JUST IN: Florida “Deadpool Killer” Wade Wilson To Be Executed — Two Women Killed In One Morning…..

This man, Wade Wilson, is accused of brutally murdering two Cape Coral women, Christine Melton and Diane Ruiz. He’s been in jail since 2019 awaiting trial, and recently he sent us dozens of letters with some wild accusations. Tonight, for the first time ever and from jail, he’s talking, and that’s with NBC2 anchor Kyla Gaylor.

These are all the letters Wade Wilson has written to NBC2 over the last 6 months. He really wanted to talk with us. I know what you’re thinking. Why would we listen to a man accused of some pretty heinous crimes? A man with a long rap sheet at that. Well, we found out he may be involved in even more than we once realized.

 It is the evening of October 6th, 2019 in Fort Myers, Florida. The air is thick and humid. The kind of night where the heat clings to your skin even after the sun has gone down. Inside Buddha Live, a bar on McGregor Boulevard known for its live music and cheap drinks, the crowd is loose and loud. People are laughing, swaying to whatever cover band is on stage, nursing cocktails and talking over each other the way people do when they have nowhere else to be.

 Christine Melton is one of them. She is 35 years old, originally from Illinois, a waitress who moved to Cape Coral with her best friend from high school, Stephanie Sailors. They work at the same restaurant. They live close to each other. And tonight, they are out together the way they have been hundreds of times before. Two best friends soaking in a Florida night with no idea it would be their last.

 Christine is described by everyone who knew her as warm, quick-witted, and fiercely loyal. She is the kind of woman who makes people feel safe just by being in the room. She is a godmother, a cat lover. Her favorite holiday is Halloween. She lives in a small duplex in Cape Coral, four houses down from her mother, Katie, who’s beginning to lose her grip on reality as Alzheimer’s takes hold.

Christine is her mother’s best friend. They have coffee every single morning. Christine is the one who keeps the scammers away, the one who fields the phone calls and watches the bank accounts. She is, as her brother Robert would later put it, the glue that holds the whole family together. Tonight, she’s just a woman at a bar enjoying a night out.

Somewhere around closing time, as Christine and Stephanie are walking toward the upstairs bar, a man steps directly into their path. He is tall, lean, 25 years old, with a face that hasn’t yet been covered in the tattoos the world would later come to know him for. He introduces himself with the kind of easy confidence that makes strangers feel like old friends.

 His name is Wade Wilson. Nobody in that bar knows what Wade Wilson has already done. Nobody knows where he has been, what he has been charged with, or what he is capable of. And by this time tomorrow, two women will be dead. Strangled within hours of each other by the same pair of hands. This is the story of Wade Steven Wilson, the man the media would call the Deadpool Killer.

 And to understand how a single October morning in Cape Coral, Florida, turned into one of the most brutal double homicides the state has seen in years, we have to go back to the very beginning. Wade Steven Wilson was born on May 20th, 1994, to parents who were barely more than children themselves. His father was 14 years old, his mother just 13.

 They were not equipped to raise a baby. Wilson was given up for adoption and placed with Steve and Candace Wilson, a couple in Tallahassee who would raise him as their own. By all accounts, the Wilsons gave him a stable home. He attended Deerlake Middle School and later Lawton Chiles High School, where he is listed in the class of 2012.

But something was wrong. Former classmates who later spoke to reporters described Wilson as restless and troubled, a kid who radiated a kind of low-level chaos that made people uneasy even when they couldn’t explain why. One woman who knew him in high school told reporters that she never felt unsafe around him one-on-one, but added that he did not respect authority whatsoever.

Another said he was expelled for lighting a roll of toilet paper on fire while smoking in the bathroom. One classmate remembered something more telling, a sense that at some point along the way something just fell off. That the efforts of his adoptive parents were not being appreciated or were being taken for granted.

 Wilson himself would later tell a neurologist that he was fine until about the age of 11 when he told his parents he thought he was going crazy. During his adolescence he sustained four documented concussions, two from car accidents, two from contact sports. In one crash he was the passenger when the car hit an oak tree. He struck his head on the windshield.

In another he was at the beach with friends when they hit a tree. Everyone in the car was knocked unconscious. Wilson ran from the scene because he was on probation, passed out again, then circled back to the paramedics but left before he could be taken to a hospital. He also reported being jumped three times and knocked out each time.

Whether the head injuries explain what came next or whether they are a convenient excuse offered by defense attorneys is a question that would divide expert witnesses and jurors for years to come. What is not in dispute is this. By 2012, at the age of 18, Wade Wilson’s life had become a revolving door of arrests and incarcerations.

His criminal record in Leon County includes burglary, assault, and firearm-related offenses. In November of 2013, he was sentenced to prison for burglary and grand theft serving until September of 2014. In 2015, he was arrested on charges of sexual battery and kidnapping after a woman accused him of raping her in his vehicle after a party.

 A six-person jury acquitted him. By 2017, he was back in prison for stealing firearms serving until July of 2018. And then came one of the strangest chapters in Wilson’s already chaotic life. While serving time, Wilson ended up in a cell with a man named Brian Winchester who was at the center of one of Tallahassee’s most infamous murder cases, the killing of Jerry Michael Williams whose wife Denise had conspired with Winchester to stage her husband’s death as a boating accident in 2000.

Winchester allegedly tried to get Wilson to fabricate evidence in the case. Wilson claims he was offered $20,000 to take care of Winchester’s wife Denise. Wilson said he refused, that it didn’t feel right, and instead went to the Leon County Sheriff’s Office as an informant. He even appears briefly in a documentary about the case, but there is another version of this story.

 Wilson has also claimed he actually received the $20,000 in a white manila envelope at a meetup after his release while he was on probation. The truth of what happened, whether Wilson was a reluctant informant or something more complicated, has never been fully resolved. What is clear is that by early 2019, Wilson’s violence was escalating and the targets were the women closest to him.

 In February of 2019, a former girlfriend accused him of assaulting and choking her. She initially reported kidnapping and sexual assault, but investigators did not pursue those charges citing a lack of evidence and an existing no contact order between the two. On July 1st, 2019, Wilson was arrested again for battery.

 And then there was Kelly Matthews. Matthews would later go public on TikTok about her relationship with Wilson claiming that he was never violent with her until February 18th, 2019, when she says he choked her two or three times in a car, pushed her onto the floorboard, cut off her clothes with a knife, bit her in the face, gagged her, tied a shirt around her head, and bound her hands and feet with a used garbage bag.

 She reported the assault to police, and she would later say that they failed her severely by not arresting Wilson. Three months before the night at Buddha Live, three months before everything went wrong, the system had Wilson’s name, Wilson’s face, Wilson’s history, and still he was out, free, walking into a bar and introducing himself to strangers.

 To understand the full weight of what happened on October 7th, 2019, you have to understand who Diane Ruiz was. Because the world came to know her only as a victim, a name attached to a crime, and she was so much more than that. Diane Ruiz was 43 years old, a bartender at the Moose Lodge on Santa Barbara Boulevard in Cape Coral.

Her co-workers said she had never missed a single shift in 5 years. Not one. She was the heartbeat of the bar, the woman who made everyone, regulars, strangers, people who walked in off the street for the first time, feel like they belonged. She was engaged to Scott Hannon, a dock worker who lived with Diane, her son Brandon Schwoller, and one of Brandon’s siblings.

 The last text Diane ever sent was to Scott. It said, “I love you.” Diane was a mother of two sons, Brandon, who was 29, and Zane Romero, who was 19 at the time of her death. Zane had just made his high school marching band. Diane was thrilled. She could not wait to sit in the crowd and watch him perform. She never got the chance. Zane would later testify at Wilson’s penalty phase, naming all of the things his mother missed because of her murder.

Three years of marching band, his college acceptance letters, photography awards, a severe car accident that put him in the intensive care unit during his freshman year of college. She was never there. She would have been there for all of it. Diane was also weeks away from getting married.

 Everything she had been working toward, the job, the family, the wedding, was right there in front of her. On the morning of October 7th, 2019, Diane left for her 10:00 a.m. shift at the Moose Lodge. She walked the way she always did. It was a route she had taken hundreds of times. She never arrived. Now we go back to the bar, back to the night before, back to Buddha Live, where Christine Melton and Stephanie Sailors have just met Wade Wilson.

The three of them hit it off. After the bar closes, they go to the home of a man named Jason Sheppard, someone they also met that night. Sheppard would later describe Wilson as cool. They spent several hours at Sheppard’s place before leaving in the early morning. Wilson’s girlfriend at the time, Melissa Montanez, who everyone called Mila, was also at Buddha Live that night.

 But she didn’t want to go to Sheppard’s house, and at some point, Wilson drove off in her car without her permission, leaving her stranded at the bar. Wilson, Christine, and Stephanie end up at Christine’s duplex in Cape Coral. Stephanie eventually leaves. Everything seems fine. Christine would have never let her leave the house if she’d been scared, Stephanie would later testify.

But what happens next behind the closed door of that duplex is the point of no return. The morning sun is barely up when Wade Wilson wraps his hands around Christine Melton’s throat as she sleeps in her bed. He squeezes. She wakes up, thrashing, clawing, fighting for her life with everything she has. Her fingernails break. Her lungs bruise.

 Her liver bruises. Her bladder and colon bruise. The medical examiner would later determine that the cause of death was asphyxia due to compression of the neck. Christine Melton is found tied and wrapped. Her skin has turned blue. There’s a curtain rod nearby with her blood on one end and Wilson’s DNA on the other. She fought.

She fought hard, and it was not enough. After Christine stops breathing, Wilson takes her car, a black Nissan Versa, and her cell phone. He drives to downtown Fort Myers to Mila’s Spa, the business owned by Melissa Montanez. It is approximately 8:45 in the morning. He is driving a car Montanez has never seen before. He tries to pull her into it.

When she resists, he punches her in the face, slaps her, chokes her, and drags her upstairs into her own business where he pins her against the wall by her throat. When he hits her again, he seems startled by the amount of blood. Montanez sees her moment and runs. Years later, Montanez would testify at trial with a sentence that would hang in the courtroom like smoke.

I knew I was going to die that day. I was just buying time. It is the morning of her son’s 15th birthday. She is thinking about the fact that she will never get to call him. That this is how her son will remember this day. The day his mother was killed by her boyfriend, and then Wilson is distracted by the blood.

And she runs. Prosecutors would later reveal that when Wilson was asked about Montanez and whether he would have killed her, too, he said there were too many people around. He probably would have killed her, too. Wilson drives away in Christine’s Versa. A Fort Myers police officer named Timothy McCormick spots him later that afternoon around 3:00 p.m.

 parked outside at Joe’s Crab Shack. Wilson tells the officer he is waiting for his girlfriend. McCormick wants to detain him for the battery on Montanez, but it is only a misdemeanor. When Wilson drives away, McCormick cannot give chase. The police do not yet know about the murders, but between the attack on Montanez and the encounter at Joe’s Crab Shack, something else happens.

 Something that defines the full horror of this day. Wade Wilson is driving through Cape Coral in a dead woman’s car. He sees a woman walking along the street. She is heading to work. She has never missed a shift in 5 years. Her name is Diane Ruiz. Wilson pulls over. He asks her for directions to a nearby school. He sounds lost, confused, harmless.

 Diane gets in the car to help. The moment she tries to get back out, Wilson attacks. He beats her. He wraps his hands around her throat and squeezes. He strangles her until she stops moving. Then he pushes her out of the car, and he realizes she is still alive. So, he gets back behind the wheel of Christine Melton’s Nissan Versa, a car already soaked in one woman’s blood, and he runs Diane Ruiz over. Again, and again, and again.

Prosecutors would tell the jury that he ran her over between 10 and 20 times. Her nose is broken. Her neck is fractured. After it is done, Wilson calls his biological father, Steven Testasecca, on the phone. He calls three times. At first, Testasecca does not believe what he is hearing. He thinks his son is telling stories.

 Wilson has always been a good storyteller. But then, Testasecca puts the phone on speaker so his wife can hear. And she begins relaying what Wilson is saying to the police in real time. Wilson describes what he did. He tells his father he strangled both women. He tells his father that when he went to dump Diane’s body, he realized she was still alive.

 So, he got back in the car and ran her over until she looked like spaghetti. When Testasecca asks him why, Wilson has no answer beyond four words, “I just wanted to.” When asked later by detectives whether he had any remorse, Wilson’s response is equally cold. “I would do it again.” Testasecca asks Wilson for his location and tells him he will send an Uber.

Wilson gives it up. The police come instead. But, Wilson is not initially arrested for murder. When officers find him at an unoccupied residence he’s broken into, the home of a couple named Kent and Fanny Amelin, who were out of town in Ohio, he’s charged with burglary, larceny, and damaged property, along with the battery on Montana’s.

 The murder charges will come later. The police are careful. They want to build the strongest case possible before bringing capital charges. In between, something else happens. Wilson walks into a restaurant covered in blood and tells the owner, someone he apparently knows, that he has killed two women. The owner calls 911.

 Wilson flees before police arrive. Three days pass. On October 10th, 2019, Cape Coral police are searching for Diane Ruiz, who has been reported missing by her co-workers at the Moose Lodge. Sergeant Justin De Rosso and his team are sweeping the area when they spot something in the sky, a single vulture circling over an empty field behind a Sam’s Club.

They follow it and they find Diane Ruiz. Her body is so decomposed that her family has to identify her by the dragon tattoo on her back. The Cape Coral Police Department officially names Wade Wilson as a person of interest on October 11th. A month later, on November 19th, 2019, a Lee County grand jury indicts him on two counts of first-degree premeditated murder, two counts of battery, one count of burglary of a dwelling, and one count of petty theft.

 The State Attorney’s Office files a notice of intent to seek the death penalty. And then Wilson waits. For nearly five years, he sits in the Lee County Jail while the legal machinery grinds forward. And during those five years, he transforms. When Wilson was arrested, his face was relatively clean. He had some tattoos, but nothing that would stop you on the street.

 By the time he appears in court for trial in June of 2024, he is unrecognizable. His face is covered in ink. There are swastikas, one under his right eye, a larger one on the side of his head, the number 666, a Joker-inspired stitched smile across his mouth, the phrase bread for war, references to The Dark Knight and Deadpool.

 He has turned himself into a living provocation, a walking middle finger to the world that is about to judge him. And then there are the escape attempts and the drugs. In September of 2020, Wilson and his cellmate Joseph Katz are caught tampering with a cell window in an attempt to escape. Wilson is charged with attempted escape and criminal mischief.

 In April of 2023, a canine detects methamphetamine hidden in landscaping rocks outside the jail’s receiving area. Authorities trace the drugs back to Wilson, who is coordinating with outside contacts and other inmates to smuggle narcotics into the facility. He survives a drug overdose that same year. He pleads no contest to attempted trafficking and conspiracy to traffic methamphetamine, receiving a 12-year sentence to run concurrently with his death sentences.

 Even in a cage, Wilson cannot stop. Will not stop. The trial begins on June 3rd, 2024 in the Lee County Courthouse in Fort Myers with Judge Nicholas Thompson presiding. Assistant State Attorneys Andreas Gardner and Sarah Miller prosecute the case. The defense is led by Lee Hollander and Kevin Shirley. The evidence is overwhelming.

 Phone records, DNA, eyewitnesses, Christine’s car filled with blood stains, Wilson’s own confessions to his father, to Montanez, to the restaurant owner, to detectives. The prosecution’s case is built on a simple, devastating argument. Wilson murdered two women for the sake of killing. “Strangulation is the epitome of life slipping through someone’s hands,” Assistant State Attorney Gardner tells the jury during closing arguments.

 The testimony is wrenching. Stephanie Sailors sobs as she describes her best friend, the woman she moved across the country with, the woman who had coffee with her mother every single morning. Brandon Gilar, Diane’s son, shakes on the stand as he recounts the recounts the blur of trauma that followed his mother’s disappearance.

Scott Hannon, Diane’s fiance, tells the court the last text she ever sent him was, “I love you.” He says he is still waiting for her to walk through the door. And then Melissa Montanez takes the stand. She describes the attack. She describes looking at Wilson and seeing two different people, one kind, caring, funny, compassionate, and the other, the monster.

 She tells the jury she knew she was going to die that day. She was just buying time. It was her son’s 15th birthday. Wilson sits through all of it with no expression, no reaction. Not when the families cry. Not when the photographs of the crime scenes are shown. Not when the medical examiner describes what strangulation does to the human body.

The only time his demeanor shifts, the only time the jurors see any sign of life behind those tattooed eyes, is when Montano’s is on the stand. When a witness describes the attack on her, Wilson shrugs. When Montano’s herself is present, he taps his fingers, reaches for water, shows what observers describe as signs of nerves or discomfort.

The prosecution takes note. He shows nothing for the women he killed, but the woman who got away, the one who saw him and lived, she makes him fidget. In his own words, “To Lonnie Funder Smith, he was a lion.” Prosecutor Sarah Miller tells the jury, “and they were the prey.” On June 12th, 2024, after two hours of deliberation, the jury returns guilty verdicts on all six counts, two counts of first-degree murder, grand theft of a motor vehicle, battery, burglary of a dwelling, first-degree petty theft. Wilson does

not react. The families of Christine Melton and Diane Ruiz hold each other and weep. The penalty phase begins on June 20th. This is where the defense makes its case for Wilson’s life. Dr. Hyman Eisenstein, a forensic neuropsychologist, testifies that Wilson suffers from neurocognitive brain impairment, likely caused by the adolescent sports injuries and car wrecks.

 The trauma compromised his executive functioning and hindered his ability to function like a normal, healthy individual, Eisenstein says. Substance abuse made everything worse. Dr. Mark Mills, a forensic psychiatrist, goes further, testifying that Wilson suffers from some kind of psychotic disorder. Dr. Mark Rubino, a neurologist, tells the court that brain scans show evidence of trauma, impairment with short-term memory, and cognitive and emotional problems in the setting of psychiatric disease.

 Rubino recounts Wilson telling him that he was fine until about 11 when he told his adoptive parents he thought he was going crazy. Wilson’s adoptive parents, Steve and Candace Wilson, write a letter to the judge begging for their son’s life. “We still love him.” the letter reads. But the prosecution fires back with its own expert. Dr.

 Michael Hurwitz, a forensic psychologist, argues there is insufficient evidence to support a diagnosis of a psychotic disorder. “Wilson’s extensive history of drug abuse,” Hurwitz says, “both documented and self-reported, is a far more plausible explanation for his behavior.” The state also notes that Wilson has the ability to recount events when he wants to.

 His memory works fine when it serves his purposes. When it comes to describing how he killed two women in graphic detail over the phone to his father, there is no impairment, no confusion, no psychotic break, just cold, clear narration. On June 25th, 2024, the jury votes. Nine of 12 recommend death for the murder of Christine Melton.

 10 of 12 recommend death for the murder of Diane Ruiz. Those numbers matter. They matter enormously because in 2019 when Wilson committed these murders, Florida law required a unanimous jury to recommend the death penalty. Every single juror had to agree. But in April of 2023, Governor Ron DeSantis signed a new law lowering the threshold.

 Now only eight of 12 jurors need to vote for death. Florida became the state with the lowest bar for a death sentence anywhere in the country. Wilson’s crimes happened in 2019. He was sentenced under 2023 rules. His defense attorney, Lee Hollander, does not argue insanity. He tells the judge plainly, “I’m not arguing insanity.

 I’m arguing he’s whacked out of his mind for any of this. He asks for a finding of second-degree murder rather than first-degree. It does not work. On August 27th, 2024, Judge Nicholas Thompson imposes two death sentences. The evidence showed both murders were heinous, atrocious, and cruel, Thompson says, and that the second murder was cold, calculated, and premeditated. The courtroom erupts.

 The families of Christine Melton and Diane Ruiz clap, cheer, and embrace. Felix Ruiz, Diane’s father, stands and makes a promise. “This is not the end. The end is when he takes his last breath, and I will be there at the execution. That’s a promise.” Wilson shows no emotion. His face does not move.

 The tattoos stare back at the courtroom. The swastikas, the stitched smile, the words “bred for war,” and behind them, nothing, or at least nothing he’s willing to show. And then his attorney makes a request that catches everyone off guard. Kevin Shirley stands and says that Wilson has asked the court, within whatever authority it has, to get him to death row as soon as possible.

 The judge tells him today is not the day for that. Three days later, on August 30th, Wade Wilson is transferred from the Lee County Jail to Union Correctional Institution in Raiford, Florida. He becomes one of 274 men on Florida’s death row. His cell measures 6 ft by 9 ft with a ceiling height of 9 and 1/2 ft. No air conditioning, no cable.

 Meals are delivered in insulated carts three times a day at 5:00 a.m., around 10:30 a.m., and around 4:00 p.m. He eats with a spork. He is handcuffed every time he leaves his cell. He is counted at least once every hour. Within 20 days of arriving, Wilson is already in trouble. Prison disciplinary records obtained by Wink News, 163 pages worth, show that Wilson attempted to mail an autographed handmade drawing to someone he called Sweet Cheeks, instructing them to post it on a 24-hour auction site because, in his words, “Due to my fame and the

rarity of my signed work, this should sell quick and rake in the cash.” He is caught misusing his prison tablet. He damages it trying to access the USB port. He attempts to form personal relationships with staff and becomes so agitated during questioning about it that he has to be removed. In November of 2024, guards observe him under the influence of an unknown substance.

By January of 2025, he tries to have someone illegally use a cash app to obtain $200. And then, there is the other thing. The thing that makes this case unlike any other, the fan mail, the love letters, the fundraising campaigns, the TikTok accounts, the women, thousands of them, who flooded Wilson’s jail inbox with messages, explicit photographs, and declarations of love.

At one point, Wilson received over 3,900 messages from women and fans. A Fundly campaign created to save Wade Steven Wilson and help prove his innocence raised nearly $74,000, including a single donation of $24,000 from someone identified only as Janette. Wilson reportedly received close to $100,000 total through various fundraising efforts.

 The phenomenon has a name, hybristophilia, a sexual attraction to individuals who commit violent crimes. Psychologists point out that many of the women drawn to Wilson have themselves been victims of abuse. The conversation feels safe to them because he is behind bars. He cannot hurt them. He writes them letters, makes them laugh on the phone, tells them he loves them.

But the families of the victims see it differently. Robert Melton, Christine’s brother, says a friend sent him a link to Wilson’s TikTok fame. “Oh, yeah, he’s a TikTok sensation,” the friend said. Robert’s response, “Oh my god. I don’t want anything in this to be about him,” Robert says. “Two wonderful people died.

This should not end up being about Wade.” State Attorney Amira Fox is more direct. At the press conference following sentencing, she says it has not gone unnoticed that Wilson is being idolized by some people who are somehow proud to mix their names with his. She calls him the most poor representation of a man there could ever be.

Even Wilson’s own defense attorney agrees the fan attention is ridiculous. A Paramount+ documentary, Handsome Devil, Charming Killer, released in January of 2026, examines the phenomenon in three parts, featuring interviews with Wilson’s former girlfriends, his father, and investigators. The documentary notes that in recent prison photos, the man who once drew thousands of admirers now appears bloated and disheveled with several teeth missing.

The charm, whatever it was, has faded, but the legal questions surrounding his case have not. On May 2nd, 2025, Wilson’s new appellate counsel files an initial brief with the Supreme Court of Florida. The appeal raises seven issues. The central argument is this: Florida retroactively applied a 2023 law, the non-unanimous jury provision, to crimes committed in 2019, when unanimity was required.

Wilson’s attorneys argue this violates the ex post facto clauses of both the US and Florida constitutions. They point out that Florida’s own statutes expressly prohibit the retroactive application of any law dealing with a crime or its punishment. Had the law that existed in 2019 been applied, Wilson would not have received two death sentences because the jury votes were not unanimous.

 The argument is not frivolous. In no other state in the country would a 9-3 or 10-2 jury vote result in a death sentence. Florida now stands alone in this regard with the lowest threshold for capital punishment in America. On February 5th, 2026, Wilson’s attorney Michael Offerman stands before the Florida Supreme Court.

 The oral arguments last approximately 4 minutes. Offerman tells the justices he does not intend to waste the court’s time rearguing points that have already been considered. A reference to a December ruling in which the court rejected similar challenges to the death penalty statute in another case. The assistant attorney general asked the court to affirm.

 Justice Renatha Francis remarks with a small laugh that hearings usually take longer than 4 minutes. The appeal is swiftly rejected. Aufferman tells reporters he is taking the case to the United States Supreme Court. Whether the nation’s highest court will agree to hear it remains unclear. But if they do, if the justices take up the question of whether Florida’s non-unanimous jury law violates the Constitution, the implications would extend far beyond Wade Wilson.

 It could halt executions across the state. As of today, Wade Wilson sits in a 6-x-9 foot cell at Union Correctional Institution in Raiford, Florida. No execution date has been set. No death warrant has been signed. He is 31 years old. He spends 23 hours a day in isolation, allowed out only for showers every other day, exercise in a small yard, and the occasional legal or social visit.

 He wears an orange t-shirt that marks him as a condemned man. He has no air conditioning in the Florida heat. Christine Melton’s mother, Katie, now lives with her son, Robert, in Maryland. She has Alzheimer’s. She does not fully understand that her daughter is dead. Occasionally, every couple of months, she reconnects with reality long enough to experience the loss all over again.

Robert has not told her about the death sentence. He thinks she would be content with it, but he cannot be sure she would understand. Diane Ruiz’s youngest son, Zane Romero, graduated from college. He won photography awards. He survived a serious car accident. He did all of it without his mother in the crowd.

Scott Hannon, Diane’s fiance, still lives in the home they shared. He said it best in a sentence that doesn’t need any decoration. “I’m still waiting for her to walk through the door, but I know in my heart that it’s not going to happen. And so here is the question that this case leaves behind.

 The question that does not have clean answer, no matter which side of the debate you fall on. Wade Wilson murdered two women in a single morning. He strangled one as she slept. He strangled the other after luring her into a dead woman’s car, then ran her over until her body was unrecognizable. He confessed. He showed no remorse.

 He told detectives he would do it again. He asked to be sent to death row as quickly as possible. The evidence is not in dispute, but three jurors voted against the death penalty for Christine Melton’s murder. Two voted against it for Diane Ruiz’s murder. And the law that allowed those non-unanimous votes to count as a death recommendation did not exist when Wilson committed his crimes.

The state changed the rules after the fact and applied them retroactively. So the question is not whether Wade Wilson is guilty. He is. The question is whether the state of Florida played fair when it sentenced him to die. Whether a man can be condemned under a law that did not exist when he pulled his hands away from a woman’s throat.

Whether eight out of 12 is enough to end a human life. And whether a state that already holds the record for wrongful death row exonerations should be making it easier, not harder, to send people to the execution chamber. What do you think? Did Florida get it right or did they bend the rules to make sure Wade Wilson never walks free? And in doing so, set a precedent that could put innocent people at risk in the future.

Drop your thoughts in the comments because this conversation is far from over. Okay.