In 2005, he had participated in a murderous raid with his father, his brother and a fourth man. Their goal was to “revenge” the father, seriously injured in a motorcycle accident.
They had gone to the home of the man they were wrongly holding responsible for the accident and fired about 60 shots. Gilbert Postelle himself shot dead two people trying to escape.
In total, their expedition had caused four deaths.
The father, who had significant mental disorders, was found criminally irresponsible in 2006 and has since died. The brother was sentenced to life imprisonment and the fourth man to six years in prison after cooperating with investigators.
Considered one of the driving forces behind the crime, Gilbert Postelle was sentenced to capital punishment.
Pardon request denied
After exhausting all of his appeals, he asked the Oklahoma Office of Pardons to recommend that the governor commute his sentence.
“I regret the pain I have caused,” he said during a December hearing before this advisory body. But “I am no longer the 19-year-old boy that I was”.
He assured that he had no clear memory of the day of the crime. “I can’t even tell you how the decision to kill these people was made. “I understand that I am guilty and I accept it. My life back then was full of chaos and drugs. He explained that he grew up in a family of drug addicts, and had used drugs himself since he was 13 years old. His father was “everything to him, despite his faults”.
He did not convince the members of the panel and should therefore be the third prisoner executed in 2022 in the United States and the second in Oklahoma.
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