Bio

Robyn Leroy Parks was born in 1954. Parks had a troubled teenage life. At the age of 17, he was convicted of robbery by force, which marked the beginning of a series of legal troubles for him. After this conviction, he received a five-year suspended sentence. However, this suspension was revoked when he was later convicted of attempted burglary, leading to a prison sentence of three years and seven months.

In the years that followed, Parks continued to commit various crimes. His criminal history included multiple convictions for offenses like robbery, which contributed to a pattern of unlawful behavior. By the time he was 24 years old, he was living in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma.

Parks’ life took a significant turn on August 17, 1977, when he committed a crime that would lead to his arrest and ultimately, execution. He was arrested on September 1, 1977, marking the end of his life as he knew it.

Murder Story

On August 17, 1977, Robyn Leroy Parks shot and killed Abdullah Ibrahim, a gas station attendant in Oklahoma City. Parks was using a stolen credit card when he became afraid that Ibrahim would report him to the police after seeing his license plate number written down on a charge slip.

After the shooting, Parks fled the scene. He was arrested on September 1, 1977, as police tracked him down through the license plate information linked to the credit card. In tape-recorded conversations with a friend, Parks admitted to the murder and revealed where he had hidden the gun.

Parks was convicted of first-degree murder and sentenced to death. His trial had several ups and downs, including an initial overturn of his death sentence by a federal appeals court, which cited improper jury instructions against being influenced by sympathy. However, the U.S. Supreme Court reinstated his death sentence in 1990.

After spending over thirteen years on death row, Robyn Leroy Parks was executed by lethal injection on March 10, 1992. He was 37 years old at the time of his execution.