JUST IN: Gregory Hunt Executed + Last Meal and Words | Death Row (US)

JUST IN: Gregory Hunt Executed + Last Meal and Words | Death Row (US)

On June 10th, 2025, after almost 30 years on death row, Gregory Hunt was executed by nitrogen gas in Alabama. In this video, we’ll uncover what happened, his last meal, and his last words. In the early hours of August 2nd, 1988, paramedics stepped into a small apartment in Cordova, Alabama, and into a scene that would stay with them for the rest of their lives.

 Karen Lane, just 29, lay lifeless on the kitchen floor. Her body was battered beyond recognition, covered in bruises, broken bones, and injuries too graphic for words. Even seasoned first responders froze in the doorway and some struggled to speak. The violence was overwhelming and nothing about the scene felt random. Right away, suspicion turned to Gregory Hunt.

 Karen had only been dating him for a few weeks. They met through a mutual connection. Tina Gilland Cook, who happened to be both Karen’s roommate and Greg’s cousin. At first, Greg seemed quiet, maybe just withdrawn. But that changed fast. His temper started surfacing early on. His jealousy, his need for control, his angry outbursts, and by the end of July, the tension inside that apartment had reached a boiling point.

 Karen had seen enough, and she told her friends she wanted him out of her life. On the night of August 1st, just after 6:00 p.m., Greg showed up at the apartment again. He was agitated, pacing, and on edge. He turned to a friend, Shirley Roine, and said, “She makes me so mad. I could kill that bitch.

” Then he added he was done with it all. Said he was going back to Miami. But he didn’t leave. Not yet. That evening, Karen and Tina drove out to Parish, headed for the home of Tina’s fiance. But as they pulled up, they noticed Greg’s van already there. Tina went inside, but Karen didn’t. She took off without a word. fast, deliberate, like something had shifted.

Inside, Greg noticed. He asked where Karen went, and Tina told him she was heading to her mom’s. That was all she knew. But Greg didn’t believe her. By 9:45 p.m., he was on the phone screaming. His voice shook with rage. He demanded answers, wanted to know where Karen was. “You better tell me,” he warned, or it’s going to be detrimental to you.

 Then came the part no one forgot. He said he didn’t care if he went back to prison. Not if that’s what it took. Over the next few hours, Greg unraveled fast. The anger didn’t fade. It morphed into something darker. He called a friend and said he was going to somebody up. Then he rang Karen’s mother twice.

 Claimed he was just trying to find her. But the way he spoke, sharp, bitter, wired with tension, said something else. He told her he had grown up in violence and knew how to use it. Then he hung up and went hunting. He drove to a house Karen owned but hadn’t lived in for months. And when he noticed she wasn’t there, something in him snapped.

 He soaked the place in gas and lit it up. About an hour later, he showed up at the home of another friend, Deborah, still asking where Karen was. Deborah later said that Greg smelled like smoke and gasoline and that he confessed to burning down Karen’s house. He said that he was sick of her crap and that he had taken the only thing she had. But still, he wasn’t done.

 Around midnight, a witness saw Greg’s van tearing through Cordova, chasing a car that looked just like Karen’s. He was speeding, swerving through the empty streets like a man hunting something. But Karen managed to lose him, at least for a while. She thought the danger had passed and drove home, probably shaken, but relieved.

 But what she didn’t know was that Greg wasn’t done. And heading back to her apartment, that decision would cost her her life. By 2:00 a.m., Karen had gone to bed. The apartment was dark, quiet, but Greg was still out there. A neighbor later told police she had heard glass shattering, then looked outside and saw a man, Greg, climbing through a broken window.

 Within minutes, he was inside. He had found Karen. Just half an hour after entering the house, he called Tina. Karen’s lying here on the kitchen floor, he said. Someone should get her to a hospital. Then he hung up. When officers arrived, what they found inside was horrifying. Karen’s body told the story before anyone could.

 She had been beaten with such force that nearly every bone in her chest was fractured. 12 ribs on each side were broken. Her breast bone was cracked. Her heart and lungs were bruised. Her liver was torn and her aorta was ripped open. The autopsy later revealed 60 separate injuries. Beside her was a blood sllicked bar stool, strands of her hair still stuck to the seat, and between her legs, a broken broomstick.

 Forensics confirmed what everyone feared. She’d beenly assaulted with it. And there was more. The medical examiner found Greg’s DNA in her mouth. It had been left there just before she died. And when officers saw what happened in that apartment, there was no question who they needed to find, Greg. But by then, he was already gone.

 He’d run to Coleman, Alabama, and made a dazed call to his family in Florida. He didn’t sound certain about anything. He said he and Karen had gone out that night, that they argued, and that he didn’t know how he had left her. But a few days later, face to face at the jail, his sister asked him the only question that mattered.

 “Did you kill her?” Greg didn’t flinch. “Yes,” he said. He claimed he’d been drinking, said he was high and angry, and that he lost control, that he snapped, that he was sorry, but by then none of it mattered. His fingerprints were everywhere, on the stairwell, on the walls, even on a busted window screen. A bloody palm print matched him exactly.

And when witnesses took the stand, the rest of the story collapsed around him. On June 19th, 1990, Greg was found guilty of capital murder on three counts. One for killing her during a burglary, one for killing her through abuse by force, and one for taking the life of a woman who by law couldn’t consent.

 The jury vote wasn’t unanimous, but close, 11 to1, and it was enough to send him to death row. Gregory Hunt would spend the next 29 years there, caught in the cycle of appeals. His attorneys argued he never stood a chance, not at trial and not at sentencing. They pointed to Alabama’s broken capital defense system, underfunded, understaffed, and overburdened, and said no one ever told the jury about Greg’s childhood, about the violence, the broken homes, the trauma that followed him through foster care and into drug addiction.

 That context, they said, was never given a voice. Since arriving in prison, Greg said he had become more spiritual. He spent most of his time reading the Bible, writing gospel songs, and trying to share his faith with other inmates. He described prison not as punishment, but as something closer to a hospital, a place where he finally began to heal.

 It was just me, God, Bible, and worship. He said, “The Holy Spirit helped me get a right mind that took years to get rid of the insanity.” Greg admitted he used to live without God and believed he could have died many times before ever landing behind bars. That was why he said he wasn’t afraid of dying now.

 I don’t know why people cry at funerals if they’re going to heaven. Years later, Greg made a decision that would put his name back in the headlines. He chose nitrogen hypoxia as the way he wanted to die, even before Alabama had created a protocol for how to use it. At the time, the state hadn’t finished developing the steps for carrying out an execution by gas.

 But under law, inmates had the right to choose between gas, lethal injection, or the electric chair. Greg would be the fifth man in Alabama to die this way. That choice sparked new fears. Nitrogen gas had been used before, but what was once called a humane alternative now looked anything but.

 Witnesses described it as slow, unsettling, even painful. Critics pushed back, demanding that Alabama paused all executions until a full review could be done, but those calls were ignored, and the execution moved forward anyway. Gregory Hunt’s final day came on June 10th, 2025. He skipped a last dinner meal the night before, but for lunch, he chose a tray of baloney, blackeyed peas, carrots, and fruit punch.

When the curtain pulled back at 5:52 p.m., Gregory lay strapped to the gurnie wrapped in a white sheet with a mask over his face. After the death warrant was read, Greg declined to say any final words, but did give a thumbs up and what appeared to be a peace sign. But not long before that moment, in a phone call, he had spoken plainly.

 At first, he insisted he wasn’t your typical death row inmate. Then he said six words that stuck. I don’t have no pity party. He paused, then added, “You know, I’m just battling until I get a break or they snuff my light out.” When asked about the crime itself, his voice changed. “I can’t explain what happened,” he said quietly.

 “All I can say is that she didn’t deserve what happened to her.” On the night of June 10th, the gas started flowing sometime after 5:55 p.m. At 5:57, Greg briefly shook, gasped, and raised his head off the gurnie. He let out a moan at about 5:59 p.m. and raised his feet. Then he took a series of four or more gasping breaths with long pauses in between.

 And by 6:05 p.m., he stopped moving altogether. His left fist remained clenched long afterward. Gregory Hunt was pronounced dead at 6:26 p.m. Gregory Hunt was 65 years old.