The State of Oklahoma is getting set to execute Raymond Johnson for a double murder that took place in 2007
According to court documents Raymond Johnson would beat his girlfriend Brooke Whitaker with a hammer before setting the house on fire. Brooke Whitaker and her seven month old daughter would die in the fire
Raymond Johnson would be arrested, convicted and sentenced to death
Oklahoma executed two men in 2025
Update – Raymond Johnson was executed on April 14 2026
Raymond Johnson Execution News
The Oklahoma Pardon and Parole Board has unanimously rejected a Tulsa murderer’s longshot bid for clemency.
Raymond Eugene Johnson, 52, is set to be executed May 14 for killing his ex-girlfriend and her baby daughter in Tulsa in 2007.
He struck Brooke Whitaker, 24, repeatedly with a hammer inside her house on June 23, 2007, doused her with gasoline and set her on fire. He confessed to police that he told her she deserved to die.
She died at a hospital from the beating and smoke inhalation after firefighters found her inside the house. The baby, Kya Whitaker, died inside the house from the flames and heat of the fire. Kya was 7 months old.
The Pardon and Parole Board voted 5-0 on Wednesday, April 8, to deny clemency despite his claims that he is a changed man.
“There is no excuse for my actions,” he said in a lengthy statement via video from the Oklahoma State Penitentiary in McAlester where the execution will take place.
“Am I perfect? Absolutely not,” he said. “Am I flawed? Yes. Have I changed and evolved? Yes. Am I ever evolving? Yes. My crime doesn’t define who I am. That defines a moment I deeply regret.
“I’m asking for forgiveness. See my remorse not just as words, but actions as well. Allow me the chance to save more lives, stop more violence, and lead more men down the path of redemption as well.”
Raymond Johnson wanted the board to recommend to Gov. Kevin Stitt that his death sentence be commuted to life in prison without the possibility of parole.In Oklahoma, the governor can only intervene if the board recommends clemency. The 5-0 denial means Stitt can’t even consider a commutation.
Stitt has granted clemency only twice, in 2021 to Julius Jones and last November to Tremane Wood.
Attorney General Gentner Drummond commended the board for its decision.
“Raymond Johnson is a cruel murderer who inflicted unimaginable pain and suffering on his victims,” Drummond said. “His heinous actions shattered a family and forced three young children to grow up without their mother or baby sister. There will finally be justice for Brooke and Kya when the death sentence is carried out on May 14.”
The Oklahoma Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty said the board made a bad decision.
“A small state of 4.4 million people — Oklahoma has the highest execution rate in the country. The decision of the Pardon and Parole Board today reaffirms that Oklahoma will remain an outlier, a seriously mortifying distinction for the state and the people of Oklahoma,” the coalition chair, Elizabeth Overman, said.
Johnson’s request was considered a longshot for a number of reasons, including that he had killed before.
He pleaded guilty to manslaughter for fatally shooting Clarence Ray Oliver, 26, in far southeast Oklahoma City on Sept. 11, 1995.
In an interview with police after the shooting, he admitted to being a con artist. State attorneys played an excerpt from the recorded interview at the clemency hearing for the board.
Oklahoma death row: Murderer Raymond Eugene Johnson denied clemency
Raymond Johnson Execution
Oklahoma has executed a man who was convicted of killing his ex-girlfriend and her 7-month-old daughter nearly 20 years ago.
Raymond Johnson, 52, was pronounced dead at 10:12 a.m. Thursday following a three-drug injection at the Oklahoma State Penitentiary in McAlester, prison officials said.
He was sentenced to death for killing 24-year-old Brooke Whitaker and her 7-month-old daughter, Kya, in June 2007.
“To Brooke and Kya and your family, I want to apologize for my actions and the pain I caused you,” Johnson said while strapped to a gurney inside the death chamber. “I hope people can speak your names without my name attached to it. I hurt you. One day, I hope you can forgive me.”
Johnson’s spiritual advisor, Kurt Borgmann, read Scripture in the chamber during the execution, which lasted about 11 minutes. A tear rolled out of Johnson’s left eye as Borgmann began to speak. A doctor entered the room and declared Johnson unconscious about six minutes after the first drugs began to flow.
Oklahoma uses the sedative midazolam, followed by vecuronium bromide to halt breathing and potassium chloride to stop the heart.
Angie Short, one of Whitaker’s aunt, criticized the delays in an execution originally scheduled for May 2024, saying Whitaker’s mom died about five months after that.
“Because of the delays, my sister didn’t get to witness justice,” Short said. “This couldn’t bring them back. But we’ll no longer have to see his face on TV. He’s no longer associated with Brooke and Kya. Now I think we can finally begin to heal after 20 years.”
Prosecutors said Johnson and Whitaker had been arguing at her home in Tulsa before he repeatedly hit her over the head with a metal claw hammer. Whitaker’s skull was fractured and she had more than 20 lacerations on her face and scalp. But she was still conscious and begged Johnson to spare her and Kya, who was sleeping in a bedroom, prosecutors said in documents prepared for Johnson’s clemency hearing in April.
“She begged him to call 911. She begged him to let her mom come get baby Kya. She begged him to think of her children,” the Oklahoma Attorney General’s Office said. Whitaker had three other children.
Johnson retrieved a gas can from a tool shed in the backyard, doused Whitaker and the house with gasoline, lit a dish towel on fire, threw it at Whitaker and left, the attorney general’s office said. Whitaker died from head injuries and smoke inhalation while her daughter died from severe burns.
“I pray that Brooke’s and Kya’s family find some measure of peace today after enduring unimaginable pain and grief for nearly two decades,” Oklahoma Attorney General Gentner Drummond said in a statement.
Johnson’s attorneys did not file a last-minute appeal with the U.S. Supreme Court to stop his execution. His attorneys unsuccessfully argued in earlier appeals that Johnson’s arrest was illegal, police coerced his confession from him and that his trial lawyer conceded his guilt in Whitaker’s death without his permission.
In April, Oklahoma’s five-member Pardon and Parole Board voted unanimously to deny Johnson clemency. During that clemency hearing, Johnson apologized to the victims’ family and asked for forgiveness, saying he was a changed person.
“I apologize. No excuses, no justifications, a sincere apology. And to know that it’s sincere, look at my actions. Look at my life. Look how I’ve changed. I’m living a remorseful life. I’m living it,” Johnson said in an interview with Death Penalty Action, a national anti-death penalty group.
Whitaker’s family members asked for the lethal injection to proceed.
“Executing him will not give me my mom or sister back, it will not take away almost 20 years of pain. What it will do is finally stop him from continuing to hurt us,” Logan Kleck, Whitaker’s oldest daughter, said in a letter to the board. Kleck did not witness the execution.
In addition to his first-degree murder conviction, Johnson also served nine years of a 20-year sentence after being convicted of manslaughter in 1996.
Johnson was the second person put to death this year in Oklahoma and the 11th in the country.
Oklahoma executes a man convicted of killing his ex-girlfriend and her 7-month-old daughter
