David Russell Hosier, a 69-year-old former firefighter and Navy veteran, was pronounced dead at 6:11 p.m. on June 11, 2024, at the Eastern Reception, Diagnostic and Correctional Center in Bonne Terre, Missouri, ending a 15-year legal battle that began with the brutal double murder of a Jefferson City couple.
His final hours unfolded with grim precision. Prison staff served him a last meal of New York strip steak, baked potato with butter and sour cream, Texas toast, Dutch apple pie, orange juice, and milk. He ate knowing these would be his final tastes of earthly food.
Hosier spent his remaining time with spiritual adviser Reverend Jeff Hood, who prayed softly beside him. He made phone calls to family members and friends, offering farewells to those who had supported him through more than a decade on death row at the Potosi Correctional Center.
In his final statement, Hosier maintained his innocence while expressing peace. “I leave you all with love. Now I get to go to heaven.
Don’t cry for me. Just join me when your time comes,” he said, according to witnesses who observed the execution.
Witnesses described Hosier as calm as the lethal injection of pentobarbital began flowing through IV lines. He turned his head a couple of times and took several deep breaths before losing consciousness. Within seconds, his movements ceased.
Eight loved ones of Angela and Rodney Gilpin attended the execution to witness what they considered justice delivered nearly 15 years after the murders.
The path to this moment began long before the trigger was pulled. Hosier was born in 1955 into what seemed like a stable Indiana family, the son of Indiana State Police Sergeant Glenn Hosier, who was killed in the line of duty in 1971 when David was just 16.
The trauma reshaped the teenager, who was sent to military academy and enlisted in the U. S. Navy at 19, serving four to six years before receiving an honorable discharge.
He later built a life in Jefferson City, Missouri, as a firefighter and emergency medical technician, seemingly following his father’s path of public service.
But beneath the surface, Hosier was unraveling. Two marriages ended in divorce, and by the mid-1980s, he was diagnosed with depression with psychotic features and bipolar disorder. In 1987, he was involuntarily committed to a state psychiatric hospital.
The 1990s brought an assault conviction against a girlfriend, earning him eight years in prison. He was paroled in 1997, but authorities later described a decades-long history of violence against women. In 2007, a stroke caused brain damage, adding physical trauma to his fragile mental state.
The trigger came in the form of Angela Gilpin, a 45-year-old neighbor with whom Hosier began a long-term 𝒶𝒻𝒻𝒶𝒾𝓇 while she was separated from her husband Rodney. When Angela chose to reconcile with her husband in August 2009, Hosier’s obsession turned to threats.
Angela filed a verified petition for an order of protection, documenting that Hosier was stalking her daily. In her own handwriting, she wrote that he knew “everywhere I go, who I go with, who comes to my home” and expressed explicit fear that he might shoot her and her husband.
On September 28, 2009, that fear became reality. Hosier entered the Gilpin apartment and gunned down both Angela, 45, and Rodney, 61, near their doorway. A neighbor discovered their bodies the next morning.
Hosier fled to Oklahoma, where authorities tracked him through cell phone signals. After a high-speed chase, he stepped out of his vehicle with arms spread wide, taunting officers with chilling words: “Shoot me and get it over with.”
Inside his car, investigators found an arsenal: 15 firearms, hundreds of rounds of ammunition, a bulletproof vest, and a Sten submachine gun. On the front seat lay a handwritten note that read, “If you are going with someone, do not lie to them. If you do not, this could happen to you.”
The case against Hosier relied entirely on circumstantial evidence. No DNA, fingerprints, or eyewitness identification tied him directly to the shooting. Ballistics tests on the seized firearms were inconclusive.
Yet the circumstantial case was overwhelming: documented threats, the protective order, immediate flight with a cache of weapons, clear motive, and a history of violence. Hosier pleaded not guilty at his January 2010 arraignment.
The trial finally began on October 21, 2013, more than three years later. In a strategic move, prosecutors proceeded on only one murder count, Angela’s death, while presenting evidence about Rodney’s murder for context. The jury deliberated less than two hours before convicting Hosier of first-degree murder, armed criminal action, first-degree burglary, and unlawful possession of a firearm.
On October 26, 2013, the jury unanimously recommended death. The judge formally sentenced Hosier on November 27, 2013.
Appeals consumed the next decade. The Missouri Supreme Court upheld the conviction and death sentence in March 2015 and again denied appeals in December 2019. Federal courts followed suit, with the U.
S. Supreme Court refusing to hear the case in August 2023.
Hosier’s health deteriorated significantly in his final years. In May 2024, weeks before his scheduled execution, he was hospitalized with heart failure and atrial fibrillation, leaving him in severe pain with swelling and difficulty walking or talking. Prison officials planned accommodations, including local anesthetic before the lethal injection, to account for his frail state.
In late May 2024, his attorneys submitted a clemency request highlighting his traumatic upbringing, military service, firefighter career, age, and deteriorating health. Two Missouri members of Congress sent a letter urging Governor Mike Parson to spare his life. Anti-death penalty activists delivered a petition with nearly 7,000 signatures.
Governor Parson denied clemency on June 10, 2024, the eve of the execution. He noted that Hosier had “cruelly taken the lives of Angela and Rodney Gilpin” and shown no remorse. Parson pointed out that prosecutors had once offered a life imprisonment plea deal, which Hosier refused.
In his final days, Hosier reflected on the death penalty itself. “I cannot honestly say that I believe in capital punishment. It does not do anything.
The state says it’s illegal for us to 𝓀𝒾𝓁𝓁 somebody or for somebody to 𝓀𝒾𝓁𝓁 somebody, but yet they want to justify murdering somebody. And that’s all this is, is an execution of state-sanctioned murder.”
He continued to insist on his innocence, frustrated that his clemency appeal focused on his life history rather than proclaiming wrongful conviction. “You cannot show remorse for something you did not do,” he maintained.
Yet he also found a measure of acceptance through faith. “I read my Bible. I talked to Reverend Hood.
I put my faith in my Lord and salvation, Jesus Christ. And no matter what happens, I know that’s what God wanted because he’s known us since before we were born.”
Reverend Jeff Hood, who witnessed the execution, criticized the decision afterward. “How can you go all over the state and teach children not to 𝓀𝒾𝓁𝓁 by killing?” he asked, calling the system absurd.
Outside the prison, 52 protesters held a vigil, including activists from Missourians to Abolish the Death Penalty. The execution was Missouri’s second of 2024 and the seventh in the United States that year.
Rilene Vaughn, Rodney’s sister, stated that Hosier should be held accountable for what he did, though she acknowledged that no punishment could bring back her loved ones. State officials expressed hope the execution would deter domestic violence and send a message about consequences.
The case reignited discussions about capital punishment, particularly in cases based on circumstantial evidence. Critics noted that no forensic evidence definitively tied Hosier to the crime. Supporters countered that the circumstantial case was compelling and that his campaign of terror against Angela proved his responsibility.
Hosier spent his final hours reading Bible passages and speaking with his spiritual adviser. He showed no signs of fear on the gurney, witnesses said. He was wearing a white prison shirt and glasses when the IV lines delivered the fatal dose.
After prison medical staff declared his death, his body was removed to be cremated. For the Gilpin family, who lost a mother, father, sister, and brother, officials hoped the sentence provided some measure of closure after nearly 15 years.
The story of David Russell Hosier is one of stark contradictions. He was a man who once saved lives as a firefighter and EMT, a son who lost his police officer father too young, a veteran who served his country honorably. In the end, he became the very thing his father spent his career fighting against.
His final journey began with a high-speed chase, an arsenal of weapons, and a taunting dare to police. It ended quietly with a lethal injection, a final breath, and questions about justice, mercy, and whether the state’s ultimate punishment serves any purpose beyond retribution.
For the families of Angela and Rodney Gilpin, the execution brought a somber resolution. For opponents of capital punishment, it underscored the finality of a system that can never undo an error. For supporters, it demonstrated that certain crimes merit the maximum penalty under law.
The debate will continue long after Hosier’s body has been cremated and his final words fade from memory. But the lives of Angela and Rodney Gilpin, cut short in their own doorway, remain the enduring tragedy at the heart of this case, a stark reminder of the cost of obsession, violence, and domestic terror.
As Reverend Hood prayed beside the gurney, and as the state carried out its sentence, the thin line between salvation and damnation that every human walks was never more visible than in the final moments of David Russell Hosier, a man who left this world insisting on his innocence while the families he devastated watched the state deliver its final verdict.
