True Crime Chronicles: Electric chair was the final seat for Latimer County man who killed wife in 1963

In the summer of 1963, Wilburton was a sleepy town of 2,500 souls tucked into the pine-draped hills of Latimer County. Coal mines, once the lifeblood of this southeastern corner,were shuttering fast, leaving families like the Ivys scraping by on hope and hard work.

Wanda June Ivy, 25, was a young mother who stitched dresses for neighbors and sang hymns at the Baptist church. Her husband, James "Jimmy" Ivy, 28, fixed cars at a local garage, his hands stained with grease and his evenings often blurred by whiskey. Their three kids, ages 2, 4, and 6, played in the dusty yard of their small frame house, a place that should have been a sanctuary.

But on July 19, 1963, that home became the scene of a crime that would shake this quiet community to its core kIt was just past 8 p.m. when the summer night turned deadly. The air was thick, heavy with the hum of cicadas and the faint clatter of Wanda washing dishes in the kitchen.

The kids were tucked into their shared bedroom, giggling over a comic book. Jimmy had been at the garage all day, his mood sour after a fight with Wanda over the phone. She’d heard rumors of his affair with a coworker at a McAlester diner, and her quiet strength had turned to fury.

 Neighbors later said they’d heard shouting from the Ivy house, a common sound in a marriage frayed by money troubles and mistrust.

Then came the gunshot.

A single, sharp crack from Jimmy’s .38-caliber revolver split the night. Wanda staggered and fell, a bullet lodged in her chest, blood soaking her apron as she crumpled near the stove. A half-peeled potato rolled across the floor, and the kids froze in their room, too scared to move.

Jimmy didn’t stay. He grabbed his keys, left the gun on the counter, and tore out the back door, his boots crunching gravel as he jumped into his beat-up Ford pickup and sped toward the county line.

A neighbor, drawn by the children’s cries around 9:30 p.m., found Wanda lifeless on the linoleum. The kids huddled together, eyes wide with fear. The neighbor dialed Sheriff Harlan "Bud" Thompson, whose voice crackled over the radio with urgency.

By 10 p.m., deputies swarmed the house, their flashlights cutting through the dark. The scene was grim: no robbery, no forced entry, just a family torn apart. Wanda’s arms bore faint bruises, signs of a struggle before the fatal shot. The revolver, still warm, had Jimmy’s fingerprints all over it.

 In Wilburton, where everyone knew everyone, the suspect was no mystery.

Sheriff Thompson, a grizzled veteran of Latimer’s coal-strike brawls, called in the Oklahoma State Bureau of Investigation (OSBI) by midnight. Agent Tom Johnson, based in nearby McAlester, arrived with a small team, their boots leaving tracks in the red clay outside the Ivy home. In 1963, forensic science was basic...fingerprints, blood types, and ballistics were the best tools available.

 But in a town like Wilburton, where secrets traveled faster than the evening train, old-fashioned police work was just as sharp.

The evidence stacked up quickly. The kids, through halting sobs, told a social worker they heard Daddy yelling before the “big noise.” Neighbors confirmed Jimmy’s truck peeling out, its taillights fading toward Red Oak. A bartender in McAlester said Jimmy had been at his place earlier, storming out after a heated call with Wanda around 6 p.m.

Phone records backed it up detailing a payphone argument that left Jimmy seething. The .38’s single spent casing matched bullets in his toolbox, and blood on his boots, found later in his truck, matched Wanda’s type. Most damning was the tip from Jimmy’s own cousin: He was hiding at a family farm in Haskell County, 20 miles away, nursing a bottle of bootleg whiskey.

By dawn on July 20, deputies surrounded the farm. Jimmy surrendered without a fight, his hands scratched and his eyes hollow. In the OSBI’s McAlester office, he sat across from Agent Johnson, chain-smoking Marlboros.

 After hours of silence, he confessed: Wanda had confronted him about the affair, and in a drunken rage, he grabbed the gun he’d loaded that afternoon. “I didn’t mean to kill her,” he mumbled, but the evidence told a colder story. The motive wasn’t money or madness...just a marriage broken by betrayal, ending in a single, irreversible moment.

Jimmy Ivy was charged with first-degree murder on July 22, 1963, and held in the Latimer County jail, a squat brick building off Wilburton’s main street. The trial, set for October, packed the red-brick courthouse with locals clutching handkerchiefs and whispering about Wanda’s kindness.

 County Attorney Roy Lofton laid out the case: Jimmy planned the act after Wanda threatened to leave, loading the gun hours before. The defense, a young public defender from Tulsa, claimed self-defense, saying Wanda lunged with a kitchen knife. But no knife was found, and Wanda’s gentle reputation made the story hard to swallow.

The medical examiner described the close-range shot, a bullet tearing through Wanda’s lungs. On October 15, after four hours of deliberation, the jury found Jimmy guilty.

Judge Elias Meserve sentenced him to death by electrocution, a rare penalty in Oklahoma, where only a handful faced the chair each decade up to that point. The Wilburton News-Citizen ran a somber headline: “Justice for Wanda: Ivy to Face Death.”Appeals stretched to 1965, arguing jury bias and mishandled evidence, but the Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals upheld the verdict.

On March 12, 1966, Jimmy was executed at the Oklahoma State Penitentiary in McAlester, just 10 miles from the town he’d torn apart. Strapped to the electric chair, he whispered, “Tell the kids I’m sorry.”

 He was 29.

 Wanda’s children, raised by her sister in Red Oak, carried the weight of that night into adulthood; the eldest son later joined the sheriff’s office, determined to stop families from breaking like his own.

Wanda Ivy’s murder wasn’t the flashiest crime in Oklahoma’s history...no serial killers or oil-baron conspiracies like the Osage murders. But in Latimer County, it cut deep. The case pushed the county to adopt a 1965 ordinance requiring deputies to report domestic assaults, a small step toward protecting women in a region where coal-town machismo often silenced abuse.

The story lingers in Wilburton’s memory, preserved in yellowed clippings at the Lutie Coal Miners Museum, alongside tales of mine collapses and bootlegger shootouts.

Latimer County remained quiet after 1963, its crime rate low--fewer than five homicides per decade, per OSBI records. But Wanda’s death was a reminder of the violence that could erupt behind closed doors, even in a town where neighbors shared Sunday potlucks.

 Today, the Ivy house is gone, replaced by a vacant lot where kids ride bikes, unaware of the tragedy that unfolded there. For those who remember, Wanda’s name is a whisper of loss—and a call to keep fighting for justice in the hills of Latimer County.