Oklahoma

Survivors of deadly Oklahoma home invasion to attend execution: ‘You shattered lives’

Published

1 year ago

March 19, 2025

Survivors of deadly Oklahoma home invasion to attend execution: ‘You shattered lives’

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_.

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Oklahoma

Pistons likely to sit several starters, including Jalen Duren, against Oklahoma City

Published

5 hours ago

March 29, 2026

Press Room

Omari Sankofa II: Pistons injury report vs Thunder DOUBTFUL: Jalen Duren (right knee injury management), Tobias Harris (left hip IM), Duncan Robinson (right hip IM) QUESTIONABLE: Ausar Thompson (right ankle IM) OUT: Cade Cunningham, Isaiah Stewart

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Oklahoma

Oklahoma City retail boom creates sharp divide between centers

Published

17 hours ago

March 29, 2026

Press Room

Oklahoma City retail boom creates sharp divide between centers

A growing divide exists between new, successful shopping centers and older, stagnating properties from the 1970s.
Newer centers with national tenants are commanding record-high rents, while older centers struggle with vacancies.
Experts suggest that older retail centers must be torn down or significantly reimagined to remain competitive.

Contrary to popular belief, the internet did not kill retail and Oklahoma City is seeing an influx of new construction.

But a new retail survey shows a growing divide emerging between the success of newer shopping destinations and fading fortunes of those built in the age of disco balls and leisure suits.

Jim Parrack, who leads the retail division at Price Edwards, said the Oklahoma City metro at first glance is doing well compared to the national market in which rental rates are going up and new development is slowing amidst higher construction costs and rising economic uncertainty.

Large new retail properties in Oklahoma City include OAK, the mixed-use upscale development at Northwest Expressway and Pennsylvania Avenue, Grove Marketplace at NW 178 and Portland Avenue, and Rose Creek Plaza at NW 164 and May Avenue.

And a next-generation prototype Walmart Supercenter, meanwhile, is being built as part of Deercrest Marketplace at the corner of John Kilpatrick Turnpike and Rockwell Avenue. More announced retailers are moving forward in northwest Oklahoma City, including a Scheels store and a Crest Foods.

Legacy at Covell in Edmond is set to include some of the biggest names in retail and dining, including Whole Foods and a Ruth’s Chris Steakhouse. And multiple new developments continue in Norman, including construction of a large development anchored by a Target store.

“Retail in general is doing better than people tend to think,” Parrack told The Oklahoman. “There is a lot of negative news nationally. But even nationally, retail is doing better than people often give credit for mainly because people are still spending money.”

Nationally, he said, not a lot of retail construction is being seen, which has helped occupancy rates and landlords are able to raise rents and are “doing pretty well.”

“There has developed, over the past couple of years, what I would call good centers and then there are centers that have fallen off pace. The good centers are those that are newer and have mostly national tenants.”

Older locations seeing rent stagnating

Parrack identified Oklahoma City’s two power retail corridors where much of the growth is happening as those at Northwest Expressway and Pennsylvania Avenue, and along the Memorial Road corridor between Portland and Western avenues, which Parrack said has the highest concentration of retail in the city.

“The other locations are those that are older, maybe aren’t configured right and have more mom-and-pop tenants,” Parrack said. “The surprising part to me is the gap between the two has widened significantly. We’re seeing certain centers, like Classen Curve, get $50 to $60 a foot in rent. There are some small strip shopping centers in that same range. And we haven’t seen those kinds of rents here ever.”

Older centers, meanwhile, are seeing rents stagnating between $12 and $14 a foot.

“The discrepancy is very noticeable,” Parrack said. “A lot of the older centers in the ‘70s are in that older tier. Sometimes the markets have grown away from them. But sometimes the centers just get old; the ceilings are low and maybe their spaces are too deep. Something is wrong with them.”

The tenant mix also weighs in, Parrack said, with centers with mostly local retailers unable to compete with the newer, national-tenant anchored properties.

“The rents haven’t moved, so the landlords have a hard time paying for tenant improvements and the local tenants don’t have as much quality credit. It’s a cumulation of events that are holding those centers down.”

One example of a struggling retail center is French Market Mall, which the report shows was over 50% vacant at the end of 2025 even though it is on a high-traffic intersection of NW 63 and May Avenue.

The property started out in the 1970s as an enclosed mall adjoining a Woolco, Furr’s Cafeteria, Trust House Jewelers, an IGA grocery, a Hallmark shop and a drugstore.

The mall portion was later shut down and replaced with a Burlington store.

“At some point, a number of these older centers just need to be repurposed, whether that means torn down for a new center, or re-imagined, an example being Mayfair,” Parrack said. “Half of that center has been torn down and part was remodeled.”

Mayfair Village, built in 1948, was one of the city’s earliest suburban shopping centers. The retail hub was built along both sides of May Avenue between NW 47 and NW 48. Some pieces of the shopping center were torn down and replaced with new buildings, notably Mayfair Market, which made way for a CVS, and a nearby shopping strip that was torn down to make way for an Aldi grocery store.

An extensive rebuilding of the shopping center followed its 2020 purchase by Caleb Hill, Nick Preftakes and Mark Ruffin. They renovated some of the buildings and then cleared other sections that were then redeveloped as fast food restaurants and a gas station.

“More centers are going to have to be redone like that,” Parrack said.

Jason Little and Charles Lewis with SHOP Companies recently brokered a $17 million sale of four buildings that make up the heart of the reimagined Mayfair to a real estate investment arm of Humphreys Companies. He said the shopping center has just one vacancy — a Starbucks that closed as part of a national shutdown of some of its locations — and that lease continues.

When that lease transitions to a new tenant, Little said he expects the former Starbucks will lease for close to $50 a foot. He credits that price expectation to the efforts undertaken by Hill and Preftakes.

“You’re talking about an asset that when they acquired it had single digit rents,” Little said. “By bringing new construction and historic architecture together, they’ve been able to create something marketable.”

In other areas of town, Parrack said west Oklahoma City, more recently, has had the lowest vacancy rate, which he sees as a reflection of new housing in the area especially near Yukon and Mustang. He said Moore and Norman continue to thrive with little old retail and ongoing construction of new retail.

Parrack said the metro’s three malls are performing at different levels.

“Penn Square continues to do the best sales of any of the local malls. Simon owns it and Simons knows what they’re doing. But even at Penn Square there are some temporary tenants that Simon controls. And I think they realize that in competition with OAK they are needing to invest some money in the mall.”

Quail Springs Mall, meanwhile, is a step down in sales, Parrack said.

Sooner Fashion Mall in Norman is the smallest of the three, and like other smaller malls, is struggling.

“It shows with them in that they have more vacancy than the other two,” Parrack said. “It doesn’t help that they have a Sears that has been closed for all these years.”

Parrack does not expect the city to see another dying mall like Crossroads or Heritage Park anytime soon.

“The thing with malls is even when they die, they take forever to die,” Parrack said. “It’s kind of a gradual thing. Their business slacks off. They lose a couple of tenants. But all bigger retail centers have these tenants with co-tenancy clauses that if certain tenants leave or the occupancy goes below a certain level, then tenants can pay half rent or a percentage rent.”

Newer mixed-use developments like OAK, Chisholm Creek and The Half are being well received by the market, though Parrack notes The Half, leaning more toward entertainment than retail with a mix of offices and apartments, is less cohesive than the other two destinations.

“It’s hard to walk from one deal to another at The Half,” Parrack said. “It’s more of a destination with each of the tenants there. But it is in a great location. The people that are there do well. OAK is something we’ve never had before, and it’s the closest thing we have to Utica Square in Tulsa.”

The demise of brick-and-mortar retail prompted by Amazon is greatly exaggerated, Parrack said.

“The last holiday sales period saw 75% of sales being at brick-and-mortar stores,” Parrack said. “That percentage for holiday sales has held steady for a while and I think most of these retailers have figured out the optimal way for them to continue.”

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