FLORIDA: Richard Knight Stabs Sleeping Mother and 4-Year-Old Daughter to Death Over Eviction Dispute, Sentenced to Lethal Injection

JUST IN: Richard Knight EXECUTED In Florida After Brutal Double Murder—Last Meal & Words

It it’s my belief that the reason I killed Hanasia, the 4-year-old little girl, was to make sure that she wouldn’t be able to identify him as the murderer of her mother. That’s reprehensible anytime someone kills a child, but to do it to save himself from being prosecuted makes it just so much more egregious. I think that the death penalty is a necessary tool.

I think it takes too long to implement it, and Richard Knight got a sentence that brings about accountability for the horrific actions that he conducted when he murdered Hanasia and Odissia. >> On May 21st, 2026, at exactly 6:13 in the evening, Richard Knight was pronounced dead by lethal injection at Florida State Prison in Stark, Florida.

He was 47 years old. In this video, we’re going to cover everything about this case. Who were his victims? What happened the night of the crime? How the legal system handled it? The controversies that followed? And at the end, what his last meal was? And the final words he spoke before the drugs entered his system.

Stay with me, because this one has layers. Richard Knight was born in Jamaica. He was abandoned by his biological mother as an infant, placed into institutional care with no known name and no recorded birth date. He grew up without a family, without roots, and without protection. >> [music] >> Between the ages of 8 and 11, he and his brother were repeatedly sexually abused by a neighbor.

As he got older, Knight began experiencing serious medical problems. Seizures, blackouts, severe headaches so intense that, according to those who knew him, he would bang his head against walls just to cope with the pain. He eventually made his way to the United States as a young adult. By the year 2000, he was living in Coral Springs, Florida in an apartment shared with his cousin, his cousin’s girlfriend, and her young daughter.

That living arrangement would end in a way no one should ever have to witness. It was the summer of 2000. Richard Knight had been staying in the Coral Springs apartment with his cousin, a woman named Odessia Stevens, his cousin’s girlfriend, and her 4-year-old daughter, Hennessy Mullings. The living situation had been tense for a while.

Knight and Stevens had a history of arguments. The source of the tension, according to court records, was simple. Knight had overstayed his welcome and Stevens wanted him out. One evening, while his cousin was away at work, Odessia told Knight directly he would need to move out the next morning. Knight left the apartment briefly. Then he came back.

By that point, Stevens and her daughter had already gone to bed. According to court records, Knight went to the kitchen. He retrieved knives. Then he walked into the bedroom where a woman and her 4-year-old child lay sleeping. What happened next was described in court documents as heinous, atrocious, and cruel.

Odessia Stevens was stabbed 21 times. Most of the wounds were to her neck. Additional stab wounds were found on her chin, her back, and her chest. Her daughter, Hennessy, 4 years old, was stabbed multiple times as well. She also showed physical signs consistent with strangulation. The attack continued, according to investigators, until the knife itself physically broke.

When it was over, Knight attempted to clean up the scene, but neighbors had already called the police. When officers arrived, Knight fled through a window. He was caught nearby almost immediately. Richard Knight was formally arrested in August of 2001, over a year after the murders. Exactly why the arrest took that long has not been extensively detailed in the public record.

But by that point, the case against him was being built carefully. The crime scene had left behind more than just the weapon. It had left behind questions. Questions that, as we’ll get to shortly, were never fully answered before the state of Florida decided it had seen enough. Richard Knight went to trial in 2006, 6 years after the murders.

part2

He was convicted on two counts of first-degree murder. In March of 2007, he was sentenced to death. The court found multiple aggravating factors in the case. That’s legal language for circumstances that make a crime more severe in the eyes of the law. Things like the vulnerability of the victim, the especially cruel nature of the killing, and the presence of a child.

But here is where things get complicated. The court found no statutory mitigation. That means, in the eyes of the sentencing process, nothing was determined to legally reduce the weight of what Knight had done. Now, the defense had presented evidence. They put forward information about Knight’s traumatic childhood, his history of sexual abuse, his ongoing medical issues, the seizures, the blackouts, the neurological problems, his life of abandonment and untreated pain.

The jury heard some of it, but according to advocates and Knight’s later legal team, the jury never heard the full picture, never received a complete, coherent account of how a life shaped by trauma, neglect, and untreated illness had led to that night. Whether that changes anything is not for this video to decide.

What it does do is raise a question that courts would spend the next two decades grappling with. The Florida Supreme Court upheld his convictions and sentence in 2011. A subsequent appeal for post-conviction relief was denied in 2017. Knight remained on death row. Now, let’s talk about what made this case more than just straightforward because there was a piece of evidence sitting in this case that never got a clean answer.

On the blade of the murder weapon, investigators found a latent fingerprint. It was confirmed to be of sufficient quality for comparison, meaning it was usable, meaningful, worth examining. That fingerprint did not match Richard Knight. It also did not match any other known individual connected to the case as of his execution date, May 21st, 2026.

That fingerprint remained unidentified. Knight’s legal team in his final weeks argued that this print should be run through modern AFIS databases, the automated fingerprint identification system used by law enforcement nationally. They argued that expanded databases might now be able to match it to someone who wasn’t in the system back in 2000 or 2006.

There was also evidence of mixed DNA at the crime scene. Samples that were consistent with more than one person’s presence. The state’s own expert testimony acknowledged this during the original trial. None of this means Richard Knight didn’t commit these murders. The courts reviewed the fingerprint argument and pointed out that the unidentified print had been known about and addressed at trial.

It was not newly discovered evidence, they ruled. But the question lingered. If someone else’s fingerprint is on the murder weapon and it has never been identified, should the state execute a man before that question is answered? On top of the forensic questions, Knight’s legal team raised serious concerns about Florida’s execution protocol itself.

Specifically, a provision that allows for what’s called a Venus cutdown. This is an invasive surgical procedure used when an intravenous line cannot be established through a normal vein. Under Florida’s own written rules, this procedure could be performed by unqualified personnel and potentially without local anesthesia.

In plain terms, if something went wrong during the execution, state protocol allowed staff to surgically cut into a person’s body to access a vein without any requirement that the person performing the procedure be a medical professional and without guaranteeing the person would be properly sedated before happened. That was the argument.

The courts rejected it. And then there was the timeline. Governor DeSantis signed Knight’s death warrant on April 22nd, 2026. The execution was set for May 21st, 2026. That is 29 days. Florida law allows up to 180 days between a death warrant being signed and an execution being carried out.

The state used less than 1/6 of that window. Knight’s lead attorney was simultaneously navigating a spouse’s medical emergency during this period, making it even harder to mount a comprehensive final appeal in the time available. Critics argued Florida was moving faster than the justice system could keep up with. Supporters of the execution argued that this case had already had over two decades of review, and that the victims’ families had waited long enough. May 21st, 2026.

The day began quietly for Richard Knight. He declined a last meal. He did not meet with any visitors. He did not request a spiritual adviser. On that same day, across the country in Tennessee, another scheduled execution was being called off. Inmate Tony Carruthers was supposed to die that evening, but officials were unable to find a suitable vein for a backup intravenous line as required by protocol.

Tennessee’s governor later announced the state would not try again for at least a year. In Florida, there were no such complications. At 6:00 p.m. exactly, the curtain of the execution chamber was drawn back. Richard Knight was already there, strapped to the gurney, arms extended outward, intravenous line in place. The warden asked him if he had any final words.

Knight looked forward, and he spoke, “I want to give thanks to Yahweh, who is the most high.” That was it. The injection began immediately after. Knight closed his eyes. He barely moved. After approximately 10 minutes, a medical professional was called into the room. At 6:13 p.m. Richard Knight was pronounced dead.

He was the seventh person executed in Florida in 2026. The state was already scheduled to carry out its eighth execution on June 2nd. Before we close, let’s make sure we say their names properly. Adessie Stevens, a woman trying to maintain a home, raise her daughter, and make a reasonable request of a man who had overstayed his time there.

Hennessey Mullins, 4 years old. She was asleep when it happened. She never had a chance to run or call out or understand what was coming. 26 years passed between that night and the night of Knight’s execution. For the family of the victims, that is 26 years of carrying something that never fully goes away. Whatever you believe about capital punishment, whatever you think about the unresolved evidence in this case, that grief was real and it was long and it was theirs.

Florida executed its seventh person of 2026 on schedule at 6:13 p.m. without complications. Richard Knight is gone. Adessie Stevens and Hennessey Mullins have been gone since the summer of 2000. And the questions, some of them anyway, will remain open. That is the case of Richard Knight. Now, I want to leave you with something to think about as you go.

The unidentified fingerprint on that knife, the one that didn’t match Knight, didn’t match anyone connected to the case, and was never run through modern databases before the execution was carried out. What do you think should have been done with it? Should Florida have paused the process until that question was answered? Or had the justice system already given this case more than enough time? Leave your thoughts in the comments below.

I genuinely want to know where you stand. If you found this video valuable, please like and subscribe. It helps this channel keep covering cases that deserve serious attention. I’ll see you in the next one.