On August 29, 1988, Robin Kelley lost her two best friends in the most horrific, tragic manner imaginable when her two siblings were brutally murdered. At the young age of 24, Robin went from being the middle child to her parents' only living child after her older brother, Mark Kelley (25) and her younger sister, Kara Kelley Voss (20) were brutally murdered at the Kelley family's Golden Nugget Pawn Shop in Houston, Texas. Leo Jenkins and his accomplice, Eugene Hart, were arrested for the murder of Robin's siblings in the course of their robbery of the pawn shop . Hart was given a life sentence, yet Leo Jenkins was executed eight years later after he turned down his appeals and "volunteered" to be executed on February 10, 1996.
The execution of Leo Jenkins in Texas in 1996 received a great deal of media attention because it was the first time since Texas reinstated the death penalty in 1982 that the loved ones of murder victims were permitted to witness an execution in Texas. The video link above goes to a documentary that was produced after the execution occurred. The documentary provides more details of the murder of the Kelley siblings and includes interviews with Robin Kelley and her parents about their plans to witness the execution and their feelings about their witnessing experience after the execution.
On February 28, 2023 I met with Robin Kelley in Arizona to interview her about her experience of witnessing the execution of the man who killed her brother and sister. She shared with me that her grief-stricken parents had died years earlier, when they were much too young, having had their lives cut short, due in large part to the pain of their tragic loss. Robin shared with me the extreme pain that she has endured over the many years that have passed since the murder of her siblings, as well as the numerous secondary losses that she suffered as a result of the murder (not the least of which was the subsequent deaths of her parents). Click on the link below to read a story published by the New York Times about the execution of Leo Jenkins, featuring the reaction of the Kelley family to witnessing his execution.
New York Times article: Texas Executes a Killer of Two as the Victims' Family Watches