Inmate Name: Delpha Spunaugle
Charge: Capital Murder, Solicitation to Commit Murder, Conspiracy to Commit Murder
Sentence: Death Row changed to Life Without Parole
Prison: Mabel Bassett Correctional Center

Delpha grew up in Southeastern Oklahoma as the youngest of four sisters. As the baby of the family, and by her own admission, she was spoiled by her parents and sisters. By all accounts, she had a normal childhood. She participated in the 4H Club, was an A student and was very popular in school. After graduating high school as valedictorian of her class, she enrolled in cosmetology school, got her beautician?s license and married her high school sweetheart. But they didn?t last. She married again, had her son Ron but then divorced her second husband. She had her daughter Jenny with husband number three, but again, the marriage ended in divorce. According to Delpha and her family, she was embarrassed that all her marriages had been failures.

When she met and married Dennis Spunaugle in 1986, she was determined to make this marriage work. She and Dennis opened up a silk-screening business and in 1988 when her beloved father passed away, Delpha claims that?s when the trouble in her marriage began. Delpha claims Dennis would get drunk and hit her and says he was having an affair with a barmaid.

According to the police, rather than file for divorce, Delpha hatched a plan to murder Dennis. She made two attempts to solicit help in murdering her husband ? one of the men was the husband of Jean Holycross, the woman Dennis had allegedly taken as his mistress. When her attempts were rebuffed, she enlisted the help of a part-time employee in the silk-screening business, Edwin Woodward who occasionally stayed in the Spunaugle?s motor home parked outside their house.

According to the police, on the night of August 15, 1993, Woodward was in the motor home waiting for Delpha to tell him to enter the Spunaugle house. Dennis had come home drunk and had fallen asleep. Police say Delpha got Woodward, and together the two of them proceeded to kill Dennis. First, Woodward hit the sleeping Dennis with a baseball bat but Dennis didn?t die. Instead, he got up out of bed and a fight began between Dennis and Woodward. Four hours later, after being stabbed and strangled with a rope, Dennis finally died. Delpha denies any involvement in the killing and claims she was an innocent, terrified bystander.

She does, however admit being part of dumping the body on a dirt road where police would find it five days later, badly decomposed. At the dumping site, police found a medallion belonging to Woodward. After being interrogated by the police, Woodward confessed and fingered Delpha as the mastermind of the murder as well as his accomplice. Delpha was arrested on charges of Capital Murder, Solicitation to Commit Murder and Conspiracy to Commit Murder and was given the death penalty. Woodward was given a life sentence. Two years later, Delpha was offered the opportunity to have a trial in which she would be able to offer evidence as to how she was under duress from Woodward during the crime. She claims that her attorney advised her not to stand trial and she pleaded guilty to life without parole. She is presently serving her sentence at the Mabel Basset Correctional Center. She continues to have a good relationship with her children and her family.