William Clyde Gibson

Victims: 3 convictions in three separate Floyd County cases - 2 death sentences, for Christine Whitis and Stephanie Kirk, and 65 years for Karen Hodella
Years active: October 10, 2002 / March 27, 2012 / April 19, 2012
Location: Floyd County, Indiana, USA
Method: Strangulation - Stabbing with knife
Status: Convicted in three separate cases and sentenced to death on November 26, 2013 for the murder and mutilation of Christine Whitis, seventy-five, a friend of his late mother; to sixty-five years on April 17, 2014 for the 2002 murder of Karen Hodella, forty-four, on a guilty plea; and to death again on August 15, 2014 for the murder of Stephanie Kirk, thirty-five, also on a guilty plea. He had served an earlier sentence for rape and was released on April 5, 1999, three years before the first of the killings, and was on the Indiana Sex and Violent Offender Registry at the time. Both death sentences were affirmed on direct appeal by the Supreme Court of Indiana, in Gibson v. State, 43 N.E.3d 231 (2015) for the Whitis murder and 51 N.E.3d 204 (2016) for the Kirk murder. The Floyd Superior Court denied post-conviction relief in all three cases after a combined evidentiary hearing, and those denials were upheld in October 2019; his appellate counsel had argued that trial lawyers failed to investigate a prior brain injury and that one lawyer had a conflict of interest across the three cases. His appeals continue in the federal courts. Indiana resumed executions in December 2024 after a gap of fifteen years, and the state’s death row has fallen from eight to five since. He is held at the Indiana State Prison in Michigan City.

William Clyde Gibson III killed three women in southern Indiana, was sentenced to death twice in separate trials, and has claimed responsibility for around thirty more killings that no investigation has ever confirmed.

He was born in Raleigh, North Carolina on October 10, 1957, the youngest of four children of a tree-trimming foreman and a Sears cashier, and grew up in New Albany, Indiana after the family moved there when he was two. He said in later interviews that he was never abused or neglected and was if anything spoiled, but that his father was an alcoholic who turned combative when drunk. He had a long criminal record and, by the accounts of those who knew him, an escalating pattern of violence.

Karen Hodella, forty-four, was killed on October 10, 2002 and her body left near the Ohio River. Stephanie Kirk, thirty-five, was invited to his house in March 2012, strangled during a prolonged attack, sexually assaulted after death and buried in his back garden. Christine Whitis, seventy-five, was his late mother's best friend; he killed and mutilated her in April 2012 and his own sister found the body in his garage. He was arrested on April 19, 2012.

The three cases were tried separately. He was sentenced to death for the Whitis murder on November 26, 2013, to sixty-five years for Hodella on April 17, 2014, and to death a second time for Kirk on August 15, 2014. His appeals have argued that trial counsel failed to investigate the effect of a 1991 road accident on his mental state; the Indiana Supreme Court rejected that unanimously and post-conviction relief has been denied throughout.

He is held at Indiana State Prison in Michigan City. Indiana resumed executions in December 2024 after fifteen years, and carried out three in twelve months; by October 2025 the state's death row was down to five men, Gibson among them. His claim to have killed more than thirty people from the age of twenty-five onward has never been substantiated and he has not been charged with any other death.