Florida executes man for three murders, the state's record 11th execution of the year

 The 30th Execution of 2025

Curtis Windom, convicted of killing his girlfriend, her mother and a man he claimed owed him $2,000, was put to death by lethal injection on August 28, 2025, marking a record 11th execution in the state of Florida this year, reported The Guardian. 

Windom, 59, was pronounced dead at 6.17pm local time at Florida state prison near Starke, authorities said.

Windom became the 30th person executed this year in the US, with Florida leading the way behind a flurry of death warrants signed by the state’s Republican governor, Ron DeSantis. A 12th man, David Joseph Pittman, 63, is scheduled to be put to death in Florida on 17 September.

Windom, whose final appeals for a stay were rejected on Wednesday by the US supreme court, was sentenced to die for the 7 November 1992 killing of Johnnie Lee, Valerie Davis and Mary Lubin in the Orlando area.

Court records show a friend told Windom that day that Lee, who supposedly owed Windom the $2,000, had won $114 at a greyhound racetrack. Windom told the friend that “you’re gonna read about me” and that he planned to kill Lee.

Windom went to a Walmart to buy a .38-caliber revolver and a box of 50 shells, according to court testimony. Not long after that, Windom drove to find Lee, located him and shot him twice in the back from his car, followed by two more shots standing over the victim at close range.

Then Windom ran to Davis’s apartment and fatally shot his girlfriend “with no provocation” in front of a friend who witnessed the murder, court records show. Windom randomly shot and wounded another man before encountering Davis’s mother, Mary Lubin, as she drove to her daughter’s apartment. Lubin was shot twice in her car at a stop sign.

Windom received death sentences for the murders and a 22-year sentence for the attempted murder. Davis was the mother of one of Windom’s children, a daughter who has been campaigning to halt her father’s execution.

“We’ve all been traumatized,” the daughter, Curtisia Windom, told the Orlando Sentinel. “It hurt. It hurt a lot. Life was not easy growing up. But if we could forgive him, I don’t see why people on the street who haven’t been through our pain have a right to say he should die.”

Windom’s lawyers have filed numerous appeals over the years, including a claim that evidence of his mental problems should have been introduced at trial. But the Florida supreme court ruled that was not prejudicial against Windom because prosecutors then would have presented evidence that Windom was a drug dealer and the two women he killed were police informants.

Many of Windom’s appeals have focused on claims that he was represented by an incompetent lawyer when it came to presenting mental health evidence.

Since the US supreme court restored the death penalty in 1976, the highest previous annual total of Florida executions was eight, in 2014. Florida has executed more people than any other state this year, while Texas and South Carolina are tied for second place, with four each.

The most recent execution in Florida took place on 19 August when Kayle Bates, 67, was put to death for the killing of a woman he abducted from a Florida Panhandle insurance office.

Florida executions are carried out using a three-drug lethal injection: a sedative, a paralytic and a drug that stops the heart, according to the state’s department of corrections.

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The 'execution state' Florida's record 10th execution of the year

 The  29th Execution of 2025

Kayle Bates convicted of abducting a woman from a Florida Panhandle insurance office and killing her received a lethal injection on August 19, 2025. Not to be out done, Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis has presided over the state’s record 10th execution this year, reported The Associated Press.

Bates, 67, was pronounced dead at 6:17 p.m. following a three-drug injection at Florida State Prison near Starke under a death warrant signed by Gov. DeSantis. The execution extended Florida’s record for total executions in a single year, and two more are planned in the state within the next month.

Bates was convicted of first-degree murder, kidnapping, armed robbery and attempted sexual battery in the June 14, 1982, killing of Janet Renee White in Bay County in the Florida Panhandle. The woman’s husband, Randy White, was one of the witnesses to Tuesday’s execution.

At the scheduled 6 p.m. execution time, the curtain to the death chamber promptly went up. Bates was already strapped to a gurney with his left arm extended and the IV line for the drugs already in place. When asked if he wished to make a last statement, Bates replied ‘no.’

The execution then began at 6:01 pm. Bates began breathing more rapidly about a minute after the drugs began flowing, and then he stopped after about another minute. At 6:05 p.m., the warden touched Bates’ face, shook his shoulders and shouted his name with no response. Several minutes later, he was declared dead.

At a briefing following the execution, Randy White thanked DeSantis for signing the death warrant and also thanked members of law enforcement and prosecutors for working on his wife’s case.

″I am truly humbled by the outpouring of love and support from so many who didn’t know either one of us. I thank you from my heart. It means more than you will ever know,” he said.

Since the U.S. Supreme Court restored the death penalty in 1976, the highest previous annual total of Florida executions was eight in 2014. Florida has executed more people than any other state this year, while Texas and South Carolina are tied for second place with four each.

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With Tuesday’s execution, a total of 29 men have died by court-ordered execution so far this year in the U.S., and at least nine other people were scheduled to be put to death in seven states during the remainder of 2025.

According to court documents, Bates abducted his victim from the insurance office where she worked, took her into some woods behind the building, attempted to rape her, fatally stabbed her and tore a diamond ring from one of her fingers.

Attorneys for Bates had filed appeals with the Florida Supreme Court and the U.S. Supreme Court, as well as a federal lawsuit claiming DeSantis’ process for signing death warrants was discriminatory. The lawsuit was recently dismissed by a judge who found problems with its statistical analysis.

The Florida Supreme Court recently denied Bates’ pending claims, including arguments that evidence of organic brain damage had been inadequately considered during his second penalty phase. The court ruled Bates already had three decades to raise these claims. The U.S. Supreme Court rejected Bates’ last appeal Tuesday.

Two more executions are planned in Florida in coming weeks.

Curtis Windom, 59, is scheduled to become the 11th person executed in Florida on Aug. 28. He was convicted of killing three people in the Orlando area in 1992.

David Pittman, 63, would be the 12th person executed in Florida if his death sentence is carried out as scheduled Sept. 17. He was found guilty of fatally stabbing his estranged wife’s sister and parents at their Polk County home before setting it on fire in 1990.

Florida executions are carried out using a three-drug lethal injection: a sedative, a paralytic and a drug that stops the heart, according to the state Department of Corrections.

CREATORS: Has The Death Penalty Become Arbitrary and Capricious?

 Matthew T. Mangino
CREATORS
August 19, 2025

Those who write about the death penalty often do so from a certain bias. I wanted to take a crack at writing about the ultimate punishment without bias. McFarland & Company helped me make that effort a reality.

My book "The Executioner's Toll, 2010" examined every execution in 2010. One of those executions was that of Cal Coburn Brown. His perspective on the death penalty was both disturbing and provocative.

Brown was executed by the state of Washington. He had brutally sexually assaulted, tortured, and murdered a young woman. He left her body in the trunk of a car at the Seattle-Tacoma Airport.

Brown then jumped on an airplane and went to meet a woman in Palm Springs, Calif. He was torturing her when she managed to escape and notify the police.

Brown spent more than 16 years on Washington's Death Row. As he lay strapped to a gurney awaiting lethal injection, he protested what he perceived to be the unfairness of his sentence. He complained that criminals who had killed many more people, such as "Green River killer" Gary Ridgway, were serving life sentences while he was about to receive the death penalty.

Ridgway is a serial killer, both diabolical and prolific. He was convicted of murdering 49 women in the northwest between 1982 and 1998. Ridgway's victims were women in vulnerable circumstances, including underage runaways. Ridgway strangled his victims and dumped their bodies in secluded areas, often returning to the bodies to engage in acts of necrophilia.

In his final words, Cal Brown said, "I only killed one victim ... I cannot really see that there is true justice. Hopefully, sometime in the future, that gets straightened out."

There does seem to be some inconsistency in the application of the death penalty. Let's start with the fact that 23 states don't have the death penalty, and another 10 that have not carried out an execution in the last 10 years.

For instance, serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer escaped death at the hands of the government because Wisconsin had outlawed the death penalty in 1853.

David Berkowitz, the Son of Sam killer, escaped the death penalty in New York. Berkowitz killed six people in New York City in the 1970s. He terrorized an entire city, and for that matter, an entire nation.

Berkowitz was not sentenced to death. He pleaded guilty to second-degree murder; as a result, the death penalty was not an option under New York's sentencing scheme. It didn't matter — New York had not executed a killer since 1963.

Charles Manson, responsible for ten murders, including the gruesome murder of pregnant movie star Sharon Tate, was sentenced to death but never executed. Manson's sentence was commuted to life in prison after the U.S. Supreme Court declared the imposition of the death penalty arbitrary in 1972.

Those serial killers who didn't escape the executioner include John Wayne Gracy who murdered 33 women in Texas between 1972 and 1978; Ted Bundy who murdered as many as 30 women across the country, often sexual assaulting them and engaging in necrophilia with their dead bodies; the "Freeway Killer," William Bonin, responsible for 14 killings and the rare female serial killer Aileen Wuornos who was executed for six murders in 2002.

There seems to be no explanation for sparing the life of the diabolical modern-day mass killer — Byran Kohberger.

Kohberger was offered a plea bargain to life without parole, without being required to explain his motive for killing four young college students in Idaho. It is not as though Idaho doesn't have, or use, the death penalty. Just this year, the state adopted the firing squad as its primary form of execution.

To further complicate matters, the evidence against Kohberger was overwhelming. He had recently purchased a KA-BAR knife — the alleged murder weapon. His DNA was on the knife sheath. He was observed on video surveillance near the victims' apartment. Kohberger's cellphone put him in the vicinity of the murders. Even more surprising, no mitigating evidence was presented by his lawyers.

Kohberger dodging the death penalty supports, yet again, that the death penalty has become arbitrary and capricious.

Matthew T. Mangino is of counsel with Luxenberg, Garbett, Kelly & George P.C. His book The Executioner's Toll, 2010, was released by McFarland Publishing. You can reach him at www.mattmangino.com and follow him on Twitter @MatthewTMangino

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Tennessee executed man who killed girlfriend and two daughters

 The 28th Execution of 2025

A man convicted of killing his girlfriend and her two young daughters in the 1980s said he was “hurting so bad” while he was given a lethal injection on August 5, 2025 in Tennessee, where authorities had refused to deactivate his implanted defibrillator despite claims it might cause unnecessary, painful shocks as the drugs were administered, reported The Associated Press.

Black’s attorney said they will review data kept by the device as part of an autopsy.

Black died at 10:43 a.m., prison officials said. It was about 10 minutes after the execution started and Black talked about being in pain.

Asked for any last words, he replied, “No sir.”

Black looked around the room as the execution started, lifting his head off the gurney multiple times, and could be heard sighing and breathing heavily. All seven media witnesses to the execution agreed he appeared to be in discomfort. Throughout the execution, a spiritual adviser prayed and sang over Black, at one point touching his face.

“Oh, it’s hurting so bad,” Black said, as he lay with his hands and chest restrained to the gurney, a sheet covering up past his lower half, and an IV line in his arm.

“I’m so sorry. Just listen to my voice,” the adviser responded.

Black was executed after a back-and-forth in court over whether officials would need to turn off his implantable cardioverter-defibrillator, or ICD. Black, 69, was in a wheelchair, suffering from dementia, brain damage, kidney failure, congestive heart failure and other conditions, his attorneys have said.

The nonprofit Death Penalty Information Center said it’s unaware of any other cases with similar claims to Black’s about ICDs or pacemakers. Black’s attorneys said they haven’t found a comparable case, either.

Black killed his girlfriend and her 2 daughters

Black was convicted in the 1988 shooting deaths of his girlfriend Angela Clay, 29, and her two daughters, Latoya Clay, 9, and Lakeisha Clay, 6. Prosecutors said he was in a jealous rage when he shot the three at their home. At the time, Black was on work-release while serving time for shooting Clay’s estranged husband.

Clay’s sister said Black will now face a higher power.

“His family is now going through the same thing we went through 37 years ago. I can’t say I’m sorry because we never got an apology,” Linette Bell, Angela Clay’s sister, said in a statement read by a victim’s advocate after the execution.

Black’s lawyer said the execution was shameful.

“Today, the state of Tennessee killed a gentle, kind, fragile, intellectually disabled man in a violation of the laws of our country simply because they could,” attorney Kelley Henry said.

The legal fight over Black’s defibrillator

In mid-July, a trial court judge agreed with Black’s attorneys that officials must have the defibrillator deactivated to avert the risk that it could cause unnecessary pain and prolong the execution. But Tennessee’s Supreme Court overturned that decision Thursday, saying the other judge lacked authority to order the change.

The state disputed that the lethal injection would cause Black’s defibrillator to shock him and said he wouldn’t feel them regardless.

Henry said Black’s defense team will carefully review autopsy results, EKG data from Black and information from the defibrillator to determine what exactly happened during the execution. The lethal injection protocol is still being challenged in court.

She said she was especially concerned about his head movement and complaints of pain because the massive dose of pentobarbital used to kill inmates is supposed to rapidly leave them unconscious.

“The fact that he was able to raise his head several times and express pain tells you that the pentobarbital was not acting the way the state’s experts claim it acts,” Henry said.

Prison officials did not comment on witnesses and Black’s attorney saying he appeared conscious or his complaints of pain.

It was Tennessee’s second execution since May, after a pause for five years, first because of COVID-19 and then because of missteps by state corrections officials.

Twenty-eight men have died by court-ordered execution so far this year in the U.S., and nine other people are scheduled to be put to death in seven states during the remainder of 2025. The number of executions this year exceeds the 25 carried out last year and in 2018. It is the highest total since 2015, when 28 people were put to death.

Black’s condition

Black had an implantable cardioverter-defibrillator, which is a small, battery-powered electronic device that is surgically implanted in the chest. It served as a pacemaker and an emergency defibrillator. Black’s attorneys have said a doctor can send it a deactivation command without surgery.

The legal case also spurred a reminder that most medical professionals consider participation in executions a violation of health care ethics.

Intellectual disability claim

In recent years, Black’s legal team has unsuccessfully tried to get a new hearing about an intellectual disability they say he’s exhibited since childhood. People with intellectual disabilities are constitutionally barred from execution. 

His attorneys have said that if they had delayed a prior attempt to seek his intellectual disability claim, he would have been spared under a 2021 state law. That is because the 2021 law denies a hearing to people on death row who have already filed a similar request and a court has ruled on it “on the merits.”

A judge denied Nashville District Attorney Glenn Funk’s attempt to get Black a new hearing. Funk focused on input from an expert for the state in 2004 who determined back then that Black didn’t meet the criteria for what was then called “mental retardation.” But she concluded that Black met the new law’s criteria for a diagnosis of intellectual disability.

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Florida carries out state's 9th execution of 2025

 The 27th Execution of 2025

A man convicted of the 1994 killings of his wife and their two children became the ninth person put to death in Florida this year, his death on July 31, 2025 marking a state record for a single-year execution total since the U.S. Supreme Court restored the death penalty decades ago, reported The Associated Press.

Edward Zakrzewski, 60, was pronounced dead at 6:12 p.m. following a three-drug injection at Florida State Prison near Starke. After the return of the U.S. death penalty in 1976, Florida carried out a high of eight executions in 2014, a one-year total only matched this year with a mid-July execution and now exceeded.

“I want to thank the good people of the Sunshine State for killing me in the most cold, calculated, clean, humane, efficient way possible. I have no complaint,” Zakrzewski said after the curtain to the death chamber went up shortly after 6 p.m.

He was lying on a gurney covered with a white sheet. Before the drugs began flowing, he also quoted from a poem as 14 witnesses looked on, plus media reporters and prison staff.

Once the drugs were administered, Zakrzewski began breathing deeply, surrounded by three Corrections Department staffers in dark suits. One of them shook Zakrzewski by the shoulders and shouted his name. There was no reaction, and then he was still.

Florida this year has carried out more executions than any other state, while Texas and South Carolina are tied for second with four each. A 10th execution is scheduled in Florida on Aug. 19 and an 11th on Aug. 28 under death warrants signed by Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis.

No members of the victims’ family spoke with reporters after Thursday’s execution.

Twenty-seven men had died by court-ordered execution so far this year in the U.S., while nine other people are set to be put to death in seven states during the rest of 2025. Florida also was the last state to execute someone, giving Michael Bernard Bell a lethal injection on July 15.

Zakrzewski was sentenced to die for the June 9, 1994, killings of his 34-year-old wife Sylvia and their children Edward, 7, and Anna, 5, in the Florida Panhandle. Trial testimony showed he carried out the killings at their Okaloosa County home after his wife sought a divorce, and he had told others he would kill his family rather than allow that to happen.

The woman was attacked first with a crowbar and strangled with a rope, court testimony showed. Both children were killed with a machete, and Sylvia was also struck with the blade when Zakrzewski thought she had survived the previous assault, according to court records.

Zakrzewski’s lawyers filed numerous unsuccessful appeals over the years, including a final plea for a stay of execution that the Supreme Court denied on Wednesday.

On Thursday morning, Zakrzewski awoke at 5:15 a.m. and later in the day had a meal that included fried pork chops, root beer and ice cream, state Department of Corrections spokesman Paul Walker said. He said Zakrzewski had one visitor and “remained compliant” as his execution time neared.

Kayle Bates, who was convicted of abducting a woman from an insurance office and killing her in 1982, is next scheduled to be executed in Florida on Aug. 19. DeSantis also has signed a death warrant setting an Aug. 28 execution date for Curtis Windom, who was convicted of killing three people in the Orlando area in 1992.

Florida uses a three-drug cocktail for its lethal injection: a sedative, a paralytic and a drug that stops the heart, according to the state Department of Corrections.

Before Thursday’s execution, opponents pointed to Zakrzewski’s military service as an Air Force veteran and the fact that a jury voted 7-5 to recommend his execution, barely a majority of the panel. They noted that under current state law, he could not have received the death penalty with a split jury vote.

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Crime rates fell considerably in the first six months of 2025

Crime almost certainly fell considerably in the United States in the first six months of 2025, reported Jeff-alytics. The decline in crime that began in 2023 and picked up steam in 2024 has accelerated even faster so far in 2025. Both violent and property crime likely fell with large drops in both murder and motor vehicle theft leading the way.

The national decline in murder stands out due to extraordinary drops in many cities. New Orleans recorded fewer murders through June 2025 than any year since 1970 even in spite of the January 1st terrorist attack. New York City has only recorded fewer murders once through June since 1960 (136 in 2017). Philadelphia recorded the fewest murders since 1969, Los Angeles since 1966, Baltimore since 1965, Detroit since 1964, and San Francisco had the fewest ever recorded (monthly data available to 1960).

As a reminder, murder rose at the fastest rate ever recorded in 2020 and it stayed at that consistently higher level in 2021 and 2022. Murder began dropping in 2023 and ended up falling at the fastest rate ever recorded that year. Then murder likely fell even faster in 2024 though we won’t have official FBI data on that for a few months. Now, just five years after the largest one-year increase ever, the US is on track to have the largest one-year drop in murder ever recorded for the third straight year in 2025.

The assessment of national crime trends can be made thanks to a variety of independent data sources which have historically closely aligned with FBI national estimates. These alternative sources are needed because the FBI has reported no data on national crime trends since reporting Q2 2024 data last year.

Relying on sampling is a workaround to the traditional slowness of FBI data, but there is always a risk in interpreting the results of 18,000 agencies from a sample of 400+ agencies. That said, the size of the crime declines articulated by independent sources and the historical accuracy of those sources suggests that large declines will hold up even if the unofficial sources are off by more than usual.

The most recent formal FBI data is 18 months old now while the CDC is just finishing up its provisional 2024 count. Fortunately, both the Gun Violence Archive (GVA) and Real-Time Crime Index (RTCI) tend to mimic the annual changes seen in the official sources. As such, these unofficial tallies can tell us what is happening without having to wait 9 or more months for the official word.

Both the GVA and RTCI point to massive declines in fatal shootings and murders occurring in 2025, the third straight year of large declines. The RTCI is now available through May 2025, and that reporting can be supplemented by sampling large cities with publicly available data to see that the trend continued through midyear.

The bottom line is that crime is falling in the United States led by the largest one-year percentage point decline in murder ever recorded. If that sentence sounds familiar it’s because it’s basically identical to what I wrote last year about our crime trends.

It is late enough in the year and the declines are large enough to feel confident that these trends will generally hold through the rest of the year. The exact degree of downward motion in the nation’s crime stats will still take some months to tease out, but a large decline is almost certainly inevitable at this point.

Real-Time Crime Index

The Real-Time Crime index was updated last week through May 2025. The new RTCI sample has data from 421 agencies representing more than 102 million people. This sample makes up around half of all the murders that occur in the US in a given year, so it’s a reliable bellwether of the nation’s murder trend. (As an aside, this is our biggest sample yet in terms of agencies and population covered).

The RTCI through May 2025 shows murder down 20 percent relative to the first 5 months of 2024, down 37 percent relative to the first 5 months of 2021 (at the height of the murder surge), and down 9 percent relative to the first 5 months of 2019 (pre-surge). Murder rolling over the last 12 months in this sample has fallen below 2019’s level

Violent crime is down roughly 11 percent in the RTCI while property crime is down 12 percent. There is undoubtedly some underreporting occurring as agencies still have 9 or so months to correct missing reports. But that issue does not impact the finding of large scale declines in every crime category even if the degree of the decline is likely slightly overstated by the collection methodology.

The decline is fairly uniform across cities/counties and population sizes. In 13 agencies covering 1 million people or more, murder is down 20.1 percent, violent crime is down 11 percent and property crime is down 12 percent. In 192 agencies covering under 100,000 people, murder is down 36 percent, violent crime is down 9 percent and property crime is down 14 percent.

Aside from murder, the motor vehicle theft decline stands out. Motor vehicle thefts surged in 2022 but have been plunging ever since. The decline in motor vehicle thefts started at the very end of 2023 and has been steady ever since. The surge in auto thefts that kicked off in 2020 has not been falling as long so it is still higher than pre-COVID levels, but we aren’t yet seeing signs of a slowdown.

Gun Violence Archive

The Gun Violence Archive data through June paints a similarly rosy picture of our nation’s gun violence trend (though even a large decline leaves gun violence far too prevalent). If a picture is worth 1,000 words then the next three graphs tell the story in 3,000 words.

The GVA isn't exact but it's another strong indicator that the historic drop in gun violence is continuing through June 2025.

Sampling Cities

The RTCI is updated through May which obviously isn’t quite midyear (though it's close!). I grabbed publicly available murder data from the 30 cities with the most murders in 2023 plus Jacksonville (which didn’t report in 2023 but would have been on this list if they had) to clearly see that the RTCI trend carried through midyear.

And…yep. That’s a huge decline through midyear in a decently large sample of cities. Violent and property crime are harder to sample because fewer agencies publish aggregated counts, but there’s no reason to suspect any change from the available May data once June is counted.

The Midyear Final Word

The final word on crime through midyear is that there is a sizable decline in every category of Uniform Crime Report Part I crime. The declines in crime shown by the RTCI data through May suggests crime may decline at or near record levels in every crime type we have measured since 1960. It’s also plausible that multiple crime types will feature the largest drop ever recorded moniker in 2025.

Not every crime is reported to police, there are still six months left in the year for these trends to moderate, and not every city or county is seeing historic declines (or declines at all). Yet the data so far this year paints the picture of declines that began in 2023 and 2024 continuing (and accelerating) through the first half of 2025.

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Why did Bryan Kohberger Kill?

Bryan Kohberger's past tells us a lot about his motivations, experts say. During his childhood, he was isolated and bullied and eventually became addicted to heroin and struggled with his weight, reported the USA TODAY.

Experts interviewed by USA TODAY agree that we can conclude a lot about Kohberger's motives based on the evidence and his history: He was bullied, he felt rage toward women, he fantasized about violence and ultimately, wanted power more than anything, they say.

"A lot of killers feel powerless their whole lives and that’s why killers become serial killers. Because for the first time they feel like an all-powerful god," said Rachel Toles, a clinical psychologist and criminal expert based in Greenville, South Carolina. "He wanted to feel powerful for once in his life."

At some point Kohberger was able to kick the heroin habit, lose weight and get lean, according to the 2025 book, "The Idaho Four: An American Tragedy." 

"He grew up kind of bullied, kind of ostracized and he decided to change his life ... and I think he started viewing himself as a possessor of power. Before he was someone without power and now he possesses it," said John Delatorre, a psychologist based in San Antonio, Texas, who works on criminal cases.

Ultimately, "he viewed himself as someone who could take what he wanted whenever he wanted," Delatorre said. "I think what interested him was the idea that you could legitimately hold someone's life in your hands and take it away whenever you choose to do so."

Bryan Kohberger, who is accused of killing four University of Idaho students, is escorted to an extradition hearing at the Monroe County Courthouse in Stroudsburg, Pennsylvania, U.S., January 3, 2023. Matt Rourke/Pool via REUTERS

Toles added: "He probably also wanted revenge on a world that made him feel unwanted."

Kohberger's past addiction, weight gain and loss, Toles said, also show that he "clearly felt empty his whole life" and may have been attracted to studying criminology at the University of Washington because it "gave him a language for his alienation."

Kohberger seemed particularly interested in three killers: Ted Bundy, the BTK Killer and Elliot Rodger. Through them, he identified with a narrative arc that "rejection moves to resentment moves to obsession moves to control moves to violence moves to infamy," Toles said.

"It’s a storyline he could place himself in and one that made him feel more powerful instead of invisible," she said, adding that Kohberger may have thought: "Maybe I'm not a problem. Maybe I'm like them. Maybe I'm a predator."

Kohberger likely felt the urge to kill for years, Delatorre said, relying on fantasies and stalking before he ultimately acted on it.

"The idea of taking someone's life with a knife was probably something he was think about for quite some time, it just required a target," he said. "People don’t snap. People brew, they fester. The negative emotionality is over a long period of time to get them to a breaking point to act out."

What is happening with the case?

Kohberger, 30, pleaded guilty to the killings earlier this month after accepting a plea agreement that allowed him to avoid the death penalty and instead face four consecutive life sentences.

The agreement also means he'll avoid a lengthy and highly publicized trial.

He's scheduled to be officially sentenced on Wednesday, July 23. The families of the victims will be allowed to address the court at that time to talk about the impact of the crime and who their loved ones were.

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Florida carries out 26th execution nationwide exceeding the number of executions in all of 2024

 The 26th Execution of 2025

 A man convicted of fatally shooting two people outside a Florida bar in 1993 as part of an attempted revenge killing was executed on the evening July 15, 2025. He was the 26th person put to death in the U.S. this year, exceeding the number of executions in all of 2024, reported The Associated Press.

Michael Bernard Bell, 54, was pronounced dead at 6:25 p.m. after receiving a lethal injection at Florida State Prison near Starke, said Bryan Griffin, a spokesperson for Gov. Ron DeSantis. Bell was convicted in 1995 and sentenced to death for the murders of Jimmy West and Tamecka Smith.

When the team warden asked Bell if he had any final words, he responded, “Thank you for not letting me spend the rest of my life in prison.”

Strapped to a gurney, Bell was alert and looking around the death chamber as the drugs began to flow into his outstretched left arm. After about 2 minutes, he closed his eyes and stopped moving. His breathing became more labored for about a minute and then slowed.

At 6:15 p.m., the team warden checked Bell’s eyes and shouted his name, but there was no response. The color began to drain from Bell’s face about 6:20 p.m. A medical worker entered the chamber at 6:24 p.m. and declared Bell dead a minute later.

With Bell’s death, the number of executions in the U.S. surpassed last year’s total with more than five months left on the calendar. The number of executions has largely trended downward nationally this century after peaking with 98 in 1999. From 1995 to 2006, there was an average of about 67 executions per year.

John Blume, the director of the Cornell Death Penalty Project, says the uptick in executions doesn’t appear to be linked to a change in public support for the death penalty or an increase in the rate of death sentences, but is rather the function of the discretion of state governors.

“A number of these people being executed are people that have been in the system for a long time; they’ve been on death row for a long time,” Blume said, adding that there are aggressive executives and attorney generals “who want to execute these people.”

He pointed to a sweeping executive order signed by President Donald Trump on his first day back in office aimed at urging prosecutors to seek the death penalty and preserving capital punishment in the states.

“The most cynical view would be: It seems to matter to the president, so it matters to them,” Blume said of the governors.

Florida Department of Corrections spokesperson Ted Veerman said Tuesday that the department was well-prepared to do its duty as assigned by the courts and the governor.

Bell is the eighth person executed in Florida this year, with a ninth scheduled for later this month. The state executed six people in 2023 but only one last year. 

Florida has executed more people than any other state this year, with Texas and South Carolina tied for second place at four each. Alabama has executed three people, Oklahoma has killed two, and Arizona, Indiana, Louisiana, Mississippi and Tennessee each have killed one.

This undated provided by the Florida Department of Corrections shows Michael Bell, who is scheduled to receive a lethal injection at Florida State Prison near Starke on Tuesday, July 15, 2025. (Florida Department of Corrections via AP)

In December 1993, Bell spotted what he thought was the car of the man who fatally shot his brother earlier that year, according to court records. Bell was apparently unaware that the man had sold the car to West.

Bell called on two friends and armed himself with an AK-47 rifle, authorities said. They found the car parked outside a liquor lounge and waited. When West, Smith and another woman eventually exited the club, Bell approached the car and opened fire, officials said.

West died at the scene, and Smith died on the way to the hospital. The other woman escaped injury. Witnesses said Bell also fired at a crowd of onlookers before fleeing the area. He was eventually arrested the next year.

Bell was later convicted of three additional murders — a woman and her toddler son in 1989 and his mother’s boyfriend about four months before the attack on West and Smith.

Prison officials said Bell woke up at 6:30 a.m. and ate his last meal, which was an omelet, bacon, home fries and orange juice. He met with a spiritual adviser but did not have any other visitors.

His lawyers argued in their state filing that Bell’s execution should be halted because of newly discovered evidence about witness testimony. But justices unanimously rejected the argument last week and pointed to overwhelming evidence of Bell’s guilt.

The U.S. Supreme Court denied Bell’s request to stay the execution.

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Florida executes man for rape and murder

 The 24 Execution of 2024

A man convicted of raping and killing a woman near a central Florida bar was executed on the evening of June 24, 2025, reported The Associated Press.

Thomas Lee Gudinas, 51, was pronounced dead at 6:13 p.m. following a lethal injection at Florida State Prison near Starke, said Bryan Griffin, a spokesman for Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis.

Gudinas was convicted of the May 1994 killing of Michelle McGrath.

When the curtain to the execution room opened at 6:00 p.m., Gudinas was already strapped to a gurney with an IV in his left arm. Then, after the warden got off the phone with the governor’s office, he asked Gudinas if he wished to make a statement. Although Gudinas’ words were inaudible to those in the viewing room, Griffin said the inmate repented and made a reference to Jesus.

The drugs were then administered, and the inmate’s eyes began to roll back and he underwent slight chest convulsions. After several minutes, he started to lose color in his face and fell still. The prison warden subsequently announced that the sentence had been carried out and the curtain to the execution chamber closed and witnesses were led from the viewing area.

Gudinas was the seventh person put to death in Florida this year, with an eighth scheduled for next month. The state also executed six people in 2023, but only carried out one execution last year.

A total of 24 men have been put to death in the U.S. this year, with scheduled executions set to make 2025 the year with the most executions since 2015.

Florida has executed more people than any other state this year, while Texas and South Carolina are tied for second place with four each. Alabama has executed three people, Oklahoma two, and Arizona, Indiana, Louisiana and Tennessee each have one. Mississippi is set to join the other states on Wednesday with its first execution since 2022.

Despite the increased frequency of executions this year, Department of Corrections spokesman Ted Veerman said there’s been no significant operational strain.

“Our staff are doing a fantastic job keeping up with the pace of these executions,” Veerman said hours earlier Tuesday. “And we are going through with these in a professional manner.”

McGrath was last seen at a bar called Barbarella’s shortly before 3 a.m. on May 24, 1994. Her body, showing evidence of serious trauma and sexual assault, was found several hours later in an alley next to a nearby school.

Gudinas had been at the same bar with friends the night before, but they all later testified that they had left without him. A school employee who found McGrath’s body later identified Gudinas as a man who was fleeing the area shortly beforehand. Another woman also identified Gudinas as the person who chased her to her car the previous night and threatened to assault her.

Gudinas was convicted and sentenced to death in 1995.

Attorneys for Gudinas had filed appeals with the Florida Supreme Court and the U.S. Supreme Court but those were rejected.

The lawyers had argued in their state filing that evidence related to “lifelong mental illnesses” exempts Gudinas from being put to death. The Florida Supreme Court denied the appeals last week, ruling that the case law that shields intellectually disabled people from execution does not apply to individuals with other forms of mental illness or brain damage.

Separately, a federal filing argued that the governor’s unfettered discretion to sign death warrants violates death row inmates’ constitutional rights to due process and had led to an arbitrary process for determining who lives and who dies. The U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday denied Gudinas’ request for a reprieve.

Officials said Gudinas had one visitor, his mother, during the day Tuesday and did not meet with a spiritual adviser.

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Texas man charged with capital murder for slipping pregnant woman abortion pill

A North Texas man charged with capital murder this month after he allegedly slipped his girlfriend abortion-inducing medication and caused a miscarriage marks the first time a murder charge has been brought in an abortion-related case in Texas, reported the Texas Tribune.

The case tests a new method for reining in abortion pills — by threatening to prosecute individuals who provide them with the most severe criminal charge — while advancing the longstanding legal provision that defines an embryo as a person, legal experts say. The latter could raise serious implications about the legality of fertility treatments and in other legal realms such as criminal and immigration issues.

“It is shocking to people that the law can be used this way… that this is the extent and result of the more than 20 year old fetal personhood laws,” said Blake Rocap, a Texas attorney who works in abortion rights advocacy and studies pregnancy criminalization. Legal experts say the case will not change Texas laws that prevent women who receive abortions from being prosecuted.

According to an affidavit filed in Tarrant County by the Texas Rangers, 39-year-old Justin Anthony Banta put mifepristone, an abortion-inducing medication, into cookies and a beverage that he then gave to his pregnant girlfriend. Banta had previously asked her to get an abortion, but she said she had wanted to keep the child, according to the affidavit. A day after drinking the beverage, the woman miscarried.

The Texas Rangers did not respond to multiple requests for comment. The Tarrant County District Attorney’s Office, which must decide whether and how to prosecute the case, has not yet brought its own charges, according to a spokesperson.

Before Roe v. Wade was overturned, a fetus was not considered a person constitutionally. However, when Roe v. Wade was overturned, the whole opinion was overruled, including the idea that a fetus does not have the same rights as a person. That did not immediately mean that fetus personhood is established. But, Joanna Grossman, a professor at Southern Methodist University Dedman School of Law, and other experts see Banta’s case as an attempt to move further in that direction.

“The purpose of this has nothing to do with caring whether this woman was victimized, but it's about trying to establish fetal personhood in a more direct way than they've been able to,” said Grossman.

If Banta is convicted and fetal personhood is established in the case, it could complicate a variety of issues, including whether IVF is still legal because it involves destroying unused frozen embryos. Last year, the Alabama Supreme Court ruled that frozen embryos are considered children.

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Mississippi executes man after nearly 50 years on death row

The 25th Execution of 2025

Richard Jordan, Mississippi’s longest serving and oldest death row inmate, died by lethal injection Wednesday evening at the Mississippi State Penitentiary nearly 50 years after he kidnapped and murdered Edwina Marter, reported Mississippi Today. 

The 79-year-old Vietnam War veteran who experienced post-traumatic stress disorder was pronounced dead at 6:16 p.m. 

“First I would like to thank everyone for a humane way of doing this. I want to apologize to the victim’s family,” Jordan said, adding thanks to his wife and lawyers and asking for forgiveness. 

“I love you very much,” he said as his last words. “I will see you on the other side, all of you.”

Prison officials confirmed Jordan was unconscious after injecting a sedative before following with injection of two other injection drugs – a check ordered by a federal judge who greenlighted the execution late last week. This was part of a federal lawsuit challenging the lethal injection protocol in which Jordan was a lead plaintiff. 

In January 1976, Jordan found himself desperate for money and made a plan to kidnap the family member of a bank employee and demand funds. The Vietnam War veteran had a job lined up and had moved his family to Louisiana, only to find the position was filled, according to his clemency petition. 

He spent a few days looking for work before calling the Gulfport bank where Charles Marter worked as the commercial loan agent. Jordan found the man’s address in the phonebook and went there, posing as an electric company worker to get the banker’s wife, Edwina, to open the door at gunpoint. Her toddler son was left unharmed at home. 

Jordan had Edwina drive to the DeSoto National Forest. As she tried to run away, Jordan shot in her direction, hitting her in the head. Afterwards, he called Edwina’s husband to demand $25,000 in ransom. After two failed money drops, Jordan was arrested. 

He went to trial that year and received a death sentence, only for it to be overturned multiple times due to questions about the legality of Mississippi’s death penalty law. It wasn’t until 1998 and four trials later that the sentence stuck. Then Jordan began years of appeals. 

Eric and Kevin Marter, the now-adult sons of Edwina, and her husband Charles did not travel to Parchman to witness the execution, but Edwina’s brother planned to attend with help of his family, Kevin Marter said. 

Family members left without offering comment. 

Ahead of the execution, Eric Marter said he wanted Jordan’s sentence to be carried out sooner rather than almost 50 years later after his mother’s death. 

“I don’t want him to get what he wants,” Marter, who was 11 in 1976, said about Jordan’s efforts to fight his death sentence. 

Jordan’s wife, Marsha, witnessed the execution along with his attorney Krissy Nobile of the Office of Capital Post-Conviction Counsel and his spiritual adviser, the Rev. Tim Murphy. Such advisers have been allowed to accompany death row inmates since a 2022 U.S. Supreme Court ruling.

After the execution, Attorney General Lynn Fitch said her office has pressed for justice and was pleased to be able to provide the Marter family, friends and the community with closure. 

Leading up to the execution, Jordan petitioned the U.S Supreme Court and the U.S. 5th Circuit Court of Appeals to step in. The appeals court denied a stay of execution Tuesday, and the high court denied request for a stay and writ of certiorari Wednesday afternoon – about an hour before the execution. 

Tuesday evening, Gov. Tate Reeves reviewed Jordan’s clemency petition and said he would not intervene in the execution, noting circumstances of the crime, how Jordan admitted his guilt, multiple trials and appeals. 

Frank Rosenblatt, a professor at the Mississippi College School of Law, submitted the clemency petition that included letters of support from at least a dozen people, including Jordan’s wife, his sister and a pastor. 

“Richard is all of these things: a patriot; a Vietnam Veteran; a man of faith; a good son, brother, and friend; and he is an exemplary inmate who has worked to prevent this type of crime from happening ever again,” Rosenblatt wrote in Jordan’s petition. 

Organizations including Death Penalty Action and Catholic Mobilizing Network circulated petitions that called on Reeves to stop Jordan’s execution citing similar factors, including how he experienced post-traumatic stress disorder from his military service. Death Penalty Action’s petitions were delivered to the governor’s office Tuesday. 

During an afternoon news conference, Parchman Superintendent Marc McClure said Jordan seemed talkative and was telling stories about his past. He had been moved to a holding cell Sunday evening, and before the execution he visited with family, his attorneys and spiritual advisers. 

He requested chicken tenders, French fries, strawberry ice cream and a rootbeer float for his last meal, prison officials said at the earlier news conference. 

Starting in the afternoon, demonstrators gathered outside Parchman in the Delta and the Governor’s Mansion in Jackson. Death Penalty Action also hosted a virtual vigil. 

Minutes before the execution, a group gathered outside the prison entrance and offered prayers for Edwina Marter, her family, Jordan and his family. Among them were Rev. Jeff Hood, an Arkansas-based spiritual adviser who has accompanied 11 death row inmates to the execution chamber and has spoken out against the death penalty. 

Jordan’s execution is the third in the past decade, with the most recent taking place in December 2022. 

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More American children and teens die from firearms than any other cause

More American children and teens die from firearms than any other cause, but there are more deaths — and wider racial disparities — in states with more permissive gun policies, according to a new study, reported by Nada Hassanein of Stateline.

The study, published in the medical journal JAMA Pediatrics last week, analyzes trends in state firearm policies and kids’ deaths since 2010, after the landmark U.S. Supreme Court decision in McDonald v. City of Chicago. The ruling struck down the city’s handgun ban, clearing the way for many states to make it easier for people to buy and carry guns.

The study authors split states into three groups: “most permissive,” “permissive” and “strict,” based on the stringency of their firearm policies. Those policies include safe storage laws, background checks and so-called Stand Your Ground laws. The researchers analyzed homicide and suicide rates and the children’s race.

Using statistical methods, the researchers calculated 6,029 excess deaths in the most permissive states between 2011 and 2023, compared with the number of deaths that would have been expected under the states’ pre-McDonald rules. There were 1,424 excess deaths in the states in the middle category.

In total, about 17,000 deaths were expected in the post-decision period, but 23,000 occurred, said lead author Dr. Jeremy Faust, an emergency physician at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, in an interview.

Among the eight states with the strictest laws, four — California, Maryland, New York and Rhode Island — saw statistically significant decreases in their pediatric firearm death rates. Illinois, which was directly affected by the court’s decision in the McDonald case, and Connecticut saw increases in their rates. In Massachusetts and New Jersey, the changes were not statistically significant.

The rate increased in all but four (Alaska, Arizona, Nebraska and South Dakota) of the 41 states in the two permissive categories. (Hawaii was not included in the study due its low rates of firearm deaths.)

Non-Hispanic Black children and teens saw the largest increase in firearm deaths in the 41 states with looser gun laws. Those youths’ mortality rates increased, but by a much smaller amount, in the states with strict laws.

Experts say the study underscores the power of policy to help prevent firearm deaths among children and teens. The analysis comes less than a month after the release of a federal report on children’s health that purported to highlight the drivers of poor health in America’s children but failed to include anything on firearm injuries — the leading cause of death for children and teens in 2020 and 2021, according to the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Trauma surgeon Dr. Marie Crandall, chair of surgery at MetroHealth medical center and a professor at Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine in Cleveland, researches gun violence. She previously practiced at a Jacksonville, Florida, urban trauma unit, where she frequently saw children and teens caught in gun violence.

“When I see children come in with 10 holes in them that I can’t save — that is a loss. That is a completely preventable death, and it is deeply emotionally scarring to have to have those conversations with families when we know, as a society, there are things we could do to de-escalate,” said Crandall, who wasn’t involved in the new study.

When I see children come in with 10 holes in them that I can't save — that is a loss. That is a completely preventable death.

– Dr. Marie Crandall, chair of surgery, MetroHealth medical center, Cleveland

In her state of Ohio, firearm death rates among children and teens increased from 1.6 per 100,000 kids in the decade before the McDonald decision to 2.8 after it, according to the study. Ohio was categorized in the group with the most permissive laws.

The study adds to previous research that shows state laws around child access to firearms, such as safe storage and background checks, tend to be associated with fewer child firearm deaths.

“We know that child access prevention decreases unintentional injuries and suicides of children. So having your firearms locked, unloaded, stored separately from ammunition, decreases the likelihood of childhood injuries,” Crandall said. “More stringent regulation of those things also decreases childhood injuries.”

But she said it’s hard to be optimistic about more stringent regulation when the current administration dismisses gun violence as a public health emergency. The Trump administration earlier this year took down an advisory from the former U.S. surgeon general, issued last year, that emphasized gun violence as a public health crisis.

Faust, the lead author of the new study, stressed that firearm injuries and deaths were notably missing from the Make America Healthy Again Commission report on children’s health. He said the failure to include them illustrates the politicization of a major public health emergency for America’s kids.

“It’s hard to take them seriously if they’re omitting the leading cause of death,” Faust said. “They’re whiffing, they’re shanking. They’re deciding on a political basis not to do it. I would say by omitting it, they’re politicizing it.”

Faust and pediatric trauma surgeon Dr. Chethan Sathya, who directs the Center for Gun Violence Prevention at the Northwell Health system in New York, each pointed to the development of car seat laws and public health education, as examples of preventive strategies that helped reduce childhood fatalities. They support a similar approach to curbing youth gun deaths.

“We really have to apply a public health framework to this issue, not a political one, and we’ve done that with other issues in the past,” said Sathya, who wasn’t involved in the study and oversees his hospital’s firearm injury prevention programs. “There’s no question that this is a public health issue.”

In Louisiana, which the study categorized as one of the 30 most permissive states, the child firearm mortality rate increased from 4.1 per 100,000 kids in the pre-McDonald period to 5.7 after it — the nation’s highest rate. The study period only goes to 2023, but the state last year enacted a permitless carry law, allowing people to carry guns in public without undergoing background checks. And just last month, Louisiana legislators defeated a bill that would have created the crime of improper firearm storage.

Louisiana Democratic state Rep. Matthew Willard, who sponsored the safe storage legislation, said during the floor debate that its purpose was to protect children. Louisiana had the highest rate of unintentional shootings by children between 2015 to 2022, according to the research arm of Everytown for Gun Safety, which advocates for stricter gun access. Willard cited that statistic on the floor.

But Republican opponents said Willard’s proposal would infringe on residents’ gun rights and make it more difficult for them to use guns in self-defense.

“Nobody needs to come in our houses and tell us what to do with our guns. I think this is ridiculous,” Republican Rep. R. Dewith Carrier said during the debate.

Another Republican opponent, state Rep. Troy Romero, said he was concerned that having a firearm locked away would make it harder for an adult to quickly access it.

“If it’s behind a locked drawer, how in the world are you going, at 2 or 3 in the morning, going to be able to protect your family if somebody intrudes or comes into your home?” Romero said.

Gun violence researcher Julia Fleckman, an assistant professor, and her team at Tulane University in New Orleans have started to collect data on the impact of the state’s permitless carry law.

“It places a disproportionate impact on really vulnerable people, really, our most vulnerable people,” Fleckman said, noting kids bear the brunt of legislators’ decisions. “They don’t have a lot of control over this or the decisions we’re making.”

In South Carolina, another one of the most permissive states, the mortality rate increased from 2.3 to 3.9 per 100,000 kids in the time before and after the McDonald decision. South Carolina Democratic state Rep. JA Moore, who lost his adult sister 10 years ago today in the 2015 racist shooting that killed nine at a Charleston church, said state policy alone isn’t enough. He implored his colleagues to also examine their perception of guns.

“We have a culture here in South Carolina that doesn’t lend itself to a more safe South Carolina,” said Moore, who added he’s been advocating for background checks and stricter carry laws. “There is a need for a culture change in our state, in our country, when it comes to guns and our relationships with guns as Americans, realizing that these are deadly weapons.”

And investing in safer neighborhoods is crucial, he said.

“People are hurt by guns in places that they’re more comfortable, like their homes in their own neighborhoods,” he said.

Community-based interventions are important to stemming violence, experts said. Crandall, the Cleveland surgeon, said there’s emerging evidence that hospital-based and community-based violence prevention programs decrease the likelihood of violent and firearm-related injury.

Such programs aim to break cycles of violence by connecting injured patients with community engagement services. After New York City implemented its hospital-based violence interruption program, two-thirds of 3,500 violent trauma patients treated at five hospitals received community prevention services.

After her 33-year-old son was killed in her neighborhood in 2019, Michelle Bell started M-PAC Cleveland — “More Prayer, Activity & Conversation” — a nonprofit collaborative of people who’ve lost loved ones to violent crime. She’s encountered many grieving parents who lost their children to gunfire. The group advocates and educates for safe storage laws and holds peer grief support groups.

She also partners with the school district in a program that shares stories of gun violence’s long-lasting impact on surviving children, families and communities and non-violent interpersonal conflict resolution.

“Oftentimes, the family that has lost the child, the child’s life has been taken by gun violence, there are other children in the home,” she said.

“It’s so devastating. It’s just so tragic that the No. 1 cause of death for children 18 and under is gun violence,” Bell continued.

The decision to “pull a trigger,” she said, changes a “lifetime of not only yours, but so many other people.”

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South Carolina killer eats fried fish, fried shrimp, crab cakes, a baked potato, carrots, fried okra, cherry pie, banana pudding and sweet tea before execution

 The 23rd Execution of 2025

Stephen Stanko, a South Carolina man sent to death row twice for separate murders was put to death June 13, 2025 by lethal injection in the state’s sixth execution in nine months, reported The Associated Press.

Stanko, 57, was pronounced dead at 6:34 p.m.

He was executed for shooting a friend and then cleaning out his bank account in Horry County in 2005.

Stanko also was serving a death sentence for killing his live-in girlfriend in her Georgetown County home hours earlier, strangling her as he raped her teenage daughter. Stanko slit the teen’s throat, but she survived.

The execution began after a 3 1/2 minute final statement where Stanko apologized to his victims and asked not to be judged by the worst day of his life. Witnesses could hear prison officials asking for the first dose of the powerful sedative pentobarbital which was different from previous executions.

Stanko appeared to be saying words, turned toward the families of the victims and then let out several quick breaths as his lips quivered.

Stanko appeared to stop breathing after a minute. His ruddy complexion quickly disappeared and the color drained from his face and hands. A prison employee asked for a second dose of pentobarbital about 13 minutes later. He was announced dead about 28 minutes after the execution started.

Three family members of his victims stared at Stanko and didn’t look away until well after he stopped breathing. Stanko’s brother and his lawyer also watched. Attorney Lindsey Vann, who watched her second inmate client die in seven months rubbed rosary beads in her hands.

Stanko was leaning toward dying by South Carolina’s new firing squad, like the past two inmates before him. But after autopsy results from the last inmate killed by that method showed the bullets from the three volunteers nearly missed his heart, Stanko went with lethal injection.

Stanko was the last of four executions scheduled around the country this week. Florida and Alabama each put an inmate to death on Tuesday. On Wednesday, Oklahoma executed a man transferred from federal to state custody to allow his death

The federal courts rejected Stanko’s last-ditch effort to spare his life as his lawyers argued the state isn’t carrying out lethal injection properly after autopsy results found fluid in the lungs of other inmates killed that way.

Also South Carolina Gov. Henry McMaster refused clemency in a phone call to prison officials minutes before the execution began.

A governor has not spared a death row inmate’s life in the previous 48 executions since South Carolina reinstated the death penalty about 50 years ago.

Stanko is the sixth inmate executed in South Carolina in nine months after the state went 13 years without putting an inmate to death because it could not obtain lethal injection drugs. The South Carolina General Assembly approved a firing squad and passed a shield law bill which allowed the suppliers of the drugs to stay secret.

In his final statement, Stanko talked about how he was an honor student and athlete and a volunteers and asked several times not to be judged by the night he killed two people.

“I have live for approximately 20,973 days, but I am judged solely for one,” Stanko said in his final statement read by his lawyer.

Stanko apologized several times to his victims and their families.

“Once I am gone, I hope that Christina, Laura’s family and Henry’s family can all forgive me. The execution may help them. Forgiveness will heal them.”

Stanko ate his last meal on Wednesday as prison officials give inmates a chance to enjoy their special food before their execution day. He ate fried fish, fried shrimp, crab cakes, a baked potato, carrots, fried okra, cherry pie, banana pudding and sweet tea.

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Man executed in Oklahoma for murder of 77-year-old woman

 The 22nd Execution of 2025

John Fitzgerald Hanson, 61, was executed for the 1999 murder of a 77-year-old woman. He pronounced dead at 10:11 a.m. Thursday, June 12, 2025 at the Oklahoma State Penitentiary. "Peace to everyone," he said at the end of his last words while strapped to the execution gurney, reported The Oklahoman.

He had been scheduled for execution on Dec. 15, 2022, but the Biden administration refused to return him to Oklahoma from a federal prison in Louisiana. The transfer went through on March 1, weeks after Trump began his second term.

He was executed for the fatal shooting of Mary Agnes Bowles, who was kidnapped from the parking lot of a Tulsa mall on Aug. 31, 1999. The victim was 77.

Hanson and an accomplice, Victor Miller, wanted the retired banker's car for a robbery spree. Hanson has always denied being the shooter, his attorneys said.

Hanson had been serving a life sentence, plus 82 years, at the U.S. Penitentiary in Pollock, Louisiana, for federal crimes involving the robbery spree. Oklahoma's attorney general, Gentner Drummond, sought Hanson's transfer after Trump issued a sweeping executive order on his first day back in office "restoring" the death penalty.

Hanson was executed in Oklahoma as a direct result of President Donald Trump's return to office, reported The Oklahoman.

"It is the policy of the United States to ensure that the laws that authorize capital punishment are respected and faithfully implemented, and to counteract the politicians and judges who subvert the law by obstructing and preventing the execution of capital sentences," Trump stated in his order.

President Joe Biden opposed the death penalty. In December, Biden commuted the sentences of 37 of the 40 people on federal death row.

“This case demonstrates that no matter how long it takes, Oklahoma will hold murderers accountable for their crimes," Drummond said in a news release after witnessing the execution. 

One of the inmate's attorneys said after the execution that Oklahoma had carried out an act of pointless cruelty.

"There was no need for Oklahoma to execute John Hanson," attorney Callie Heller said in a news release. "He would have lived the rest of his life in federal prison, costing the state nothing and posing no danger to anyone."

The execution took only 10 minutes to complete after Hanson made his brief final statement. It was the 17th in Oklahoma since lethal injections resumed in October 2021 after a long hiatus and one of the fastest.

It also was the third in the United States this week. A fourth execution is scheduled for Friday, June 13, in South Carolina.

Hanson blinked rapidly as the curtain to the execution chamber was raised at 10 a.m. He then said either "just forgive me" or "just forgiveness" when asked if he had any last words. Media witnesses differed on what he said at first because he spoke in a low voice.

A spiritual adviser, pastor Michael Scott, stood by the inmate's feet and read from a Bible as the execution drugs began to flow into his arms. Hanson could be heard snoring when the Oklahoma Department of Corrections operations chief announced he was unconscious.

Who was Mary Bowles?

The retired banker was from Tulsa. She was kidnapped after walking at the Promenade Mall for exercise. She had done volunteer work earlier that day at a Tulsa hospital in the intensive care unit for babies.

The two men took her in her car to a dirt pit near Owasso.

There, the accomplice shot Jerald Thurman, the owner of the dirt pit, after he spotted them on his property, according to trial testimony. Thurman died about two weeks later.

Hanson shot Bowles four to six times in a ditch near the dirt pit. Her body wasn't found for days.

The stolen Buick broke down after the two men went to a motel in Tulsa. They abandoned the car there.

Hanson also was convicted of the dirt pit owner's murder and sentenced for that crime to life in prison without the possibility of parole.

The accomplice, Miller, was given life in prison without the possibility of parole for the murders after death sentences were thrown out on appeal. He is now 62.

The Oklahoma Pardon and Parole Board voted 3-2 on May 7 to deny Hanson clemency. The vote meant Gov. Kevin Stitt could not consider commuting his sentence.

At his clemency hearing, he told the board members he was not an evil person.

"I haven't lived my life inclined to do wrong," he said. "I was caught in a situation I couldn't control. Things were happening so fast, and at the spur of the moment, due to my lack of decisiveness and fear, I responded incorrectly, and two people lost their lives.

"I can't change the past, and I would if I could."

His attorneys and death penalty opponents said he was autistic and easily manipulated. His attorneys also contended there was overwhelming evidence that the accomplice was the one who actually shot Bowles.

Hanson did not testify at his 2001 trial in Tulsa County District Court. He also did not testify at a 2006 resentencing trial.

More: 'A remarkable development': States expanding their execution methods to firing squad, more

His attorneys tried to stop his execution, complaining in lawsuits about his transfer to Oklahoma and his clemency hearing. They also made a last-minute claim of newly discovered evidence about a key prosecution witness.

An Oklahoma County judge granted Hanson a temporary stay on Monday, June 9, so his lawsuit over his clemency hearing could be considered. The Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals ruled Wednesday, June 11, the judge did not have that authority.

The execution went forward after the Oklahoma Supreme Court and the U.S. Supreme Court denied Hanson's last requests for emergency stays.

"I feel like now we can finally be at peace with this," said Jacob Thurman, the dirt pit owner's son, after witnessing the execution. "I feel like we have some closure and our families can pick up the pieces now and move forward."

The son, who lives in Tulsa, said it took an army of people to make the execution happen. He specifically thanked U.S Attorney General Pam Bondi, who ordered the Federal Bureau of Prisons to transfer Hanson "so that Oklahoma can carry out this just sentence."

Bowles' niece, Sara Parker Mooney, called for reforms after witnessing the execution.

"Capital punishment is not an effective form of justice when it takes 26 years," said Mooney, who lives in Texas. "Respectfully, if the state is going to continue to execute individuals a better process is needed. This existing process is broken.

"There must be limitations on taxpayer-funded frivolous litigation as exemplified in the past two weeks. It's ridiculous, it's expensive and it only revictimizes the survivors."

She said she is relieved that the execution is over with. "But nobody wins," she said.

Hanson did not request anything specific for his last meal, said Steven Harpe, the executive director of the Corrections Department.

Hanson did eat the regular meal of a chicken pot pie, two fruit cups, two rolls and some carrots, the official said. Hanson declined a sedative.

Witnessing the execution were reporters for The Oklahoman, The Associated Press, the Tulsa World, a Tulsa television station and the online news site NonDoc.

The execution came as corrections officials are still dealing with damage from a tornado that struck Saturday, June 7. The entrance for executions at the penitentiary had boards up where the storm destroyed windows.

The roof of the warden's mansion is sagging where a massive tree fell into it. The mansion was already under renovation.

The storm downed trees across McAlester and knocked a wall off one brick building. The street in front of the building was still closed Thursday.

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