After spending 12 years on death row, Wanda Gene Allen was executed by lethal injection in Oklahoma. But to understand how she ended up on death row in the first place, we have to go back to the winter of 1988, where our relationship finally hit its breaking point right outside the front doors of a small town police department.

Wanda Jean and Gloria Jean Leathers had been inseparable once. They met behind prison walls and once released tried to build a life together. But what started as companionship quickly turned toxic. By the time they were living under the same roof, the relationship had become violent. And on a cold Thursday afternoon, Gloria was done.

 She wanted out, this time for good. It started inside a grocery store. The two had walked in together, but tension was already building. Gloria had picked up her welfare check, and Wanda Jean wanted the money, even demanded it. Their loud voices turned to shouting and eventually someone called the police. When officers arrived, Gloria was done pretending.

 She asked one of them to escort her back to the house so she could pack her things and leave. She told them she was moving out, going back to her mother’s. She was done with the fighting and done with Wanda Jean. Back at the house, things stayed civil, at least on the surface. The officer waited as Gloria gathered her belongings and made a quick phone call to her mom to ask for a ride.

 She ignored the looks Wanda Jean was giving her across the room. Wanda just stood there watching until she finally muttered something under her breath, “If I can’t have you, no one will.” Gloria didn’t respond, and a few minutes later, her mother pulled into the driveway. Together, they loaded the last of her things into the car, and it looked like Gloria was finally free.

But before heading home, she made one last decision. She didn’t just want to leave. She wanted to make a report. So, they turned the car around and drove straight to the police station. But what they didn’t know was that Wanda Jean was right behind them. She had gotten into her own car and followed, quiet and calculated, never getting too close, but never losing sight either.

When they reached the station, Gloria opened the door and stepped out, walking toward the front entrance, but she only made it a few steps. Wanda Jean pulled in behind them, got out, and raised a gun. She didn’t hesitate and pulled the trigger. One shot right into Gloria’s stomach, and she immediately collapsed on the concrete.

Inside the building, two officers heard the shot and sprinted toward the front doors. And what they found outside was chaos. Gloria bleeding out on the pavement, her mother screaming for help. And Wanda Jean already speeding off in her car with the gun still in her hand. But Gloria wasn’t gone yet. She was still breathing and was able to say who pulled the trigger.

 Her mother filled in the rest. It all had happened in broad daylight right on the police department’s front steps. For the next 4 days, Gloria hovered between life and death. Doctors tried everything they could, but the damage inside her abdomen was just too much. Meanwhile, Wanda Gene had disappeared. For 4 days, no one could find her, but she didn’t disappear forever.

 An anonymous tip finally came in and she was hiding out 70 m outside of Oklahoma City and the police moved in quickly. When they arrested her, they found the 38 revolvers stashed nearby, the same one that had torn Gloria’s life apart in a split second. And Wanda Jean was charged with shooting with intent to kill.

But that wouldn’t last long. Just 2 hours after the arrest, Gloria Gene Leathers died. She was just 29 years old. And with that, everything changed. The shooting became a homicide. And the story behind it, the why, the who, the how, wasn’t as simple as it looked. Not when investigators traced it back and looked at Wanda Jean’s life.

 She was the second of eight kids raised in a crowded Oklahoma City housing project by a mother who drank through every pregnancy and couldn’t hold down a job. And her father had left right after the last sibling was born. Welfare checks kept the lights on barely, but most days Wanda Gene took it upon herself to keep the rest of the family fed.

 When there wasn’t enough to go around, she stole cash, food, and whatever she could carry. And it didn’t take long for the police to learn her name. And that was not it. At 12, she got hit by a truck and was knocked unconscious. And at 14, she was stabbed in the head. No one ever ran any tests to figure out what kind of long-term damage those injuries left behind, but she never quite seemed to think like other kids.

 School was a blur, and before she ever made it to senior year, she dropped out. A psychologist eventually did see her at 15 and found signs of an intellectual disability with an IQ hovering around 69 and urged a full neurological workup. But that never happened and she slipped through the cracks like so many others. After dropping out, she stole and got arrested more than once.

 And by the time she was 21, she had a record, a temper, and a gun. Her first victim was someone she knew well, Dedra Pettis. They had grown up together, lived together as roommates, and at one point they were even more than friends. But by summer of 1981, something in their bond had changed. On June 29th, Wanda Jean told the police she had fired in self-defense, that Dedra’s boyfriend had pulled a gun, and she had shot back.

 She said she stood 30 ft away when the bullet flew, and that Dedra had just been in the wrong place. But the autopsy told a different story. She had bruises along her face, and the powder burns on her skin said the shot had come from a close range. Too close. Investigators believed she had been pistolhipped before being shot, not caught in a crossfire, but targeted.

Still, prosecutors offered her a deal. A chance to walk away and get her life together, plead guilty to manslaughter, serve 4 years, and get out. Wanda Gene took it. And in less than 2 years, she was out again. But nothing about her life got better. Behind bars, she had met Gloria, a woman with a temper and a past just as bloody.

They clicked instantly. But when Wanda Gene got out in 1982, they drifted apart. However, by 1986, when Gloria was released, they found each other again, started dating, and even moved in together in 1988. But whatever spark had drawn them together quickly turned to friction. Gloria had her own demons.

 She served time for stabbing a woman to death and she had racked up multiple arrests for assault. Their relationship was a roller coaster full of love, anger, and fear. Police were called to the house again and again for screaming matches, threats, and sometimes worse. But through it all, Wanda Jean stayed and so did Gloria until the night everything snapped.

After the shooting, Wanda Gan was booked and processed. Her courtappointed attorney had never handled a death penalty case before, not once. And when he found out the state planned to seek execution, he begged the judge for help. A second chair, a public defender, anyone with real experience. But the judge said no.

 And not only was his request denied, he was also told he couldn’t withdraw from the case. There came no help, no experts, and he got just $800 to prepare a defense. That was all her family could get. The outcome, in many ways, was sealed right there. Wanda Gan wasn’t coming into this trial with a clean slate.

 She was still on probation for killing Dedra Pettis years earlier, and that probably weighed heavily against her. On paper, she wasn’t a scared woman acting in the heat of the moment anymore. She was a repeat offender with a violent past, and that was enough to change the entire tone of the case. Had this been her first arrest? Had Dedra’s death not followed her into that courtroom, maybe the story would have played differently, maybe the court might have viewed her as desperate or emotional.

 But Dedra was dead and now Gloria was too. And the jury didn’t see Wanda Jean as a woman trying to survive. They saw a woman who had already been given a second chance and wasted it. Wanda Jean told the court she had acted in self-defense. She said Gloria came at her with a hand rake again, just like earlier that day.

 But police never found a rake. And Gloria’s mother, who witnessed the shooting up close, said it didn’t happen that way at all. The jury didn’t believe Wanda Gene, and on April 27th, 1989, they convicted her of firstdegree murder, and she was sentenced to death. Years later, her legal team brought something else to the table.

 At her clemency hearing, they revealed Wanda Gene had taken an IQ test back in the 70s, and her score was just 69. This was low enough to qualify as intellectually disabled, and that one number could have changed everything. But there was a problem. At trial, Wanda Gene had lied. She claimed she graduated high school, said she had a certificate in medical assistance, but that wasn’t true.

 And the prosecution used those lies against her, said she wasn’t mentally impaired, just manipulative. And even her own lawyer hadn’t known. He didn’t have the resources to dig into her past, and Wanda Gene likely didn’t understand how badly those lies would hurt her. In the end, none of it mattered. The appeals were exhausted and the clock had run out.

 Wanda Jean spent the next 12 years on death row. And as the execution date closed in, she leaned into the only place left to go, faith. In her final months, she became a born-again Christian. And according to her spiritual adviser, she may have sought redemption, not only for herself, but to connect with the world that had turned away from her.

 On January 11th, 2001, Oklahoma carried out her execution. That day, 24 relatives of the victims stood in silence. Some had lost Gloria Leathers, others Diet Trapetis. Both were gone because of the same woman. And now they stood behind a tinted window, watching as the state carried out her sentence. Among them was Latoya, Gloria’s daughter.

 She said Wanda’s death wouldn’t bring her mother back, but it was something. It would give the family closure. Wanda Jean didn’t ask for a big last meal, just a simple bag of potato chips. And when the moment came, Wanda Jean lay on the gurnie wearing a gray inmate shirt with a white sheet covering most of her body.

She looked calm and kept her eyes open. A chaplain read aloud from the Bible. And when asked for her final words, Wanda Jean’s voice was quiet but clear. Father, forgive them. They know not what they do, she said, repeating the words of Jesus Christ on the cross. That’s it. Thank you.

 Then she smiled at her attorney and stuck out her tongue. Defiant to the end. At 9:21 p.m., she was pronounced dead. Wanda Gene Allen was 41 years old. She became the first black woman to be executed in the US in over 50 years and the first woman ever to be executed in the history of Oklahoma.