Bigler Stouffer was sentenced to death by the State of Oklahoma for the murder of a school teacher. According to court documents Bigler Stouffer would go over to Doug Ivens home and asked to borrow a gun and then would use that gun to shoot and kill Linda Reaves and wounded Doug Ivens. Bigler Stouffer would be arrested, convicted and sentenced to death.
Oklahoma Death Row Inmate List
Bigler Stouffer 2021 Information
Gender: Male
Race: White
Height: 5 ft 11 in
Weight: 220 lbs
Hair Color: Brown
Eye Color: Brown
Alias: Bigler Stouffer
OK DOC#: 146930
Birth Date: 9/25/1942
Current Facility: OKLAHOMA STATE PENITENTIARY, MCALE
Reception Date: 3/10/2003
Bigler Stouffer More News
Doug Ivens and Velva Ivens (now Pardee) were separated and pursuing divorce proceedings. B.J. (Bud) Stouffer was dating Velva. Doug Ivens was dating Linda Reaves.
¶ 4 Doug Ivens testified that on January 24, 1985, Stouffer came to his house asking for a pistol. Stouffer told him that he needed a gun because there were prowlers or a burglar at Velva Ivens’s house. Doug Ivens was concerned for the safety of his estranged wife and his two eight-year-old daughters.
¶ 5 Doug Ivens went to his bedroom and came out with a bank bag containing a loaded Colt .357 caliber revolver. Doug gave the bank bag to Stouffer. Stouffer turned his back to Doug Ivens, and then he turned around with the pistol in his hand. Stouffer fired two shots at Ivens, and Ivens fell to the floor. Stouffer then went to where Linda Reaves was reclining on the couch and shot her twice in the head. Stouffer walked back to Ivens and fired another shot into Ivens’s face. Stouffer then left.
¶ 6 Ivens was able to crawl to the phone and call the police. He told police that Bud Stouffer had shot him and Linda Reaves. Reaves died as a result of her gunshot wounds, but Doug Ivens survived.
¶ 7 The State’s experts concluded that five shots were fired. Five spent rounds and one live round were found in the Colt Python revolver.
¶ 8 The defense experts testified that there was not enough information to conclude that only five shots were fired. They concluded that more shots could have been fired. These experts pointed out that it was impossible to match all of the slugs to the Colt Python. The shots could have been fired from any .357 caliber weapon (including a .38 revolver or a 9 millimeter pistol). All of the defense experts believed that the crime scene was insufficiently processed, possibly because the police focused only on the description of events relayed by Ivens.
https://caselaw.findlaw.com/ok-court-of-criminal-appeals/1030706.html
Bigler Stouffer Execution
Oklahoma executed inmate Bigler Jobe “Bud” Stouffer II Thursday without the issues that caused the last three lethal injections to be described as botched.
The convicted murderer was pronounced dead at 10:16 a.m. at the Oklahoma State Penitentiary. It was the state’s second execution in a month and a half after the practice was halted for more than six years.
“No vomiting, no erratic movements or anything like that. Just, you could see his chest moving as he appeared to breathe. That’s about it,” said one media witness, Sean Murphy of The Associated Press.
The execution process began at 10:01 a m., Corrections Department Director Scott Crow told reporters. Stouffer was declared unconscious at 10:06 a.m.
For his last words, Stouffer said, “My request is that my Father forgive them. Thank you,” media witnesses reported.
In a policy change, Stouffer was allowed to have his personal spiritual advisor, Baptist minister Howard Potts, in the execution chamber with him.
Potts put a hand on Stouffer’s foot and read from a Bible, witnesses said. Early in the process, the advisor said something that made Stouffer laugh.
At 79, Stouffer is the oldest inmate in Oklahoma history to be executed.
He is the second oldest inmate to be executed in the nation since the U.S. Supreme Court reinstated the death penalty in 1976.
He was put to death by lethal injection for the fatal shooting of Putnam City elementary school teacher Linda Reaves in 1985.
He maintained to the end he was wrongfully convicted.
Media witness Dylan Goforth said Stouffer talked in an interview Wednesday about being at peace and ready to go.
“He felt like if he couldn’t prove his innocence while alive then his attorneys would prove it after he was gone,” said Goforth, who works for The Frontier.
Three more executions are set for next year.
As many as 26 more could be scheduled next year if death row inmates lose a legal challenge to the lethal injection process at a trial in Oklahoma City federal court. The trial is set to begin Feb. 28.
Stouffer filed his own legal challenge after his execution was set. He sought to have his execution delayed until after the trial but was turned down in court three times.
The U.S. Supreme Court denied his last request for a stay about 8 a.m. Thursday.
His attorneys also had sought clemency for him. Gov. Kevin Stitt last week rejected a recommendation to commute his sentence to life in prison without the possibility of parole.
Stouffer spent more than three decades on death row because he was tried twice.
He was first convicted in 1985. He was granted a retrial in 2000 when a federal appeals court agreed his defense attorneys had been inept. He was convicted again in 2003 but did not exhaust his appeals of that conviction until 2017.
Prosecutors alleged he intended to kill both Reaves and her boyfriend, Doug Ivens, and staged the crime scene to look like a murder-suicide.
He planted the gun in Reaves’ hand after shooting them both, prosecutors alleged.
Ivens was in the middle of a divorce, and Stouffer was dating his estranged wife.
Ivens survived the attack at his Oklahoma City home and identified Stouffer as the shooter. Prosecutors alleged the motive was a $2 million life insurance policy.
Stouffer also later told his girlfriend in a phone call that he was afraid she would go back to her husband and that he just went berserk, according to testimony.
Stouffer claimed Reaves already was dead when he arrived at the house. He suggested she was murdered because she was going to be a witness in an embezzlement case.
He said at his clemency hearing that Ivens lured him to the “crime scene” and he defended himself because Ivens had a gun. He said Ivens was shot during their struggle.
Jurors at the second trial heard testimony that Stouffer from death row hired hit men to kill Ivens and two others. He denied involvement, saying he was being set up again to keep him in prison.
After the execution, the family of the murder victim thanked the governor and Attorney General John O’Connor for their willingness to carry justice through.
“Although long in coming, justice has prevailed,” a cousin, Rodney C. Thomson, told reporters at the penitentiary.
The cousin recalled how Ivens before his death placed a Christmas tree every year on Reaves’ grave.
Stouffer did not request a traditional “last meal.” He was served a regular evening meal Wednesday that included a chicken patty, bread, fries, broccoli, mixed fruit and two cookies, the Corrections Department said.
His spiritual advisor told the Oklahoma Pardon and Parole Board in November that Stouffer turned his incarceration into a spiritual ministry and regularly shared his faith with other death row inmates.
https://www.oklahoman.com/story/news/2021/12/09/bigler-stouffer-execution-crime-oklahoma/6432756001/