At 6:26 p. m. on June 10, 2025, the State of Alabama executed Gregory Hunt, 65, by nitrogen gas at the William C.
Holman Correctional Facility in Atmore, bringing to a close a case that haunted the small community of Cordova for nearly four decades.
Hunt, who spent almost three decades on death row for the brutal murder of 29-year-old Karen Lane, was pronounced dead roughly 30 minutes after the gas began flowing. Witnesses described a harrowing scene that reignited the national debate over the state’s use of nitrogen hypoxia as an execution method.
The execution did not go as smoothly as state officials had hoped. At 5:55 p. m.
, the gas started flowing. Two minutes later, Hunt shook, gasped, and raised his head off the gurney. At 5:59, he moaned and lifted his feet, followed by a series of four or more gasping breaths with long pauses between them.
By 6:05 p. m. , he had stopped moving altogether, though his left fist remained clenched for a considerable time afterward.
The timeline closely mirrored the unsettling patterns observed in previous nitrogen gas executions in Alabama, which critics have described as slow, painful, and anything but humane.
The case against Hunt began more than 36 years ago, when paramedics stepped into a small apartment in Cordova, Alabama, in the early hours of August 2, 1988. What they found would stay with them for the rest of their lives.
Karen Lane lay lifeless on the kitchen floor, her body battered beyond recognition. She was covered in bruises, broken bones, and injuries too graphic for words. Even seasoned first responders froze in the doorway, some struggling to speak as the overwhelming violence of the scene became apparent.
The autopsy would later reveal 60 separate injuries. Nearly every bone in her chest was fractured, with 12 ribs broken on each side. Her breastbone was cracked, her heart and lungs were bruised, her liver was torn, and her aorta was ripped open.
Beside her body lay a blood-slicked bar stool with strands of her hair still stuck to the seat. Between her legs was a broken broomstick. Forensics confirmed that she had been sexually assaulted with it.
The medical examiner also found Hunt’s DNA in her mouth, left there just before she died.
Nothing about the scene felt random. Suspicion immediately turned to Gregory Hunt, who had only been dating Lane for a few weeks. They met through Tina Gilland Cook, who was both Lane’s roommate and Hunt’s cousin.
At first, Hunt seemed quiet, perhaps just withdrawn. But that changed quickly. His temper surfaced early, along with his jealousy, his need for control, and his angry outbursts.
By the end of July 1988, the tension inside that apartment had reached a boiling point.
Karen Lane had seen enough. She told her friends she wanted him out of her life. But 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 that he was done with it all and claimed he was going back to Miami.
But he didn’t leave. Not yet.
That evening, Karen and Tina drove out to Parish, heading for the home of Tina’s fiancé. 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 and deliberate, like something had shifted.
Inside, Greg noticed her absence immediately. He asked where Karen went, and Tina told him she was heading to her mother’s house. But Greg didn’t believe her.
By 9:45 p. m. , he was on the phone screaming, his voice shaking with rage.
He demanded answers and wanted to know where Karen was. “You better tell me,” he warned Tina, “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 “do somebody up.”
Then he rang Karen’s mother twice, claiming he was just trying to find her.
But the way he spoke, sharp, bitter, wired with tension, said something else entirely. 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. When he noticed she wasn’t there, something in him snapped. He soaked the place in gasoline 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 confessed to burning down Karen’s house. He said 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 and swerving through the empty streets like a man hunting something.
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.
Heading back to her apartment would cost her her life.
By 2:00 a. m. , Karen had gone to bed.
The apartment was dark and quiet, but Greg was still out there. A neighbor later told police she had heard glass shattering and looked outside to see 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 speak. The violence was so extreme that first responders were left shaken and speechless.
By then, Greg was already gone. He had 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.
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. He said he snapped and 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. When witnesses took the stand, the rest of the story collapsed around him.
On June 19, 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 to 1, 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.
They described the violence, the broken homes, and 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. It 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,” he said.
Years before his execution, 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 pause all executions until a full review could be done.
Those calls were ignored, and the execution moved forward anyway.
Gregory Hunt’s final day came on June 10, 2025. He skipped a last dinner meal the night before, but for lunch, he chose a tray of baloney, black-eyed peas, carrots, and fruit punch.
When the curtain pulled back at 5:52 p. m. , Gregory lay strapped to the gurney, 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.”
At 6:26 p. m. , Gregory Hunt was pronounced dead.
He was 65 years old.
The execution concludes a legal saga that spans more than three decades, but for the family of Karen Lane and the community of Cordova, the scars of that terrible August night in 1988 will never fully heal. As Hunt himself acknowledged in his final words, Karen Lane did not deserve what happened to her.
