Heather Rich, a 16-year-old Waurika, Oklahoma high school student, was murdered on the night of October 2, 1996, in Montague County, Texas by three young men, two of whom had sexually assaulted and raped her. Rich was shot nine times and thrown into a creek. All three men were convicted after trials featuring conflicting testimony and recanted plea bargains, leaving lingering controversy over the eventual verdicts and the identity of the particular man who pulled the trigger. The case received national coverage.

Rich was a high school cheerleader in Waurika, Oklahoma, successful academically and a popular student. She had exhibited some troubled behavior in the weeks before her death and had been suspended from the cheerleading team for drinking alcohol.

Late on the evening of October 2, 1996, Rich left her home without her parents' knowledge to meet 17-year-old Joshua Bagwell in a trailer at the home of Bagwell's grandfather. Bagwell had already been drinking with friends Curtis Gambill and Randy Wood, who left Bagwell and Rich alone for an hour. When they returned Rich was intoxicated and largely insensible; Bagwell said they had had consensual sex. According to Wood's later testimony he had assaulted Rich before Gambill had sex with the semi-conscious Rich; Gambill then decided to kill Rich and persuaded the others to help him. They dressed Rich and drove her a deserted location in Belknap Creek, Texas. Bagwell carried Rich to a bridge where Gambill shot her several times in the back and head with a shotgun. Rich's body was thrown into the creek below, where it was discovered by a rancher on October 10.

Curtis Allen Gambill, a 20-year-old high-school dropout with a criminal record; Josh Bagwell, a classmate of Rich's from a comparatively affluent background; and Randy Wood, another classmate and Rich's ex-boyfriend, were arrested two weeks after the body was discovered.

Gambill was tried in October 1997 and Bagwell in February 1998. Having first blamed Wood, Gambill then entered into a plea bargain under which he admitted to shooting Rich and agreed to testify against Bagwell in exchange for avoiding the death penalty. During Gambill's trial, a prison guard who had known Gambill during a period of juvenile custody in 1992 testified that Gambill had told another inmate of a desire to """"kidnap and rape a beautiful young girl, then 'blow her head off'"""".

Gambill was found guilty and sentenced to a life term. However, when Wood gave testimony at Bagwell's trial, identifying Gambill as the murderer without the incentive of a plea bargain, Gambill rejected his own agreement with prosecutors and changed his story, minimizing Bagwell's role in the affair and testifying that Wood was Rich's murderer. This opened the way for a further prosecution, on a charge of conspiracy to commit capital murder, which took place in February 2002 and resulted in a second life sentence for Gambill.