Elderly Woman Who Killed Terminally Ill Husband Says She Wouldn't Change Anything

An elderly Florida woman who was convicted of shooting and killing her terminally ill husband is speaking out after being released from prison, saying she would do it all over again to help him.

“I’m accepting the consequences,” Ellen Gilland, 79, of Winter Park, told FOX 35 Orlando in an exclusive interview that aired on Monday, Jan. 26.

On Jan. 21, 2023, Gilland shot her ailing husband of 53 years, Jerry Gilland, 77, in his hospital room at AdventHealth in Daytona Beach — with his blessing, according to FOX 35, WESH and KBTX.

Three weeks before the shooting, the couple had made a murder-suicide pact, FOX 35 reported.

Jerry had told Gilland that when his dementia and other medical issues worsened, he wanted to die, according to KBTX.

"I held the gun behind his ear,” she later said during her trial, the outlet reported. “I pulled it away and asked him if he was sure," she said.

“He raised his hand and placed it on my arm and pushed the gun to his head. There was a loud bang and he was gone," she added, per the outlet.

Gilland said she planned to turn the gun on herself after but became “hysterical” and was unable to pull the trigger, FOX 35 reported.

When hospital personnel came to see what caused the loud bang, Gilland pointed the gun at them, prompting a lockdown on the floor and a standoff when police arrived.

Gilland fired the gun into the ceiling when officers deployed a flashbang in the room and were trying to apprehend her.

She was subsequently arrested and initially charged with first-degree murder premeditated, according to online court records.

The murder charge was later dropped, however, and she was charged with assisting self-murder/manslaughter, aggravated assault with a firearm and aggravated assault on a law enforcement officer with a firearm, per the court records.

After pleading no contest to the charges in Dec. 2024, she was sentenced on Feb. 28, 2025 to 366 days in prison with 12 years of probation.

Gilland has since been released from custody after serving most of her one-year sentence.

She told FOX 35 that as her husband’s health worsened, she was feeling increasingly overwhelmed about how to care for him and how to deal with his vision issues and depression.

But, she also didn’t want to lose him, per the outlet.

“We’d known each other since middle school,” she said. “I knew how difficult it would be without him.”

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She said she felt “there wasn’t anything else to do" — though experts warn against this mindset and urge people to seek out support and resources, per the outlet.

According to her interview with FOX 35, she deeply misses her husband, who she says was “supportive” and “generous.”

Before the shooting, she said she had never been in trouble before. And, she added, per the outlet, “I never planned to hurt anyone ever.”