David Hosier was sentenced to death by the State of Missouri for a double murder that was committed in 2009. Now baring a last minute step in by the Missouri State Governor he will be put to death today, July 11 2024, by lethal injections
According to court documents David Hosier began dating Angela Gilpin in Jefferson City who was separated from her husband Rodney Gilpin. However when Hosier learned that Angela and Rodney were trying to rekindle their marriage he would react by going to her appointment and killing the pair
David Hosier would be arrested, convicted of both murders and sentenced to death
David Hosier Case
Death row inmate David Hosier is set to be executed in Missouri on Tuesday, which would make him the state’s second execution of the year and the nation’s seventh.
Hosier, 69, is set to be executed by lethal injection for 2009 murder of his former lover, Angela Gilpin, a mother of two sons who was working to repair her marriage and escape Hosier, according to court records.
Hosier has maintained his innocence since his conviction and recently told the Kansas City Star: “You cannot show remorse for something you did not do.”
Republican Missouri Gov. Michael Parson rejected Hosier’s last petition for clemency on Monday, saying that “he displays no remorse for his senseless violence.”
Here’s what you need to know.
Sometime between 2008 and 2009, Hosier got involved romantically with Angela Gilpin, who had separated from her husband. When Gilpin decided to end the affair and reconcile with her husband, Hosier got angry.
Two weeks before she was killed, Gilpin applied for a restraining order against Hosier and was looking to move apartments, writing to her landlord that she could no longer live next to Hosier.
“He scares me. I don’t know he will do next,” she wrote, according to court records.
The day before the killings, Hosier left a voicemail for a friend saying that he was going to “finish it” and called another friend to say that he was going to “eliminate his problems,” court records show.
The next morning, a neighbor found Gilpin’s and her husband Rodney’s bodies at the threshold of their Jefferson City apartment. They had been shot to death.
In Gilpin’s purse was an application for a protective order from Hosier that said “he knows everywhere I go, who I go with, who comes to my home,” adding that he was stalking and harassing her every day.
Hosier was arrested in Oklahoma later that day following a pursuit and a standoff, after which Hosier told police: “Shoot me and get it over with,” according to court documents.
Attorneys for Hosier have argued that the trial attorneys failed to call a medical professional to explain to jurors how a 2007 stroke had affected Hosier’s mental state. The attorneys have also argued that the judge that presided over the trial and sentencing had a conflict of interest, having prosecuted Hosier in 1998 for not paying child support.
The Missouri State Supreme Court rejected Hosier’s appeals and the U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear the case in August 2023.
The Federal Public Defender’s office produced a video pleading for clemency for Hosier. In the video, multiple family members point to the death of Hosier’s father when he was 16 years old as the beginning of a downward spiral.
“He’s been angry with all the women in his life, including me and my mother and it was not like that for him before my dad died,” Hosier’s sister, Kay Schardien, says in the clemency video. “My dad’s death was just like a crater and David fell into that crater.”
In denying Hosier’s clemency petition on Monday, Parson said in a statement that Gilpin “had her life stolen by David Hosier because he could not accept it when she ended their romantic involvement.”
“For these heinous acts, Hosier earned maximum punishment under the law,” he said. “I cannot imagine the pain experienced by Angela’s and Rodney’s loved ones but hope that carrying out Hosier’s sentence according to the court’s order brings closure.”
Hosier is scheduled to be executed shortly after 6 p.m. CT on Tuesday, June 11. The window for the execution runs for 24 hours, according to the Missouri Department of Corrections.
The execution will be carried out at the Eastern Reception, Diagnostic and Correctional Center in Bonne Terre, about an hour south of St. Louis
David Hosier Execution
Missouri carried out its second execution this year on Tuesday after Gov. Mike Parson denied a request for clemency filed by inmate David Hosier.
Hosier was pronounced dead at 6:11 p.m. local time at the Eastern Reception, Diagnostic and Correctional Center in Bonne Terre, Missouri, a corrections spokesperson said in a statement.
Hosier, 69, has maintained his innocence in the double murder for which he was sentenced to death. He submitted a clemency petition in the wake of multiple prior appeals, including one that the Missouri Supreme Court rejected five years ago when it unanimously upheld the state’s decision to execute him. But the authority to commute Hosier’s sentence or halt his execution — or not — ultimately rests with the governor, and some lawmakers have in recent days called on Parson to spare his life.
Hosier was placed on Missouri’s death row in 2013 after being convicted of capital murder in the 2009 deaths of Angela Gilpin and Rodney Gilpin at their home in Jefferson City. The governor, who has overseen 10 executions since beginning his term in office, said Hosier killed the couple “in a jealous rage,” echoing the prosecution’s argument during his criminal trial.
Hosier was convicted of fatally shooting the Gilpins during an armed burglary, after previously having a romantic relationship with Angela Gilpin. She and her husband were murdered around one month after Angela Gilpin ended the affair with Hosier, according to court documents.
“Ms. Angela Gilpin had her life stolen by David Hosier because he could not accept it when she ended their romantic involvement. He displays no remorse for his senseless violence,” Parson said in a statement Monday, announcing that Hosier’s clemency petition was denied. “For these heinous acts, Hosier earned maximum punishment under the law. I cannot imagine the pain experienced by Angela’s and Rodney’s loved ones but hope that carrying out Hosier’s sentence according to the Court’s order brings closure.”
Hosier already had a criminal record and owned firearms when the Gilpins were killed, and in the aftermath of the murders, Angela Gilpin’s purse was found to contain an application for a protective order against him as well as a statement saying she feared Hosier may shoot her and Rodney, documents show.
Parson’s office said Tuesday that “Hosier, with a decades-long history of violence against women, would not let Angela reconcile with Rodney, stalking and harassing her for weeks before murdering her and her husband.”
Before the Gilpins’ case, Hosier was convicted and sentenced to prison for assaulting and seriously injuring another woman.
Hosier’s defense attorneys have over the years tried to appeal the death sentence on the grounds that no physical evidence linked Hosier to the murders. “No confession, no eyewitnesses, no fingerprints, and none of David’s DNA or other personal effects were found at the crime scene,” they wrote in his 2019 appeal. Attorneys also argued that Hosier’s prior conviction for assault should not have been admissible evidence in the Gilpin trial because it unfairly prejudiced the jury.
His recent clemency petition focused mainly on Hosier’s personal life. Much of the petition centered on a stroke Hosier suffered in 2007 that attorneys said left him with lasting brain damage, as well as the 1971 murder of his father, an Indiana State Police sergeant, which his defense characterized as a traumatic event that drove his mental health struggles in adulthood. Hosier went on to serve in the United States Navy and as an emergency medical technician and firefighter in Jefferson County. His health has declined in the last several months, with the petition citing heart issues that intensified in early May.
U.S. Reps. Cori Bush and Emmanuel Cleaver, both of Missouri, urged Parson to grant Hosier’s clemency petition in a letter to the governor last week. They referenced the inmate’s medical issues and mental illness and suggested that his former attorneys’ choice to omit “vital medical information” during the criminal trial could amount to “a potential violation of Mr. Hosier’s Sixth Amendment rights.”
“Mr. Hosier’s debilitating condition further emphasizes the need for clemency in this case. He does not pose a threat to those around him and deserves humane treatment as he suffers from heart failure,” Bush and Cleaver wrote in that letter.
Hosier told The Associated Press he was unhappy with his current defense team’s approach to the clemency request, which he thought should have focused more on the lack of forensic evidence tying him to the Gilpins’ deaths and less on his childhood.
“They did exactly the opposite of what I wanted them to do,” Hosier said of the clemency petition, according to the AP. “I told them I didn’t want the ‘boo-hoo, woe is me.’ All that stuff happened 53 years ago, OK? It has nothing to do with why I’m sitting here right now.”