Oklahoma executed Gilbert Ray Postelle on Thursday morning, putting to death a man who gunned down four innocent people in cold blood nearly 17 years ago because his brain-damaged father believed they caused a motorcycle accident that never happened. Postelle, 35, was pronounced dead at 10:14 a. m.
at the Oklahoma State Penitentiary after receiving a lethal injection. He declined to give any final words.
The execution marked the state’s second this year and the fourth since Oklahoma resumed capital punishment in October 2021 following a seven-year moratorium. Postelle had spent 14 years on death row after a jury convicted him of four counts of first-degree murder for the Memorial Day 2005 massacre that left Donnie Swindle, James Alderson, Terry Smith and Amy Wright dead in a trailer park outside Oklahoma City.
For his last meal, Postelle requested McDonald’s fried chicken nuggets, French fries, chicken sandwiches, a large cola and a caramel frappe. Nothing fancy, just fast food. Prison officials said he cooperated fully with the execution team, showing no emotion as the lethal drugs began flowing into his veins.
The case has haunted Oklahoma for years because of its sheer brutality and senselessness. On May 30, 2005, a van pulled up to the trailer home complex where the four victims were relaxing on the holiday. Postelle, then 18, emerged alongside his brother David Pastore, their father Brad Pastore and another man named Randall Wade Bias.
All four were armed.
The attackers stormed the property in what investigators called a blitz attack. They rounded up Swindle, Alderson, Smith and Wright at gunpoint, forced them outside and ordered them to kneel in the dirt. The victims begged for their lives, asking what they had done wrong.
Postelle answered by raising an AK-47 rifle and firing more than 30 rounds into their bodies.
Two of the victims, Wright and Alderson, managed to get up and run despite being hit. Postelle shot them both in the back. They collapsed in the dirt, still alive but unable to move.
He then walked up to each victim and fired additional rounds at close range to ensure they were dead. The entire attack lasted less than five minutes.
Neighbors heard the gunfire but assumed it was fireworks because of the holiday. When they came outside, they found a massacre. Shell casings littered the ground.
Blood soaked into the dirt. One officer on scene said it looked like a war zone. Donnie Swindle’s body was so riddled with bullets that the funeral had to be closed casket.
His mother never got to see her son one last time.
The motive behind the killings was even more disturbing. Brad Pastore, Postelle’s father, had been in a motorcycle accident that left him with a traumatic brain injury. The injury caused paranoia and violent mood swings.
Brad became convinced that Donnie Swindle had caused the crash, even though there was absolutely no evidence to support that claim. It was a single-vehicle accident.
Brad began telling his sons that Swindle needed to pay. Gilbert Postelle was an 18-year-old methamphetamine addict who had been using the drug daily for days straight. His judgment was destroyed.
When his brain-injured father said they needed to kill Swindle, Postelle agreed. His brother David agreed too. They recruited Bias to help.
The four men armed themselves and drove to the trailer park with the intention of executing everyone they found. In the weeks after the murders, police tracked down the maroon van used in the attack. It was found in Terre Haute, Indiana.
The men inside told detectives everything. They said Gilbert Postelle was the primary shooter.
Bias turned state’s witness in exchange for a reduced sentence. He testified that Postelle made the victims kneel, that he shot them in the back as they tried to run, that he showed no mercy. The jury convicted Postelle in 2008 and sentenced him to death for the murders of Wright and Alderson.
He received life without parole for the murders of Swindle and Smith.
His brother David was sentenced to life without parole. Their father Brad was declared incompetent to stand trial due to the brain injury. He died in 2011 without ever facing justice for his role in planning the massacre.
Bias, because he cooperated, served a reduced sentence.
Postelle’s journey to the execution chamber was prolonged by legal battles over Oklahoma’s lethal injection method. The state halted executions in 2015 after a series of botched procedures. In 2021, after a federal judge ruled Postelle had been removed from the lawsuit because he refused to choose an alternative execution method on religious grounds, Oklahoma set his execution date.
In December 2021, Postelle appeared before the Oklahoma Pardon and Parole Board for a clemency hearing. His lawyer argued that Postelle grew up in an overwhelmingly negative environment and had been under the influence of methamphetamine for days before the killings. Postelle himself told the board, “I do understand that I’m guilty and I accept that.
There’s nothing more that I know to say to you all than I am truly sorry for what I’ve done to all these families.”
But victim impact statements were powerful. Mary Joe Swindle, Donnie Swindle’s mother, testified that she never got to see her son’s body because it was so torn and riddled with bullets. The board voted 4-1 to deny clemency.
Postelle’s final appeals went all the way to the U. S. Supreme Court, which refused to grant a stay.
He made a last-ditch offer to die by firing squad instead of lethal injection, but the courts rejected that as well. There were no more appeals left.
On Thursday morning, the execution went forward without incident. Postelle was strapped to the gurney. The IVs were inserted.
He did not speak. The drugs flowed. At 10:14 a.
m. , he was pronounced dead.
The families of the victims have waited 17 years for this moment. For Mary Joe Swindle, there may never be full closure. The trauma of watching her son’s body destroyed by bullets will never go away.
For the families of James Alderson, Terry Smith and Amy Wright, the loss remains a wound that time has not healed.
Four innocent people died because a paranoid man with a brain injury and his meth-addicted teenage son believed a lie. Donnie Swindle had nothing to do with Brad Pastore’s motorcycle accident. No one had.
The crash was a single-vehicle incident. But Brad convinced himself otherwise, and his son pulled the trigger more than 30 times.
Oklahoma has now executed four inmates since resuming capital punishment in October 2021. Each case has drawn scrutiny, especially after the botched execution of John Grant, who vomited and convulsed for several minutes before dying. But the courts have repeatedly upheld the state’s lethal injection protocol, and Postelle’s execution proceeded without any reported complications.
For Gilbert Postelle, the journey that began with a motorcycle accident ended in an execution chamber. He was 18 when he killed four people. He was 35 when the state killed him.
His last meal was fast food. His last words were silence.
The question of whether justice was served will likely be debated for years. Some argue that a life sentence without parole would have been more appropriate, especially given Postelle’s youth, addiction and the influence of his brain-damaged father. Others point to the absolute brutality of the crimes and say the death penalty was the only fitting punishment.
One thing is certain: four families lost loved ones in a massacre that never should have happened. Two brothers are now imprisoned for life, one of them executed. A father died without ever facing a jury.
And all because a man wanted revenge for an accident that was no one’s fault.
