Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast - A 76 Year Old Murderer? - The Ellen Gillard Story

Episode Date: September 3, 2025

Ellen Gilland, a 76-year-old Florida woman shot her terminally ill husband, Jerry Gilland, in his Daytona Beach hospital room in January 2023- a killing she claimed was part of a mutual pact after his suffering became unbearable.

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My whole world is falling apart right now. It's chaos. Watch the Hulu original series. The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives. Now streaming on Hulu and Hulu on Disney Plus for Bumno subscribers. Terms apply. This elderly woman is about to unalive her husband, and I have a feeling you're going to be okay with it. Now the woman's name is Ellen, and Ellen is 76 years old, living in Florida, but one day in 2022,

she runs into a huge problem. Her husband gets really sick, like deathbed sick. Now her husband is this guy, Jerry, and him getting sick is devastating for Ellen. I mean, she loves Jerry a lot. They're a lot like Ellie and Carl from that Pixar movie Up. You know, like they met when they were kids, they went to middle school and high school together. And eventually, later in their teens, they started dating and they fell in love and they ended up getting married. And they stay married for 53 years.

They've gone through everything together. But now it's all starting to fall apart because he's sick. And Ellen will do anything to save him. And she admits him into the intensive care unit at the hospital. She stays with him by his bed, 14 hours a day, only leaving to get food or to go sleep at night. She's dedicating her life to saving him. But then she notices that the nurses and doctors don't seem to be treating him well. Like one time two nurses are moving Jerry on the bed and they bump his head on the headboard.

And Ellen's like, be careful. And one of the nurses gives her attitude and says, I guess I won't come into this room anymore. And Ellen doesn't want them to stop showing up. So she has to beg these nurses saying, If anything happens to Jerry while I'm gone during the night, please call me. And the nurses are like, all right. But then the next day, when Ellen comes in, she sees that the nurses had strapped Jerry to the bed. Apparently he had some incident during the night.

So they strapped him down. Then they just left him there alone. And so Ellen, she gets super pissed off. And she starts arguing with them. Like, why didn't you call me like I asked? I would have come to help him. and the nurses are like, it's not our job to call you. And so Ellen is fed up with this hospital staff.

She has had enough. So she calls a private nursing company and hires a paid nurse to come watch Jerry during the night while Ellen is asleep. So this should help. However, a few weeks later, Ellen finds that the nurse she hired to watch Jerry during the night is literally sleeping on the job. And so Ellen argues with the hospital nurses again, like, why didn't you tell me the paid nurse was sleeping while she was supposed to be watching my husband. And these nurses are like, once again, it's not our job. And so at this point, Ellen doesn't know what to do. She can't get the help for Jerry that she needs. Meanwhile, Jerry's condition just keeps getting worse. He's getting

sicker and sicker. And at this point, he can barely eat. He can barely speak. And then one day, the worst thing happens. Jerry finally breaks the news to Ellen. He tells her, I'm not making it out of the hospital. And then he tells her, I just want the suffering to end. And then he looks at Ellen and he asks her, will you please end it for me? And of course, poor Ellen, she doesn't know what to do. She can't unalive Jerry.

Then he'll be gone and she'll go to prison. So Ellen and Jerry spend weeks discussing it. And finally, they come up with a plan. After living together for 53 years, they decide that they're going to die together. And they agree that she is going to use their pistol to unalive him and then herself, which is just heavy. And so eventually the big day comes. The day they talked about, the day they planned for, their last day on this earth.

And Ellen shows up to the hospital like she always does, but this time she's got Jerry's old pistol. She snuck it in. So she walks into Jerry's room, she sits down, she shows it to him, and she asks him, are you sure? And Jerry, he can barely speak, but he indicates that, yes, he is sure. So then, Ellen points it at him and she pulls the trigger. But of course, it's not over because she now has to do herself. Meanwhile, there's a nurse nearby, and he hears this gunshot and he's like, what the What f*** was that? And he runs into Jerry's room and he can see what happened. And Ellen is still there and she's still holding the pistol and she points it at him and

she's like, get out of here. Leave me alone. And the nurse is like, oh shit. Because he thinks she's going to shoot him. So he runs out of the room and he yells, there's a shooter. And so of course, everyone freaks out. It's complete chaos now. People are running away.

Patients and staff are running around trying to evacuate the whole floor. The hospital staff panics. Boom, the whole place goes on lockdown. And so pretty quickly, the police show up, and they bust into the hospital, and they go up to Jerry's room, and there they find Ellen. And she's still sitting down, she's holding the pistol with one hand, and she's holding Jerry's hand with the other. And she appears to be hesitating, because she's trying to decide what she's going to do. She told Jerry that they would die together. However, doing this to herself is much harder than she initially thought.

So she needs a minute. And so she points that pistol at the door so that no one will come in the room while she makes her decision. But police, they don't have any context for any of this. All they see is a woman pointing a pew-poo at them who had just shot and killed a man and who had also threatened a nurse. And they feel like they need to use whatever means necessary to end what they see. see as a threat. And so now, 76-year-old Ellen is officially in a standoff with police. Police Department. Drop the gun. Drop the gun right now.

Drop the gun. Drop the gun. Man, hold on. You got to go down. Tell me what's going on. Tell me what we don't, I don't want to hurt you. We don't want to hurt you. Tell me what's going on. And a few hours pass, and they're still in this standoff. And by this point, Ellen has finally made her decision. She's gonna unalive herself.

And so she goes to do it and suddenly, boom, a flash bang goes off, which is like a grenade that just creates a flash. And then pow, officers bust into the room. And Ellen is disoriented by the flashbang and blam, she accidentally shoots the pistol and the bullet nearly hits an officer missing by like an inch. And so officers are like, oh shit, she's shooting at us! And they start shooting back at her and they nearly hit her. So then one officer,

yells out, please, ma'am, I have young children. And Ellen's like, why the hell do I care? Why are you telling me about your children? And that is when she finally realizes that police think she's is a threat to them. And Ellen never wanted to hurt anyone in all this. And so she drops the pistol to the floor and she raises her hands and she surrenders. And so, bam, police arrest her. Here they are wheeling her out of the hospital with her hands all zip tie. Also, here's her mugshot. And so here's where everything gets complicated, as if it wasn't complicated before. Even though Jerry wanted to die and he asked to be shot, Ellen gets charged with first-degree

murder for shooting him. And they're trying to throw her in prison for life. And so she goes to trial for all this. And here in the courtroom, you can actually see how old and non-threatening she looks. And so in court, she explains that she was just fulfilling her. her husband's dying wish, and the judge seems to sympathize with her. But you know, you can't be shooting a pistol in a hospital, like pointing it at the staff and stuff. And so, after all that, Ellen gets sentenced to one year in prison.