub with friends to establish an alibi.⁴

Douglas, a mechanic and U.S. Army veteran who had served in Desert Storm as a tanker, arrived home around 11:30 p.m. after spending the evening working on cars with a friend from church.⁵ Owen confronted him, held the knife to his throat, and forced him to drive to a remote area on Luke Edwards Road. Following Kelly’s instructions, Owen took Douglas’s watch and wedding band to make the crime look like a robbery. He then forced Douglas to his knees, struck him in the back of the head with the nightstick, and stabbed him in the neck eight to ten times, killing him.⁴

Kelly returned from the nightclub, paged Owen with a numeric signal, and drove to the crime scene to inspect the body herself. Owen then doused Douglas’s car with the kerosene Kelly had left and set it on fire. Kelly picked him up at the end of the road and drove him home. One or two nights later, Owen disposed of his bloodied clothing, the murder weapons, and Douglas’s jewelry in a garbage bag.⁵

Douglas’s burned car was discovered by the Georgia Department of Natural Resources on February 9, 1997. His body was found about a mile away in a wooded area off Luke Edwards Road on February 20. Owen confessed on February 24 and implicated Kelly as the person who planned and directed the killing. Kelly was arrested the next day.⁶

The Plea Deal That Spared His Life

Before Kelly’s trial, prosecutors offered both defendants the same deal: life in prison with an agreement not to seek parole for 25 years. Owen accepted. Kelly rejected the offer.⁷

Owen pleaded guilty to murder and testified for the prosecution at Kelly’s trial. His testimony was the centerpiece of the state’s case. He told the jury that Kelly had initiated the murder plot, insisted on it over his suggestion of divorce, provided the weapons and kerosene, given him detailed instructions, and come to the scene afterward to confirm Douglas was dead. Phone records showing 47 calls and 18 pages from Kelly to Owen in the days before the murder, along with DNA evidence on Owen’s pants matching the victim, corroborated his account.⁵

A jury convicted Kelly of malice murder on November 18, 1998, and recommended death the following day. Jurors found two statutory aggravating circumstances under Georgia Code § 17-10-30(b)(2) and (b)(6): that the murder was committed during a kidnapping with bodily injury, and that Kelly had caused or directed another person to commit the murder.⁶ She was executed at 12:21 a.m. on September 30, 2015, at a state prison in Jackson, Georgia, the first woman put to death in Georgia in 70 years.⁸

Why He Lived and She Died

The case drew sustained attention because of the gap between the two sentences: the man who did the stabbing received life with eventual parole eligibility, while the woman who planned but did not carry out the killing was put to death. According to the Equal Justice Initiative, Kelly was the first person executed in Georgia since the death penalty’s 1976 reinstatement who did not personally kill the victim.⁹

The Georgia Supreme Court addressed the disparity directly in its 2000 opinion affirming Kelly’s conviction and death sentence, Gissendaner v. State, 272 Ga. 704. The court acknowledged that co-defendant sentences are a factor in proportionality review but held that Kelly’s role as the “moving force” behind the crime justified the harsher penalty, emphasizing that she conceived the plan, recruited Owen, supplied the weapons and kerosene, directed the staging of a fake robbery, and came to the scene to verify her husband was dead.⁵

Critics saw the outcome differently. Former Georgia Supreme Court Chief Justice Norman Fletcher, who had originally voted to uphold Kelly’s sentence, later wrote to the Board of Pardons and Paroles arguing that the sentence was disproportionate and saying he had been “wrong” in his earlier vote.¹⁰ Legal scholars pointed to a broader structural issue: when prosecutors offer plea deals to secure testimony in capital cases, defendants facing death have a strong incentive to cooperate and shift blame, creating what one Cornell Law School expert called an “unavoidable incentive to lie.” Supporters of the sentence countered that someone who orchestrates a murder for financial gain is as culpable as the person who carries it out.¹¹

According to the Death Penalty Information Center, as of 2015 only ten inmates in the United States had been executed for orchestrating a killing rather than committing it themselves.¹¹

Where Gregory Owen Is Now

Under the terms of his 1997 plea, Owen agreed not to seek parole for 25 years, making him eligible in approximately 2022. Former Chief Justice Fletcher cited this timeline in his 2015 clemency statement, noting that Owen “will become eligible for parole in 2022.”¹² According to an account published by the Project on Lived Theology, Owen was released on parole in early 2023.¹

1
Project on Lived Theology. Jennifer McBride’s New Book on Kelly Gissendaner and Theological Friendships
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ThoughtCo. Profile of Kelly Gissendaner
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Oxygen. Kelly Gissendaner Murder
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Georgia Attorney General. Execution Date Set for Kelly Renee Gissendaner
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FindLaw. Gissendaner v. State
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Georgia Attorney General. Execution Date Set for Kelly Renee Gissendaner
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Jacksonville.com. Hours Before Execution, Georgia Woman Again Asks Clemency
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CNN. Georgia Execution Kelly Gissendaner
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Equal Justice Initiative. Georgia Executes Kelly Gissendaner
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CBS News. Pope Francis Asks to Spare Life of Condemned Killer
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BBC. The Death Penalty Dilemma
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WRTV. Only Woman on Georgia’s Death Row Is Executed