'I'm not a monster': Wendell Grissom to be executed in Oklahoma for home invasion murder

• Oklahoma is set to execute Grissom by lethal injection for the 2005 murder of 23-year-old Amber Matthews.
• Grissom's attorneys argue that the death penalty should not apply to him because of developmental issues and head injuries pre-dating the crime.
• Oklahoma Attorney General Gentner Drummond told a clemency board that the random and brutal attack on "innocent strangers" is the kind of crime that keeps people up at night.

A man with a complicated life since the day he was born, Wendell Arden Grissom is “much more than the worst thing he did," Grissom's attorneys say.

Grissom's attorneys describe him as severely mentally stunted by a complicated birth, which, combined with a string of head injuries, caused him to turn to drugs, alcohol, crime, and eventually, murder.

Now Oklahoma is set to execute Grissom by lethal injection for the 2005 murder of 23-year-old Amber Matthews. If the execution moves forward, Grissom will be the first inmate executed by Oklahoma this year and the ninth in the United States. (Louisiana had an execution Tuesday and Arizona had one on Wednesday.)

"I don’t know what made me do what I did," Grissom said in his confession to police. "I don’t know. I never done anything like this in my life ... I have no explanation."

Although he has admitted to the crimes, Grissom has continued to maintain that the murder was a once-in-a-lifetime mistake.

"I'm not a monster," Grissom wrote to the Oklahoma Pardon and Parole Board in 2019. "Please, somehow look past that one day in my life, for it's not who I am at all."

Grissom’s lawyers have argued in court filings that the death penalty should not be applied to him because of his developmental issues. But prosecutors say they shouldn't excuse his actions.

“Grissom chose to be reduced by those challenges," prosecutors said in court records. "He embraced bitterness, rejected many opportunities for healing and change, and left behind a path of terror, death and destruction."

As the execution approaches, USA TODAY is looking back at the crime, who Grissom is, and who his victims were.

What has Wendell Arden Grissom convicted of?

On Nov. 3, 2005, Grissom and a homeless hitchhiker he had picked up named Jessie Johns were planning to burglarize homes when they targeted 23-year-old Dreu Kopf's house near Watonga, 70 miles northwest of Oklahoma City.

Kopf was home with her two daughters and a friend, Amber Matthews, when Grissom came knocking. Initially, he asked Kopf if her husband was home but eventually shot his way in, laughing as he fired, according to court records.

Kopf, who had been shot in the wrist, jumped on Grissom while Matthews ran with Kopf's 5-week-old into a room where Kopf’s 19-month-old daughter was sleeping.

“Dreu begged Grissom to stop,” court records say. She offered him “anything he wanted” to spare their lives but Kopf said in court records that “he was just laughing and he just kept shooting and shooting and laughing.”

Grissom shot Kopf in the head and hip. Hearing the shooting from inside the bedroom with the girls, Matthews was "overcome with terror" and "vomited all over her jeans and on the floor,” court records say.

Kopf managed to steal Grissom’s truck and escape, hoping he would follow her. On the way out, she heard Matthews scream, "Please don't shoot me," before Grissom shot her in the back of the head and then the forehead as she held one of the girls. Matthews died.

Kopf managed to flag down help and survived after being treated at a hospital. Police said Grissom and Johns fled Kopf's home using her husband's four-wheeler. Court records say Grissom and Johns were arrested in a nearby café after local citizens reported seeing the men to police.

Matthews' father, Garry Matthews, described her daughter as the “apple of my eye, a cute blond blue-eyed little bundle of joy.”

“She was not only my daughter, she was my best friend. In and out of marriages, she was always there for me,” she said during Grissom's 2008 trial. “The last restaurant we ate in, I can’t go back. Everything that reminds me of her brings back the pain.”

Grissom's complicated birth, childhood

When Grissom was born in 1968 in Arkansas, he “remained in the birth canal for an inordinately long period of time, causing him to suffer oxygen deprivation,” his mother, Mary Grissom, said in court records.

Grissom’s development was stunted and his parents had difficulties understanding him until he was about 7 years old, with Mary Grissom saying "it sounded like he was speaking Chinese." In school, Grissom had emotional and behavioral problems.

His stunted development was only made worse by a string of car accidents. Court records say Grissom was riding a motorcycle by himself without a helmet as an 8-year-old and hit a concrete surface, knocking him unconscious and requiring 18 stitches to the back of his head.

Other motorcycle accidents happened when he was 15 and 16, further injuring his head.

“Wendell was never the same after those close-in-time severe motorcycle accidents. He had awful headaches,” his attorneys say in court records. “This spelled the end of Wendell’s school days, as he was unable to return to school due to his physical and cognitive difficulties.”

Court records said Grissom and his family moved from Arkansas to Texas when he was 16 years old.

Grissom’s adulthood was no different

Court records say Grissom had committed several home invasions in Texas in the years before 2005.

After one home invasion in 1992, Grissom stole and sold televisions, silver, watches, and jewelry, among other items. He was convicted of the robbery the next year and sentenced to 25 years in prison. He only served nine years after getting parole in 2001.

Afterward, Grissom moved back to Arkansas, where he married a fellow truck driver two weeks after meeting her. Both were heavy drinkers and addicted to Adderall and meth. Court records say Grissom was prescribed medicine for “depression, frequent headaches, anxiety, crying spells.”

Grissom continued to spiral as his marriage began to fail. In December 2004, less than a year before the murder, Grissom was arrested for threatening his then-wife with a rifle. He then voluntarily entered a “residential program for chemical dependency.”

In the months and days leading up to the murder in Oklahoma, Grissom was described as a wreck.

“Wendell’s professional life and personal life were in shambles, and he was depressed and suicidal,” court records say. “Friends and family noticed irrational behaviors.”

Grissom is basically out of options

The Oklahoma Pardon and Parole Board met in early February to vote on whether to grant Grissom clemency. As part of the filings, Grissom’s family submitted letters asking to spare his life.

“Wendell is a good person who made a terrible mistake and Wendell has made many attempts to show remorse for his actions,” his mother said. “Wendell has been in prison for nearly 20 years now, which has been more than enough time to pay for what he has done.”

Grissom chose not to make a statement to the board via video from prison, according to the Oklahoman, part of the USA TODAY Network. Assistant Attorney General Jennifer Crabb told the board that Grissom has been saying he doesn't want clemency since at least July. 

In text messages to his spiritual adviser in January, he called his clemency hearing a joke. Grissom also wrote that he is not scared of dying because he knows where he is going.

"I'll finally be free from this place and all, you know?" he wrote. "I for sure do not want to spend the rest of my life in this sorry place."

Attorney General Gentner Drummond told the board "this is a textbook case for the death penalty." He called the random and brutal attack on "innocent strangers" the kind of crime that keeps people awake at night.

The board voted 4-1 to deny Grissom’s clemency, which means Republican Oklahoma Gov. Kevin Stitt cannot now commute Grissom's sentence to life in prison without the possibility of parole. Grissom’s only path to a stayed execution is in the federal courts or the Supreme Court.

Contributing: Nolan Clay - The Oklahoman

Fernando Cervantes Jr. is a trending news reporter for USA TODAY. Reach him at fernando.cervantes@gannett.com and follow him on X @fern_cerv_.