Summary of Offense: Convicted and sentenced to death for the April 5, 1984 sexual assault, kidnapping and murder by strangulation of Elizabeth Jones.

Elizabeth Jones, 36, lived alone in a house in Clear Lake Shores, Texas, near the IBM facility where she worked as a manager on the NASA shuttle project. At about 7:30 p.m. on September 8, 1987, Jones called her boyfriend Terry Hahn and told him that she was not feeling well and that she planned to go to bed early. Jones was in the midst of remodeling her home, and she told Hahn that a roofer was still there hammering on the roof over her bedroom.

After Jones did not appear for work the next day, some friends went to her house in the evening to check on her. They found the doors locked, Jones's car parked in the driveway, no forced entry, and no one at home. Jones's friends entered the house, found no evidence of foulplay, and reported her missing to police.

Gribble was the roofer. In initial questioning by police he denied any involvement, but following his arrest on September 30th, he confessed to the sexual assault, kidnaping, and murder by strangulation of Jones. He told police he returned to the house several hours after work and raped Jones after she let him in to search for the wallet he claimed to have left behind. He admitted to later driving her to an isolated area and strangling her with the belt of her robe. Gribble led police to her body in a desolate woods area, and Libby's purse was recovered from a nearby creek.

The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals overturned his first conviction in 1988, saying jurors should have received better instructions about defense claims that Gribble suffered mental disorders and was sexually abused as a child. On retrial in 1992, Gribble was again convicted and sentenced to death.

Gribble had previously served less than a year and a half of a five-year sentence on a rape and false imprisonment conviction and was released under mandatory release in May 1985. He was also been indicted in the June 13, 1987 strangulation death of Donna Weis in Galveston County. Gribble confessed to the murder, but was never tried.

Victim:
Elizabeth Jones

Manner of execution:
Lethal injection

Time of Death:
N/A

Last Meal:
None

Final Statement:
"I was wrong what I did," he said in a final statement in which he apologized for the killings. "Just please, find peace." In a handwritten statement read by prison chaplain James Brazzil, Gribble said he had been living with guilt and pain. "Although I have no regrets in my case," he said. "The death penalty is an unnecessary punishment for a society who has other means to protect itself. I go with God."