Missouri is set to carry out its second execution of the year Tuesday evening after the governor. Mike Parson rejected a death row inmate’s request for clemency, over which the inmate had also expressed frustration.
“I don’t feel like they represented me at all,” David Hosier, 69, said of his legal team during a recent phone call from Bonne Terre State Prison .
Hosier, who is set to die by lethal injection, has long maintained his innocence in the 2009 murders of a Jefferson City couple, Angela and Rodney Gilpin.
A 19-page clemency petition cites childhood trauma from the murder of his own father as a mitigating factor in Hosier’s case. Hosier’s father, Glen Hosier, was an Indiana state trooper who was killed in the line of duty when Hosier was 16 years old. But Hosier said he disagreed with the angle his lawyers took in arguing for clemency.
“Fifty-three years ago my father was killed,” he said. “I told them I didn’t want any of this used. It has nothing to do with this matter.
Instead, Hosier wanted his lawyers to focus on the lack of DNA evidence at the crime scene.
His legal team did not respond to requests for comment.
Hosier admitted that before the murder he had an affair with Gilpin, who had married during their romantic relationship.
“I was seeing a married woman who was separated from her husband,” Hosier said, “and she went back to her husband.”
Gilpin ended her relationship with Hosier and reconciled with her husband, according to court documents. Prosecutors say Hosier then broke into their apartment and killed her and her husband.
Prosecutors described Hosier as a scorned ex-lover who was seeking revenge, saying Gilpin’s purse contained an application for a protection order against Hosier, as well as a document saying she feared Hosier would shoot on her and her husband.
After the bodies were discovered, Hozier was arrested in Oklahoma, where law enforcement recovered 15 firearms, numerous rounds of ammunition, a bulletproof vest and a knife from his car. According to court documents, all of the guns were loaded except for a World War II-era machine gun, which prosecutors named as the murder weapon.
There was also an incriminating note in the front seat of Hosier’s car that read: “If you leave with anyone, don’t lie to them.” …Be honest with them if there is something wrong. If you don’t, this could happen to you. People don’t like being fucked, and after so much bullshit, they can fall off the deep end.
Hosier has maintained his innocence. He said he did not flee to Oklahoma but liked to take long drives to clear his mind and often took his guns with him because he hunted, as well as out of caution because, he said, his landlord would visit his apartment when he wasn’t home.
“I know two people were killed. I know that I have been accused of this,” he said. “I know that they have no witnesses who can place me in this crime. Nobody saw anything that happened. So there’s no witness to say, “He did it.” They don’t have any fingerprints to tie me to this crime.
Hosier rejected a plea deal removing the death penalty if he admitted guilt. The Missouri Supreme Court upheld his conviction in 2019.
He said his lawyers have not set a date for filing his appeal and no other appeals are pending in his case.
While reps. Cori Bush and Emmanuel Cleaver, both Missouri Democrats, had urged Parson, a Republican, to stop the execution, and Parson declined the request Monday.
“MS. Angela Gilpin had her life stolen by David Hosier because he couldn’t accept her when she ended their romantic relationship. He shows no remorse for his senseless violence,” Parson said in a press release. “For these heinous acts, Hosier received the maximum penalty provided for by law.”
In a series of interviews from prison, the first conducted shortly after he was given an execution date, Hosier went through a range of emotions, from outrage to tears. During an interview last week, he was short of breath and out of breath. Last month, he was transferred from the prison to a hospital where he was diagnosed with atrial fibrillation, which causes a very irregular pulse.
“I will maintain this until the day they put a needle in my arm and kill me. I will always be innocent, even if I am dead,” he said.