Gaye Keeler, a 57-year-old white woman, was a longtime Blanchard, Oklahoma resident who co-owned Gator’s Deli, a small convenience store and gas station on Highway 62, with her estranged husband, Larry Keeler. On August 6, 2014, what had once been a shared dream of running a local business together became the backdrop to a deadly act of violence.
For decades, Gaye and Larry had been married, raised two sons, and shared grandchildren, becoming well known in their community as familiar faces behind the counter of their store. By the summer of 2014, however, their relationship had deteriorated into a bitter divorce, with disputes over money and allegations of serious financial wrongdoing casting a shadow over their former partnership.
That Wednesday morning, just before 10 a.m., customers filtered in and out of Gator’s Deli as they always did, unaware that the tension between the store’s co-owners was about to erupt in front of them. Witnesses later told investigators they heard Gaye screaming from her office in the back of the store. Moments earlier, Larry had walked into the business they still owned together and gone straight toward her. According to an employee’s account in a probable cause affidavit, Gaye had her back to him when he entered, and he opened fire, shooting her and her dog repeatedly until the screaming stopped. The shooting unfolded in front of several stunned onlookers, and the dog—Buck, an Australian shepherd who was often at the store with her—was killed alongside her.
The violence did not come out of nowhere. In the months leading up to her death, the couple’s divorce proceedings had become increasingly contentious. Court records later referenced in news reports described hundreds of pages of filings, with Larry claiming that Gaye had a serious gambling problem and had drained large amounts of money from their savings, including tens of thousands of dollars from a shared account. In testimony related to the divorce, one of their sons recalled his mother acknowledging that she had spent a large sum—hundreds of thousands of dollars—and expressing frustration that others could not move past it. Financial strain and resentment appeared to fuel Larry’s anger, and, according to his own statements to a judge, he believed decades of their savings had vanished.
Gaye had tried to shield herself as the situation escalated. She obtained a protective order that remained in place for more than a year, telling authorities that Larry was stalking her, tracking her with GPS, and had threatened to kill her, even describing to her what a “bullet to the head” would look like. The order barred him from coming into Gator’s Deli, effectively turning the store into one of the few spaces where she felt she might be safe. But the order expired roughly two weeks before the shooting, and friends later said she ran into difficulty renewing it with local police. A close friend recounted that just a week before her death, Larry allegedly tried to run her off the road; when she went to the Blanchard Police Department for help, she was reportedly told there was nothing they could do. With the expiration of the protective order and the divorce still dragging on, Gaye remained exposed to the very person she had described as a threat to her life.
After the shots rang out inside the store that August morning, Larry left the scene and returned to the home the couple had once shared. Detectives, following up quickly on witness accounts and their knowledge of the couple’s history, went to the residence and arrested him without incident a short time later. Investigators later reported that Larry told them he had been thinking about killing Gaye for several months and claimed he had attempted to take his own life after the shooting but said the gun would not fire. Handwritten notes addressed to their two sons were found, laying out instructions about what property should be sold and what should be done with their remains, details that pointed to planning rather than a spontaneous act. In the immediate aftermath, a judge denied him bond, leaving him jailed while the case moved toward trial. The Oklahoma State Bureau of Investigation took the lead role in the case, working with local authorities as the community reeled from the loss of a woman many described as friendly, smiling, and kind to everyone who walked through the doors of Gator’s Deli.
The legal process stretched on for more than two years. Ultimately, a jury heard the evidence of the long, troubled marital history, Gaye’s attempts to obtain protection, the financial disputes, and Larry’s own statements about planning the killing. In early March 2017, after a trial that began on February 28, Larry Keeler was found guilty of first-degree murder for shooting and killing his estranged wife inside their business, as well as guilty of animal cruelty for killing her dog. He was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole for the murder and ordered to pay a $5,000 fine for the animal cruelty charge. With his conviction and sentence, authorities closed the case with no indication of any other suspects; the narrative that emerged was of a domestic relationship that had deteriorated into fear, threats, and control, culminating in a final, deadly encounter in the very store that had once symbolized the couple’s shared life.
