Dreu Kopf was at home with her young daughters and dear friend Amber Matthews when Wendell Grissom barged in and began shooting. Now Kopf and the girls, who are now grown, will watch him die.
Amber Matthews and Dreu Kopf only knew each other for two years but they had already become inseparable friends. Their lives then became forever intertwined when one of them was killed in a home invasion murder that the other survived.
“I would give anything to be able to call her at work again,” Kopf said in a victim impact statement obtained by USA TODAY. “I had a special ringtone for her and I miss hearing it.”
On Nov. 3, 2005, Wendell Arden Grissom murdered Matthews and seriously wounded Kopf inside her home in Watonga, Oklahoma. He didn’t know either women and chose the home seemingly at random.
Now Grissom is set to be executed by lethal injection in Oklahoma on Thursday, marking the first execution in the state in 2025 and the ninth in the U.S.
As his execution approaches, USA TODAY is looking back at the crime, who Matthews was and how Kopf is feeling about the case 20 years later.
What happened to Amber Matthews?
On Nov. 3, 2005, Grissom and a homeless hitchhiker he had picked up named Jessie Johns were planning to burglarize homes when they targeted Kopf’s house near Watonga, 70 miles northwest of Oklahoma City.
Kopf was home with her two daughters and Matthews when Grissom came knocking. Initially, he asked Kopf if her husband was home but eventually shot his way in, laughing as he fired, according to court records.
Kopf, who had been shot in the wrist, jumped on Grissom while Matthews ran with Kopf’s 5-week-old daughter into a room where Kopf’s 19-month-old daughter was sleeping.
“Dreu begged Grissom to stop,” court records say. She offered him “anything he wanted” to spare their lives but Kopf said in court records that “he was just laughing and he just kept shooting and shooting and laughing.”
Grissom shot Kopf in the head and hip. Hearing the shooting from inside the bedroom with the girls, Matthews was “overcome with terror” and “vomited all over her jeans and on the floor,” court records say.
Kopf managed to steal Grissom’s truck and escape, hoping he would follow her. On the way out, she heard Matthews scream, “Please don’t shoot me,” before Grissom shot her in the back of the head and then the forehead as she held one of the girls. Matthews died.
Kopf managed to flag down help and survived after being treated at a hospital. Police said Grissom and Johns fled Kopf’s home using her husband’s four-wheeler. Court records say Grissom and Johns were arrested in a nearby café after local citizens reported seeing the men to police.
‘I was crazy, I was scared’
Speaking to USA TODAY ahead of Grissom’s execution, Kopf recounted a long road to recovery that changed the trajectory of her and her family’s lives.
“I was scared all of the time. My husband wouldn’t leave my side,” Kopf said. “I lived in fear 24/7.”
Rylee Kopf, who was just 17 months old when Grissom invaded her home, recalled the struggles her mother endured in the years following the shooting.
“My mom would probably, with no exaggeration, call my dad 100 times a day, asking when he’s going to be home and if he couldn’t give her an answer she would call back,” she said. “She didn’t want to be home alone.”
Other members of Kopf’s family describe her as someone who was “paralyzed by fear” as she recovered from the shooting.
Despite the lasting nightmares and injuries, Kopf said that she has found a way to forgive Grissom. “I have to forgive this guy or Grissom is going to ride on my shoulder the rest of my life and control the rest of my life,” she said.
With Grissom’s execution this week, Kopf said it’s the end of a long process.
“Amber is always going to be 6 feet under and I will always be the girl that got shot. I’m probably going to always be nervous and scared,” Kopf said. “It’s taken 20 years of my life that I’ve had to deal with him. It’s a rollercoaster.”
She plans to witness Grissom’s execution along with her now-grown daughters, who are 19 and 20.
She hopes Grissom’s death will mark the moment that she “will never think of him again.”
‘My best friend’ and a ‘pretty angel’
Matthews’ father, Garry Matthews, described his daughter as the “apple of my eye, a cute blond blue-eyed little bundle of joy.”
“She was not only my daughter, she was my best friend. In and out of marriages, she was always there for me,” he said during Grissom’s 2008 trial. “The last restaurant we ate in, I can’t go back. Everything that reminds me of her brings back the pain.”
Although USA TODAY was not able to speak with members of Matthews’ family for this story, court records obtained show a family that has been devastated.
Matthews aunt, Rita Russell, told the Oklahoma Pardon and Parole Board last month that her niece was a “pretty angel.”
“We never got to see her get married or have kids. She loved kids,” she said, then addressed Grissom. “You shattered our lives that day … There’s not a day that does by that I don’t miss her beautiful smile.”
The ripple effects continue to haunt the entire Matthews family, they told the parole board.
“My holidays are not the same. My son no longer has a big sister,” Garry Matthews said in court. “I’m depressed. I miss my daughter so much and I want her back and can’t have her. I can’t even have her for one more day to say goodbye.”
Fernando Cervantes Jr. is a trending news reporter for USA TODAY. Reach him at fernando.cervantes@gannett.com and follow him on X @fern_cerv_.
