Every U.S. Prisoner Executed in July 2026 — 3 Men, 2 Executions in One Day

Three men were put to death in the United States in July 2026, all in Florida, all by lethal injection. [clears throat] On July 14th, Dennis Michael Soaker, 74, was executed at Florida State Prison. Then, in a rare double execution not seen in Florida since 1964, James Ron Duckett, 68, a former police officer convicted of murdering an 11-year-old girl, and Dominic Anthony Aakonei Jr.

, 80 were executed just 5 hours apart on July 28th. Aikone became the oldest person ever executed in Florida. Convicted of killing his ex-girlfriend’s parents in 1986. Three lives ended. Three decades of appeals exhausted. One month. Her name was Patricia Gford. Everyone who loved her called her Patty. She was 18 years old.

 She grew up in eastern Massachusetts. the kind of place where everybody knows your name and your family has roots. She was one of four siblings and by every account that family was close, tight, the kind of family that showed up for each other. Her family described her in three words: loyal, protective, and responsible. Those were not words chosen to make her sound good after she was gone.

 Those were words that matched who she actually was every single day she was alive. By the time she turned 18, Patty was already building something. She had moved to Fort Lauderdale, Florida, just 3 months before her death with her high school sweetheart, Johnny Vel. That was a bold move, a fresh start in a new city.

 She found work quickly as an aerobics instructor. She was healthy, active, and focused on her future. New Year’s Eve 1981. Johnny had to work that night, so Patty made plans with her friend Delta Harville. A mutual friend of theirs was bartending at a lounge called the Banana Boat on Commercial Boulevard. That is where they decided to spend the night.

It was supposed to be a simple evening. Two friends, a bar, a countdown to midnight. Patty never made it home. Her brother Bobby spent three full months after her disappearance walking through fields and ditches, searching every place he could think of. He never found her. Her family said it best.

 Patty was 18 years old, full of life, and deeply loved by her family and friends. She deserved to grow old. She never got the chance. Dennis Michael Socher was 29 years old on New Year’s Eve, 1981. He worked as a swimming pool cleaner in Fort Lauderdale. A job that took him quietly through neighborhoods into backyards, past homes where people let their guard down because the man cleaning their pool seemed perfectly ordinary. He was not ordinary.

 Dennis grew up in a house full of violence. His father was a boxer who beat him relentlessly. His sister sometimes had to physically pull their father off of him. Court records show that his own parents, when called to testify, admitted to the abuse on the stand. They confirmed it happened. They confirmed how bad it was.

 That history explains a pattern. It does not excuse what he chose to do with it because by the time Dennis walked into the banana boat that night, he already had a documented record of violence against women that should have had him behind bars. Michigan, 1979. Dennis asked a woman for a ride home. Once they were alone, he choked her until she lost consciousness.

 When she came too, she had defecated on herself. He took her back to his house, let her shower, then raped her twice more. When detectives later asked him what that felt like, Dennis told them it was like an airplane jump. No feeling, no emotion, no remorse, no shame, nothing. Fort Lauderdale, 1980. He ambushed a 19-year-old woman in a parking lot, choked her, threatened to stab her, dragged her into a camper shell on the back of a truck, and assaulted her in every way possible.

 Court records confirmed he bit her repeatedly during the attack. He became violent specifically because he had not climaxed. He was arrested for that crime. The punishment, probation. He was a convicted sexual offender on supervised release the night he sat down next to Patty Gford. His ex-wife later took the stand at trial and testified that he had assaulted her at least 30 times in a single year of marriage.

 Her words, “If he wanted sex, he got it because he would get violent if he didn’t.” A convicted predator on probation, walking free into a crowded bar on New Year’s Eve. What happened next is something courts would spend the next 37 years trying to fully close. Dennis did not show up at the banana boat alone that night.

 His brother, Gary Sokor, had driven down from Michigan just after Christmas to visit. The two of them had been together for about a week by the time New Year’s Eve arrived. That evening, they climbed into Dennis’s work truck and headed to the Banana Boat Lounge on Commercial Boulevard, a popular spot with a tiki bar out back.

By the time they got there, the place was already packed. Holiday energy, music, people counting down to midnight. Patty and Delta arrived separately and settled in at the tiki bar. Two friends, a simple night out. Then Dennis noticed Patty. Witnesses who were present that night later told investigators that Dennis could not keep his eyes off her.

He stared throughout the entire evening. He stood too close. He tried to buy her drinks. He pushed compliments on her that she did not ask for and did not want. Patty tried to brush him off. She was not interested and she made that clear. By midnight, she had switched from champagne to iced tea.

 She was not drunk. She was simply trying to enjoy what was left of her night. At some point, without either woman knowing, someone at the party snapped a photograph. In the background, just behind Patty and Delta, Dennis can be seen watching them. That random picture would later become the single most important piece of evidence in the entire case.

 As the hours passed, Delta began feeling severely ill. She later told investigators she believed she had been drugged. Around 2:00 in the morning, Patty helped Delta out to the parking lot and placed her in her car to sleep it off. Then Patty went back inside to settle the tab. When she came back out, Delta was in no condition to drive and Dennis Soaker was watching.

Dennis and Gary walked up to Patty with a simple offer. Delta was asleep in her car. She could not drive, so the brothers offered to take Patty to get breakfast while her friend slept it off. Come with us. We will get some food. It is not a big deal. Patty got into the truck.

 According to court testimony, she believed she was going for breakfast. That was the only reason she climbed in. She had no reason to think otherwise. Or so it appeared in that moment. But Patty’s family pushed back on the idea that she went willingly. Their words entered into court records were direct. The idea that she casually left her unconscious friend alone in a car to go off with the men who had been harassing them that night is unthinkable to us.

They believed Dennis and Gary had spent the entire evening targeting both women and that Patty would never have chosen to leave Delta vulnerable and alone. Gary Sulkor was in that truck. According to his own trial testimony, he got in willingly. He knew his brother. He had spent a week with him.

 He was present for everything that followed. Gary Sor was never charged with any crime. He walked away from that night a free man. That fact sat with the Gford family for decades. Two men, one truck, an 18-year-old girl who thought she was going to breakfast. What Dennis did next, in his own words on tape, is something no one in that courtroom was fully prepared to hear.

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 So you never miss a story like this one. Because what Dennis confessed to three separate times on three separate recordings is the part of this story that Patty’s family has never been able to leave behind. Stay with me. Everything you are about to hear came directly from Dennis Soor’s own mouth. Not from witnesses.

 Not from detectives piecing things together. from Dennis himself recorded on three separate tape recorders in three separate confessions, all of which were played in open court for the jury to hear. Once the truck pulled away from the banana boat, Dennis asked Patty if she wanted to have sex. She said no.

 She had been saying no to him all night at the bar, at the tiki table, every time he got too close. No was not a new answer. It was the only answer she had ever given him. That should have been the end of it. Per court records. Dennis grabbed her by the hair. Patty fought back. She screamed. She scratched at his face. She did everything she could to get him off her.

Dennis did not stop. He started choking her. According to Gary’s testimony at trial, Dennis stopped the truck at some point after they left the lounge. Gary heard screaming from outside the vehicle. Patty screaming for help. He jumped out, ran around to the other side, and found Dennis on top of her, pinning both of her hands to the ground.

Gary picked up a rock and threw it at his brother. He yelled at him to stop. Dennis turned and looked at him. Gary described that look to the jury in court. He said his eyes had rolled back in his head. He looked possessed by the devil. Dennis told Gary to get back in the truck. Gary got back in the truck. He sat there and he stayed there.

 Back in Dennis’s own confession, he kept choking Patty. He pressed down until she stopped fighting, until she stopped moving, until she stopped breathing entirely. His words, per court records, were that he knew he had probably just killed her. He drove to a remote location described across his confessions as a secluded construction site near a dirt road in an area close to the Everglades.

 He left Patty’s body there. Then he drove home. At trial, the state’s medical examiner told the jury one fact that stopped the courtroom cold. Choking is a slow and painful way to die. Every person in that room heard it. None of them forgot it. The following morning, Gary found a woman’s shoe, a sweater, and a set of keys sitting inside the truck.

 He hid the keys. Dennis found out and demanded them back immediately. A few days later, Gary packed his things and drove back to Michigan. He did not call the police. He did not tell anyone what he had witnessed. Delta Harville woke up alone in her car at approximately 5:30 in the morning. She looked around.

 Patty was gone. She raised the alarm and investigators opened a missing person’s case. Dennis Sulkor had just killed an 18-year-old girl. And for the next four and a half years, he was a completely free man. Investigators began canvasing immediately after Patty was reported missing. They pulled every photograph taken at the banana boat that night.

They went through all of them and then they found it. The one photograph with Dennis standing in the background just behind Patty and Delta. Neither woman had known he was there. Neither had known the picture was being taken. Investigators released that photograph to a local television station. Dennis saw his own face on the evening news.

 Per his own later admission, his reaction was not guilt. It was not remorse. His first instinct, his very first thought was fear that he had been caught committing another crime. That was his exact word, another. Not a mistake, not something terrible, another crime. As though this was simply the latest entry on a list. He moved that same day, drove to Tampa, abandoned the truck, boarded a bus to New Orleans, eventually settled in Atlanta, Georgia.

New city, new routines, same man. His roommate in Atlanta, Paul Jones, later testified in court that Dennis casually described choking a woman and leaving her body near a drainage pipe in the countryside. Dennis told Jones the murder didn’t bother him at all, that if he had to, he would do it again, that women were, in his own words, more or less a sexual tool, nothing more.

 Jones testified to every word of that in open court. For 4 and 1/2 years, a killer lived freely in Atlanta while a family in Massachusetts was still searching for their daughter. Patty’s disappearance was opened as a missing person’s case. But as the weeks passed and evidence began to build, investigators knew they were likely dealing with something far worse.

 The case quietly became a murder investigation, even though there was no body. The photograph from the banana boat was the strongest early lead investigators had. It placed Dennis directly behind Patty and Delta on the night she vanished. Witnesses from that same night confirmed to investigators that Dennis had been fixated on Patty for hours, staring, following, refusing to take no for an answer.

 But Dennis was gone. No truck, no known address in Florida. No confirmed full identity in the early days of the search. He had disappeared as cleanly as if he had never been there at all. Patty’s brother, Bobby, refused to stop looking. For three full months, he physically searched fields, ditches, and rural areas across the region.

 He covered ground on foot. He kept going back. Court records indicate he found nothing. Not a single trace of his sister. Meanwhile, Gary So had returned to Michigan and told no one what he had witnessed inside that truck. The one person who had been present for everything stayed completely silent. The investigation did not close, but it did not move forward either.

 It simply sat heavy and unresolved while a family waited for answers that did not come. Every year that passed without news made the grief heavier. Patty’s sister, Marilyn, would later describe the weight of it plainly. Every happy memory of Patty is immediately crushed by the tragedy of her murder. The break investigators needed would not come from a tip.

 It would not come from new forensic evidence. It would come from a drunk driving stop on a Georgia road nearly 5 years after Patty Gford was last seen alive. May 1986, Decal County, Georgia. A police officer pulled over a driver on suspicion of drunk driving. It was a routine stop, the kind that happens hundreds of times every night across the country.

 Nothing about it seemed significant. The man behind the wheel was Dennis Michael Soair. 4 and 1/2 years had passed since New Year’s Eve 1981. 4 and 1/2 years since Patty Gford climbed into his truck and never came home. And here he was stopped on the side of a Georgia road because of a drink too many. Florida investigators flew to Atlanta immediately. They had their man.

 Dennis confessed right there in Atlanta on tape. He admitted to what he had done to Patty Gford. That was confession number one. He was extradited back to Florida. Investigators drove him directly to the banana boat and retraced the route he had taken that night. Dennis confessed again. Confession number two.

 Then a third time, confession number three. All recorded, all preserved, all played later in open court for the jury to hear. In every single confession, Dennis admitted the same things. luring Patty into the truck, driving her to a remote location, sexually assaulting her, beating her, and strangling her. And in every single confession, he claimed he was too drunk to remember exactly where he had left her body.

 Investigators searched the Everglades. They combed rural roads. They checked drainage areas. They found nothing. Patty’s remains were never located. Dennis was charged with kidnapping, rape, and first-degree murder. While he sat in Broward County Jail awaiting trial, a fellow inmate named Michael Hickeyi later testified that Dennis approached him one day and asked how to discredit a witness.

 Before walking away, Dennis added completely unprompted. Yeah, in case you’re wondering, I killed a Jay. Court records entered that testimony at trial. 1987, Broward County, Florida. Dennis Michael Soor sat in a courtroom and listened as his own voice was played back to the jury. Three separate taped confessions, his words, his admissions, his descriptions of what he did to an 18-year-old girl on New Year’s Day 1982.

The prosecution built its case layer by layer. Gary Socher took the stand and confirmed he was in that truck. He testified that he heard Patty screaming, ran around to the other side, and found Dennis on top of her with her hands pinned to the ground. He told the jury he threw a rock at his brother, and yelled at him to stop, and that Dennis turned, looked at him with eyes rolled back, and ordered him back into the truck. Gary testified that he obeyed.

Paul Jones, Dennis’s Atlanta roommate, told the court that Dennis had described the crime to him casually without any sign of guilt, that he said he would do it again, that women were nothing more than a sexual tool. Michael Hickeyi, the inmate from Broward County Jail, testified that Dennis had asked him how to discredit a witness, then volunteered without being asked that he had killed a woman.

 Dennis’s ex-wife took the stand and described 30 assaults in a single year of marriage. She told the jury that his eyes would glaze over before the violence started and that refusal was never an option. During the penalty phase, the state’s medical examiner told the jury something plain and devastating. Choking is a slow and painful way to die.

 The courtroom went quiet. The jury held that fact. In mitigation, Dennis’s family described his brutal childhood in detail. His parents admitted to the abuse from the witness stand. His sister described physically pulling their father away from him. The jury heard everything. They convicted Dennis of kidnapping and first-degree murder.

 Then they deliberated again, this time on punishment. Their recommendation, death, by a vote of 10 to2. The judge accepted it without hesitation. Dennis Michael Sokor was formally sentenced to death. He would not be executed for another 39 years. From 1987 to 2026, Dennis Michael Soour sat on Florida’s death row for nearly 37 years.

 Patty Gford lived for 18. He spent more than twice her entire lifetime waiting for a death sentence he had earned in a single night. Marilyn Gford stated that fact explicitly after watching him die. During those 37 years, Dennis fought the courts at every turn. He challenged the competence of his lawyers.

 He claimed evidence had been hidden from the jury. He argued brain damage. He alleged that his brother Gary had been more involved in the murder than the trial had revealed. And at one point, despite having confessed three times on tape to strangling Patty with his own hands, he argued there was no proof she was even dead because her body had never been found.

 Every motion was denied. Every appeal was rejected. Not one court ruled in his favor. During those years, a woman from Norway became his pen pal and later published a book about him titled Dennis, My Friend on Death Row. In it, Dennis described himself as a sensitive person who cares about those who suffer in the world. This was the same man who told his Atlanta roommate that women were nothing more than a sexual tool.

 In the final weeks before his execution, his attorneys argued that lethal injection could produce a sensation similar to drowning and formally requested that he be put to death by firing squad instead. The man who strangled an 18-year-old girl with his bare hands was worried that his own death might cause him discomfort.

 The Florida Supreme Court dismissed the argument as meritless. He also sent a letter to Patty’s family through prison staff, expressing what he called remorse and sorrow. His spiritual adviser conveyed that Dennis wanted people to know he would help locate Patty’s body if he could, but that he simply could not remember where he had left her.

 Marilyn Gford had a direct response to that. He had 45 years to return Patty’s remains to us, but he cruy chose not to. July 14th, 2026. Dennis woke at 4:48 in the morning. He met with one visitor and a spiritual adviser during the day. He was offered a last meal. He declined. At 6:00 in the evening, the curtain to the witness room was raised.

 Dennis was already strapped to the gurnie with an IV in his arm. The warden asked if he had any final words. He apologized to the Gford family. He said he was deeply sorry for his actions. He thanked his own loved ones for their support over the years. Then he commended his spirit to Jesus Christ. The drugs began flowing at 6:03 in the evening.

 Witnesses observed approximately 1 minute of heavy breathing followed by several seconds of sputtering, then complete stillness. The warden looked into his eyes, shook his shoulders, called his name. No response. A medic entered the chamber. Dennis Michael Soore was pronounced dead at 6:16 in the evening. He was 74 years old, the oldest inmate executed in modern Florida history.

 He was Florida’s 10th execution of 2026. This story does not end with Dennis Sokor. It ends, or rather it fails to end, with Patty. She was 18 years old. She had moved to a new city to build a new life. She worked hard. She loved her family. She went out on New Year’s Eve with a friend, helped that friend when she got sick, and trusted two strangers who offered her breakfast.

 Her remains have never been found. Her family has never held a funeral. They have never had a grave to visit or a place to leave flowers. Marilyn Gford said it in a way that cannot be improved upon. We never got a chance to lay her to rest in God’s arms. Without closure, every happy memory of Patty is immediately crushed by the tragedy of her murder.

 Dennis spent 37 years in courtrooms arguing that he deserved to live. He never spent one honest moment helping a family find their daughter. What moment in this story hit you the hardest? Tell me in the comments below. I read every single one. And if you believe Patty’s family deserved more, that her body should have been found and returned to the people who loved her, drop a comment right now.

If this story moved you, please subscribe to this channel. Every single week, we make sure that victims like Patty Gford are never forgotten because their stories deserve to be told and they deserve to be heard. Stay tuned. The next story is coming and it is one you will not want to miss. >> Every time we came down here, she was a sweet little girl.

 That man was on patrol in a patrol car and he did this in uniform. You teach children to go to cops for help. This man had no right to do what he did. Been waiting 40 years to have him dead. >> Nearly four decades after the murder of Dorothy Tula’s 11-year-old daughter, Terresa Makabe, >> the sentence of the state of Florida versus James Aaron Duckett was carried out at 1:19 p.m. on July 28th, 2026.

 The execution took place without incident. >> Tracy McFall Buzzkerk still remembers visiting her young cousin in the 80s. Every time we came down here, she was a sweet little girl. That man was on patrol in a patrol car. And he did this in uniform. You teach children to go to cops for help.

 This man had no right to do what he did. >> July 28th, 2026. Florida State Prison. 1:19 in the afternoon. The curtain goes up. 35 people are watching through the glass. The drugs begin to flow. 4 minutes pass. The warden steps forward, shakes the man on the table, and calls his name out loud. Nothing. James Arn Duckett, 68 years old, is pronounced dead.

 Earlier, when the warden asked if he had any final words, Ducket looked up and said two words. No, sir. No apology, no explanation, no acknowledgement of what he had done. He had spent 38 years on death row telling anyone who would listen that he was innocent. And for a while, a retired detective, a former police chief, and a sitting mayor all believed him.

 Then the state ordered a DNA test, the one piece of evidence that could have changed everything. The results came back inconclusive. He was executed anyway. But here is the part that will stay with you long after this video ends. The evidence that put him on that table was only part of the story. What investigators uncovered about his time in that police uniform is something else entirely.

Welcome to the execution archive. If you are new here, hit subscribe and turn on notifications because today we are going inside one of Florida’s most debated death row cases. A police officer, a missing child, and a badge that was used as a weapon. Stay with us. You will want to see how this ends.

 Before we talk about what happened that night, you need to know who Terresa May Makabe was. Teresa was 11 years old. She was a fifth grader at Mascot Elementary School. Growing up in the small, quiet town of Mascot, Florida, people who knew her described her as bright, loving, and responsible. She was the kind of child who did her homework, stayed out of trouble, and made her mother proud.

 Her mother, Dorothy Tula, was her whole world, and Teresa was hers. She also had cousins she was close to, including Tracy McFall busker, family who loved her deeply and would carry the weight of losing her for decades. Teresa had never been in any kind of trouble. She had never engaged in any sexual activity. The medical examiner would later confirm that in open court, and those words would land like a punch to the stomach of everyone who heard them.

 On the night of May 11th, 1987, Teresa needed a pencil to finish her homework. It was nearly 10:00 at night. Her mother said no. But Teresa looked at her and said, “Mom, I won’t take but 5 minutes.” Her mother let her go. She walked to a convenience store less than a mile from their front door. She had school the next morning. She never came home.

Now, let’s talk about the man behind the badge. James RN Ducket was born on September 4th, 1957. In late 1986, he joined the Mascot Police Department. By the night of May 11th, 1987, he had been on the force for exactly 7 months. He was 29 years old. And on that particular night, he was the only officer on patrol.

 The entire town of Mascot, every street, every home, every person was his responsibility alone. To the people of Mascot, Ducket looked the part. He wore the uniform. He drove the marked patrol car. He represented safety and order. His former police chief, Michael Brady, would later stand before cameras and publicly say he believed Ducket was innocent.

 The sitting mayor of Mascot said the same thing. On the surface, James Ducket looked like exactly what he claimed to be, but court records told a different story. During the trial, three young women came forward with accounts of what Duckett actually did while wearing that uniform.

 All three were petite, the same build as Terresa Makabe. The first testified that he picked her up while she was searching for her boyfriend, and inside the patrol car tried to kiss her. The second testified that on May 1st, 1987, just 10 days before Teresa’s murder, Ducket pulled up beside her as she walked along the highway, offered her a ride, and instead of taking her home, drove her to a remote grove miles away from anyone who could hear her.

 He placed his hand on her and tried to kiss her. The third testified to repeated encounters with Ducket while he was on duty in uniform in the same patrol car that Terresa Makabe was last seen entering. Court records confirm this pattern clearly. He was not using that badge to protect people. He was using it to access them.

 What happened on the night of May 11th did not come out of nowhere. There was a pattern and it had been building for months. Every woman Ducket targeted was someone he encountered while on patrol. He spotted them alone. He approached them using the weight of his uniform and he took them somewhere isolated. Not one of them reported him because who do you call when the threat is the police officer himself. Then came May 1st, 1987.

10 days before Terresa Makabe walked to that convenience store. Ducket had already driven a young woman to a remote orange grove and put his hands on her. Nothing happened to him. No report, no consequence, no one stopped him. 10 days later, he was back on patrol. According to court testimony, when Ducket arrived at the convenience store on the night of May 11th, he went inside first.

 He walked straight up to the store clerk and asked two questions. What’s her name? How old is she? The clerk told him Teresa was somewhere between 10 and 13 years old. Ducket said he was going to check on her and walked out the door. Court records confirmed that between 10:50 at night and 12:10 in the morning, the exact window Teresa disappeared, Ducket sent zero radio transmissions, not one.

 Over an hour of total silence from the only officer on duty and mascot. This was not a case with accompllices, co-plotters, or hired help. James Ducket acted entirely alone. And that is exactly what made him so difficult to catch. He had the patrol car. He had the badge. He had the entire town of Mascot to himself with no supervisor checking in, no partner riding alongside him and no one to answer to.

 Court records confirm he was the sole officer on duty that night. Whatever he chose to do, he could do without anyone knowing. And after Teresa disappeared, he made his moves carefully. He showed up at the mascot police station 15 to 20 minutes after Teresa’s mother had already been there, waiting and desperate. He sat down and took the missing person report himself, the report about the girl he had last been seen with.

 He drove to her home to collect a photo, making himself look helpful and concerned. He told the police chief he had already prepared a flyer and did not need any assistance. Then he took that flyer to the convenience store and told the clerk not to post it. He said it was not a good picture. He promised to return with a better one. He never came back.

 If you have made it this far, you already know this case is unlike anything you have heard before. Make sure you are subscribed so you never miss a case like this one. It is the night of May 11th, 1987. Let’s walk through it minute by minute. At around 10:00 at night, Teresa Makabe leaves her home and heads to the convenience store.

 5 minutes, she had promised. By around 10:20, she is outside the store with a 16-year-old boy she had just met. The two walk over to the area near the dumpster and talk. Then, a marked patrol car pulls up. Ducket goes inside the store first. He asks the clerk about Teresa, her name, her age. Then he steps outside and approaches the pair.

 According to his own trial testimony, he told Teresa it was nearly 10:30 and that she needed to go home because of the curfew for minors, but she did not go home. Shortly after, the boy’s uncle arrived at the store. Both he and the boy saw something that contradicted Ducket’s story. Teresa and Ducket were still standing near the patrol car.

 Ducket sent the uncle and the boy away. Once they were gone, Teresa was placed in the passenger seat. The door closed, the car pulled away. The uncle later testified in court that he never once saw Teresa touch the hood of that patrol car. At around 10:50, Duckett’s radio went completely silent. At around 11:00, Teresa’s mother arrived at the convenience store looking for her daughter.

 The clerk told her the officer may have taken Teresa to the police station. Teresa’s mother and her sister drove through every street in Mascot. No patrol car. They reached the Mascot police station empty. They drove to the Groveland station and filed a missing person report. At 12:10 in the morning, Duckett’s radio came back on.

 10 minutes later, he walked into the mascot station. 15 to 20 minutes after Teresa’s mother had already been there waiting. The next morning, May 12th, a fisherman near Night Lake spotted something at the W’s edge, less than a mile from the convenience store. Authorities were called. The police chief arrived. It was Teresa.

 Court records confirm what the medical examiner found. Teresa had been sexually assaulted while she was still alive, then strangled and drowned. She was 11 years old. She had been gone less than 3 hours. By the time Teresa’s body was pulled from Night Lake, Ducket had already spent hours positioning himself at the center of the search.

 He had taken the missing person report. He had collected her photo. He had made the flyer. To anyone watching, he looked like a dedicated officer doing his job. But investigators began to see it differently. Every move he made had kept the early search inside his own hands. When the body was found, the focus shifted to him immediately.

 He was the last known person seen with Teresa. He was the only officer on duty that entire night. There was no one else. Then detectives pulled the radio logs. The gap between 10:50 at night and 12:10 in the morning, over an hour, was completely empty. Ducket told investigators he had stopped for coffee during that time.

 Not one person confirmed that. Not one. Court records show he had also told the convenience store clerk not to post Teresa’s flyer. He promised a better photo. He never came back with one. On June 16th, 1987, 36 days after Teresa’s murder, Ducket was suspended from the Mascot Police Department. 3 days later, he was fired.

His entire career as a police officer had lasted exactly 7 months. Investigators had no confession, no murder weapon, no eyewitness who watched it happen. What they had was physical evidence, and it was quietly building a case that Ducket could not explain away. The first major find was the tire tracks near Night Lake.

 A technician from the sheriff’s department examined them closely and noticed something unusual. The tracks were made by Goodyear Eagle mud and snow tires. Tires built for cold northern climates, rarely ever seen on Florida roads. The local tire center confirmed they had only ever received two sets of those tires by mistake across 9 years of business.

 Both sets had been fitted onto mascot police cars. One of those cars belonged to Ducket. The second finding was the Palm Prince. Both Duckett’s Prince and Teresa’s were found on the hood of his patrol car. The position of Teresa’s prince showed she had been sitting backward on the hood and sliding upward.

 At trial, Ducket denied it directly. Sir, she was not down on the hood of my car. The third piece of evidence came from FBI analyst Michael Malone. He testified that a single pubic hair found inside Teresa’s underwear matched Ducket’s samples with, in his words, a high degree of probability. Ducket denied driving to the lake.

 He denied Teresa was ever on the hood. He repeated his coffee story. Not one person on Earth confirmed any of it. In October 1987, 5 months after Teresa’s murder, a Lake County grand jury formally indicted James Ducket for firstdegree murder. The prosecution made their position clear from day one. They were seeking the death penalty.

 But the indictment was only part of the story. What truly shifted public understanding of Ducket was the testimony of three young women who came forward to describe what he had done to them while wearing that uniform. Their accounts made one thing impossible to ignore. Terresa Makabe was not a random isolated incident.

 This was a pattern of behavior Ducket had been carrying out for months. He found women and girls who were alone. He used the patrol car. He used the badge. He drove them to places where no one could hear them. Teresa was simply the one who never came home. The arrest sent a ripple through Lake County and far beyond it.

 A sworn police officer, someone the community trusted, had been charged with the rape and murder of an 11-year-old girl he encountered on a routine patrol shift. But as the case moved toward trial, detectives were quietly looking at something else entirely. A woman found dead near Lakeland, Florida in 1986, last seen getting into a dark blue car.

 Ducket owned a royal blue Buick Regal at the time and a 14-year-old girl who vanished from a carnival in September 1987, just 4 months after Teresa’s murder. What investigators found connecting those cases to Ducket is almost impossible to believe. In early 1988, James Ducket stood trial before a Lake County jury.

 The prosecution laid out the physical evidence, the tire tracks, the palm prints, and FBI analyst Michael Malone’s pubic hair testimony. The three young women took the stand and described what Ducket had done to them while on duty. Their testimony painted a clear picture of who he was and how he operated long before Terresa Makabe ever walked to that convenience store.

 When it was Ducket’s turn during the sentencing phase, he took the stand himself. He denied everything. Then he looked at the jury and asked them to spare his life. The jury went to deliberate on May 10th, 1988. They came back in less than 90 minutes. Guilty of first-degree murder. Guilty of sexual battery.

 By a vote of 8 to4, they recommended the death penalty. On June 30th, 1988, Judge Jerry Lockett sentenced Ducket to death by electric chair along with an additional 25 years to life with no possibility of parole for the sexual battery conviction. Then began nearly four decades of appeals. In December 1989, Ducket filed his first appeal.

 The Florida Supreme Court dismissed it in September 1990. In 2001, the same judge who sentenced him denied his postconviction appeal. In 2003, his defense team claimed a trial witness had lied under coaching from law enforcement. That too was denied. New DNA testing was approved that same year, but the deadline passed without a single motion being filed.

 By 2004, a court order barred any further DNA testing entirely. In 2005, the Florida Supreme Court rejected his second appeal. In 2010, US District Court Judge William Terrell Hajes denied his federal appeal. Further appeals in 2014, 2017, and 2018 were each rejected. Every court reached the same conclusion. The tire tracks, the palm prints, the radio silence, and the eyewitness accounts were more than enough.

 By the year 2000, James Duckett was one of 370 inmates sitting on Florida’s death row. He continued to insist he was innocent. He filed appeal after appeal. Every single one was denied. For a period of time, he had supporters who believed him. A retired homicide detective named Marshall Frank publicly stated he had researched the case and concluded Duckett was innocent.

 Former police chief Michael Brady said the same. So did the mayor of Mascot. But Marshall Frank kept digging. The deeper he went into the details of Terresa Mcabe’s case and the unsolved murder of 14-year-old Jennifer Weldon, the more his opinion changed. Frank eventually reversed his position completely.

 He concluded that Ducket was guilty of killing both Terresa Makabe and Jennifer Weldon. On February 27th, 2026, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis signed Duckett’s death warrant. The execution was scheduled for March 31st, 2026. Almost immediately, Ducket, the same man who had let a DNA testing deadline expire without filing a single motion back in 2004, suddenly wanted that test done.

 The Florida Supreme Court halted the execution and allowed the testing to proceed. The results came back inconclusive. They did not exonerate him. The state moved to lift the stay. Six of the seven justices said no. The warrant expired. The court ordered deeper analysis of the results. For months, the case sat in legal uncertainty.

 Then on July 8th, 2026, the Florida Supreme Court lifted the stay. The DNA testing had settled nothing. 6 days later, Governor Dantis signed a second death warrant. The new execution date, July 28th, 2026. The night before he was executed, Ducket met with four family members for a final visit. He woke the next morning at 4:45.

 His last meal was eggs, grits, bacon, biscuits, and chocolate milk. He met with a spiritual adviser. At noon, he was taken to the execution chamber. 35 witnesses sat behind the glass. among them the family of Terresa Makabe and relatives of Jennifer Weldon. When the warden asked if he had any final words, Ducket said, “No, sir.

” At 1:00 in the afternoon, the drugs began to flow. At 1, James Aaron Ducket was pronounced dead. He was 68 years old. Outside the prison, Teresa’s mother, Dorothy Tula, stood before cameras and broke down completely. I waited nearly 40 years to have him dead. Her niece, Tracy McFall Buskerk, was composed but direct. This man took advantage of his badge.

 She added that it should never have taken four decades for her aunt to see this day. The family of Jennifer Weldon was also there. They said the execution gave them a measure of closure they had been waiting a very long time for. The two families, bound together by loss, had quietly supported each other through the years since Duckett’s conviction.

 Two days later, on July 30th, 2026, Pulk County Sheriff Grady Jud announced that investigators were formally naming Ducket as the suspect in Weldon’s murder, closing a case that was nearly 39 years old. James Duckett spent 38 years on death row. Terresa Mcabe’s mother spent 38 years without her daughter. He had a badge.

 He had a uniform. He had a patrol car. And on the night of May 11th, 1987, he used all three. Tell me in the comments what moment in this case hit you the hardest. And if you are not subscribed yet, now is the time. We cover cases like this every single week. Hit that subscribe button and we will see you in the next one.

>> [music] >> A Pasco County man is about to end a 39-year stint on death row. Since 1986, Dominic Okuchoni has been waiting to be executed for killing Raymond and Martha Artsner, the parents of his ex-girlfriend. But now, his lawyers say he’s too old and frail to be put to death because he can’t even care for himself anymore.

 Fox 13 Axelbank reports on the effort to keep him alive and the response to it. Almost exactly 40 years ago, a stunned Anita Gity told news cameras what she’d just seen. >> He turned and looked at me and pointed the gun at my father and shot him. >> Dominic Oone had confronted Martha and Ray Artsner at their home in Holiday because Anita didn’t want to see him anymore.

>> Just sheer panic, you know? I mean, I knew I I knew I was next. >> Thus began a 39-year wait for Oone. This is how he looks today in court filings. old, frail, and according to his lawyers, suffering from heart and kidney disease. They say he’s unable to shower or get around on his own. July 28th, 2026. 6:00 in the evening.

 Florida State Prison, Stark, Florida. The window shade inside the execution chamber rises. An 80-year-old man is strapped to a gurnie. His eyes scan the room. 27 witnesses sit behind the glass, watching in silence. Outside, rain begins to fall. Thunder rolls across the Florida sky. This man, Dominic Anthony Aakonei Jr.

, is about to become the oldest person executed in modern Florida history. But here is what makes this story different from anything you have heard before. For weeks before the murders, Dominic told bartenders, friends, and anyone willing to listen exactly who he was going to kill and exactly how he planned to do it. He named them.

 He described it in detail, out loud, in public, and nobody called the police. Not once. Before the lethal injection took effect, Dominic’s final words were, “I know it don’t mean much, but I’m sorry. I never meant to do what I did. But what about Raymond and Martha Artsner, the retired couple whose lives ended because of him? Did they ever get a warning? That answer will change everything you think you know about this case.

 Welcome back to the Execution Archive. If this is your first time here, hit that subscribe button. We cover true crime stories that don’t let you sleep. Let’s get into it. Before we talk about what happened that night, you need to know who was lost. Raymond Artsner was 66 years old, a retired working man, quiet, steady, the kind of father who kept his household together without making a lot of noise about it.

Court records and family accounts describe him as protective, the type of man who did not back down when his family was threatened. You will see exactly what that looked like before this story is over. His wife, Martha Artsner, was 62. She was the heartbeat of that home, the one who kept everything running.

 She had no reason to believe that the walls of her own house would be the last thing she ever saw. By 1986, their daughter Anita Gered was living under their roof along with her two children. After her relationship with Dominic Achon fell apart, the Artsner home became the one safe place she could turn to. A shelter for a mother trying to rebuild her life.

 Anita had been with Dominic since 1982. 3 years into the relationship, she had seen enough. A knife, a gun fired into a door jam inches from her head, and a pattern of verbal and physical abuse directed at both her and her children. She made the hardest decision and walked away.

 She did everything a person in her position was supposed to do. But in May of 1986, she told Dominic something that pushed him past whatever line he had left. She told him she had terminated a pregnancy. She told him she was moving on with someone new. Anita had already escaped. She had gotten out. But Dominic Aicone did not come for her that night.

 He came for her parents. And that decision is what makes this case impossible to forget. So who exactly was Dominic Anthony Aakonei Jr.? He was born on August 29th, 1945 in Carmel, New York. He grew up in a threeeneration Italian-American household. His father was an Italian immigrant described by those who knew him as a gentle family oriented man.

 From the outside, it looked like a stable home, a good foundation. But Dominic was different from early on. As a teenager, he had an explosive temper that he could not control. Bar fights became routine. He would walk back through the front door with fresh injuries and little explanation. This was not a one-time thing.

 It was a pattern, and it followed him into adulthood. When the Vietnam War draft came, Dominic was called up for military service. He did not report. He was arrested, court marshaled, and spent roughly 2 years in a military prison at Fort Dicks, New Jersey. After his release, life continued, but the anger never left. In 1977, he relocated to Holiday, Florida, following his parents after their retirement.

 It was there he married a woman named Sharon. They had a son together. Then Sharon was diagnosed with cancer. She died when their boy was just 2 years old. The child was placed in the care of relatives and Dominic, now alone, turned to alcohol heavily, consistently for years. What most people did not know was that before Sharon, Dominic had a brief relationship in New York in the 1970s.

That relationship produced a daughter he never knew existed. She did not learn the truth until 2011 and met her biological father for the very first time while he was already sitting on death row. To people at the bars he frequented across Pasco County, Dominic Oicone was just a regular. A familiar face, nothing remarkable, but court records tell a very different story.

 The warning signs were not hidden. They were announced out loud in public. and still nothing was done. In September of 1985, Anita Jared ended the engagement. The wedding had been set for November 30th, 2 months away. But she had seen enough. Court records detail one specific incident that stayed with her. She locked herself inside a bedroom to get away from him.

 Dominic kicked the door clean off its hinges. He was holding a knife. That was the moment she made her decision. But leaving Dominic Achona was not simple. About a month after the breakup, Anita was at his house and tried to walk out. He pulled a pistol and fired a round directly into the door jamb inches from her head. Then he turned the gun around and held it out to her. He begged her to shoot him.

 She refused. She walked out the door. What followed was months of pressure, flowers delivered to her workplace every single day, constant phone calls, and roughly 20 separate late night appearances at her parents’ home, showing up at her bedroom window in the dark. Court records also note that during this period, Anita sometimes let him in.

 She visited his house more than once. Psychiatrists who later reviewed the case described this as a cycle, one that is well documented in abusive relationships. It is noted here not to place blame on Anita, but because it is part of the documented record. Then came May of 1986. Anita told Dominic she had terminated a pregnancy.

 She refused to say whose child it was. She also told him she had started seeing someone new. He told a bartender he planned to sue over the abortion. He told another he could no longer look at children. And when his friend Joanne Carico came to check on him, she found him on the floor of his home crying, shaking, and vomiting, telling her he had nothing left to live for.

 What happened next was not a breakdown. It was a countdown. There was no partner, no accomplice, no one Dominic Archicon recruited to help him. He planned this alone. But here is what makes this section so deeply unsettling. He did not plan it quietly. The people who sat beside him at those bars, who poured his drinks, who listened to him talk, became witnesses to everything that was coming.

They just did not act on it. Dominic was a regular at Shooters Liquor Lounge in Elfers, Florida. He also rotated between three other local bars. The staff at these establishments knew his face, knew his order, and as court records would later confirm, knew exactly what he intended to do to the Artsner family.

These bartenders and regulars did not call the police. Every single one of them became a prosecution witness only after Raymond and Martha Artsner were already dead. The Sunday before the murders, bar owner William Anderson spotted a gun tucked into Dominic’s waistband. He told him to take it outside.

 That was the extent of the intervention. Court records confirmed Dominic had been carrying that loaded handgun for days. Bartender Deborah Newell testified that Dominic told her he wanted to shoot Anita, her children, and then himself, but that he would not go through with it because of his young son.

 To others, he described shooting Anita’s parents, starting at the kneecaps and working upward with Anita forced to watch every single shot. He said this at the bar. He said it to Anita’s face directly. He repeated it for weeks. Cutting the phone lines before knocking on that door was not a spontaneous decision. Returning to that house armed after already being turned away once was not an accident.

 This was not a man who snapped. If you haven’t subscribed yet, now’s the time. We’re about to get into the night of June 10th, 1986. And it does not get easier from here. June 10th, 1986, Holiday, Florida. It started the same way most of Dominic’s nights did, at a bar. Around 2:30 in the morning, Dominic was still at Shooters Liquor Lounge in Elfers.

 He had been drinking since the bar opened. a full night of vodka cocktails on top of a decade of heavy drinking. Before he left, he turned to the bartender and asked whether he should go over to Anita’s place. Then he walked out the door. It seemed for a moment like he had decided against it. He had not. At 3:00 in the morning, Dominic pulled up to the Artsner home in Holiday.

 He knocked on Anita’s sliding glass door. She woke up, saw him standing there, and told him clearly there was nothing left to discuss. She warned him she would call the sheriff if he did not leave. He turned and walked away. He drove home, but according to statements Dominic later gave to psychiatrists, the phone rang shortly after he got back. It was Anita.

 She was angry. She hung up. And then Dominic sat in that house for nearly an hour, drunk, wide awake, and armed before he made his decision. At [clears throat] around 3:45 in the morning, he got back in his 1975 Corvette and drove to the Artsner home a second time. Before he knocked on a single door, he walked to the side of the house.

 The telephone junction box was mounted on the exterior wall. He ripped it off. He pulled the wires out. Then he began pounding on Anita’s sliding glass door and on her daughter’s window. Inside, Anita woke her father. Raymond went to the kitchen phone to call the sheriff. The line was completely dead. So Raymond did what that kind of father does.

 He walked to the garage, raised the overhead door, stepped out onto the driveway, and faced Dominic with nothing but a broomstick in his hands. He told him to get off his property. A neighbor jolted awake by the noise later testified to hearing a man shout, “Get the hell out of here and don’t ever come back here.

” Dominic did not shout back. He kept repeating the same words. “Can we talk about this?” directed at Anita, who was standing nearby. She could smell the alcohol on him from where she stood. Then she watched him raise his right hand toward her father’s face. She did not even realize he was holding a gun until she saw the muzzle flash.

 Raymond collapsed onto the driveway. Dominic turned and came straight through the garage after Anita. She ran. She locked the interior door behind her. He drove his fist through the glass panel, reached through, turned the lock, and forced his way inside. Anita grabbed her daughter. They ran out the front door and across the lawn to a neighbor’s house.

 Martha did not make it out. Court records and the medical examiner’s testimony confirm what happened inside that hallway. Martha was shot four times. Three bullets entered her chest. One entered her heart. The medical examiner described that wound as rapidly fatal. Her body was found just past the doorway, only a few steps from where she had been standing.

 At around 4:00 in the morning, Pasco County deputies arrived on the scene. Raymond Artsner was still alive, lying on the driveway with a gunshot wound. He looked up at a deputy and said, “Dom shot me.” Those were among his last words. He was rushed to the hospital and died from his injuries shortly after.

 Dominic’s 1975 Corvette was found five houses away, smoke rising from under the hood. A tracking dog picked up his scent and followed it 3/4 of a mile along a set of railroad tracks. Deputies found him in the dark, hair disheveled, clothes in disarray, barely awake. Two people were dead, and the man who did it was found half asleep by the side of the railroad tracks.

Dominic Anthony Oone Jr. was arrested on June 10th, 1986, the same morning the bodies were found. When deputies located him along those railroad tracks, he did not run. He did not fight back. Court records note he offered no resistance at arrest and was described as disheveled and disoriented. [music] There was no alibi prepared, no cover story offered to investigators, no explanation beyond the man they found slumped in the dark, barely coherent.

For weeks, he had told anyone who would listen exactly what he planned to do, and then he did it. But he had made no plan whatsoever for what came after. Meanwhile, the Artsner household had been shattered in the space of a single hour. Anita had stood on that driveway and watched her father fall.

 She had run from that house with her daughter. She had left her mother inside. Every piece of testimony she gave at trial carried the full weight of that night. Raymond had named his killer before he died. Martha never made it out of the hallway. By the end of that morning, both were gone.

 He had told everyone what he was going to do. He had done it. And now the only question was what a jury would make of a man who claimed he never meant any of it. This investigation did not begin with a mystery. Raymond Artsner had solved it himself. Lying wounded on his own driveway. He looked up at a deputy and gave them the name.

 From that moment, Pasco County investigators knew exactly who they were looking for. They had the crime scene. They had the weapon. They had Anita as an eyewitness. and they had Raymond’s dying declaration spoken in his final hours before he passed away at the hospital. What prosecutors then built around that foundation was a paper trail stretching back weeks.

 They went bar by bar, Shooters Liquor Lounge and three other locations across Pasco County and collected testimony from multiple bartenders and witnesses who had heard Dominic describe in specific terms what he intended to do to the Artsner family. Each account lined up with the next. The cut phone lines were documented at the scene and confirmed as deliberate, ripped from the exterior junction box before Dominic knocked on a single door.

That detail became the backbone of the prosecution’s premeditation argument. The defense responded early with a single position. This was not a planned attack. This was a severely alcoholic, emotionally broken man who had lost control entirely. Dominic was charged on June 11th, 1986, one day after the murders.

 A Pasco County grand jury formally indicted him on July 16th, 1986. There was no dramatic forensic breakthrough in this case. No single piece of physical evidence that cracked everything open. The breakthrough was human. It was testimony. One by one, the prosecution brought witnesses to the stand who had sat beside Dominic Oxone at those bars who had listened to him and who had said nothing until now.

Anita Jared testified about the threats he had made directly to her face. Two additional female witnesses corroborated his stated resentment toward her parents. Bartender Deborah Newell told the court what he had said about shooting Anita and her children. Bar owner William Anderson confirmed he had seen Dominic carrying a loaded gun in his waistband the Sunday before the murders.

 Joanne Carico described finding him on the floor of his home, broken and threatening violence. Together, these accounts built a single consistent picture. a man with a named target, a stated plan, and a loaded weapon. The defense brought in psychiatric experts who described Dominic as severely depressed and emotionally impaired. They called no character witnesses.

 They offered no alibi. Their entire case rested on one argument that his judgment was too broken to constitute premeditation. Then the state’s own court-appointed psychiatrist took the stand and testified that on the night of June 10th, 1986, Dominic Achone was not psychotic. His judgment, the psychiatrist stated, was not substantially impaired.

 Five jurors voted to spare his life. Seven voted to end it. And what the judge decided next set in motion 40 years of courtroom battles. The trial was held in 1987 in Pasco County, Florida. Dominic did not deny pulling the trigger. He admitted to the killings from the start. His defense had one argument.

 That what happened on the night of June 10th was not planned. That severe alcoholism, major depression, and extreme emotional disturbance had robbed him of the ability to think clearly. That this was a man who had broken down, not a man who had decided. The prosecution dismantled that argument piece by piece. The cut phone lines.

 The return trip after already being turned away once. The loaded gun he had been carrying for days and weeks of explicit, specific, publicly stated threats. They told the jury this was not a breakdown. This was a decision made in stages over time. The jury returned a verdict of guilty on both counts of firstdegree murder. During the penalty phase, the same jury recommended death by a vote of 7 to five on both counts.

 On November 9th, 1987, the trial judge sentenced Dominic to life imprisonment for the murder of Raymond Artsner and to death for the murder of Martha Artsner. Then began four decades of appeals. The Florida Supreme Court rejected his direct appeal in October of 1990. The United States Supreme Court denied review in 1991. Further appeals were rejected in 1993, 2000, and 2006.

Each court upheld the original sentence. In 2018, his legal team sought re-sentencing under a new Florida law requiring unanimous jury recommendations for the death penalty. The Florida Supreme Court ruled he was ineligible. His sentence had been finalized before 2002, placing it outside the law’s reach.

 His lawyers had raised ineffective counsel, constitutional violations, and shifting legal standards across multiple courts. Every single claim was rejected. Dominic Achone spent 39 years on death row. By December of 2007, he was the oldest of seven death row inmates from Pasco County alone. By May of 2019, one of six from the same county still waiting.

 By June of 2026, he was among the five oldest inmates on Florida’s entire death row. Every one of them born in 1945. On June 26th, 2026, Governor Ron DeSantis signed Dominic’s death warrant. Execution date, July 28th, 2026. At 80 years old, he became the oldest inmate on Florida’s death row to receive an execution order.

 The debate that followed was immediate. Advocates against capital punishment, and several religious figures argued publicly that executing an elderly, physically frail man constituted cruelty. Court records confirmed Dominic suffered from kidney and prostate problems and required assistance with basic daily tasks inside prison.

 On July 8th, 2026, his lawyers filed a motion arguing that executing a man of his age and condition violated the ETH amendment’s protection against cruel and unusual punishment. Also scheduled for that same day was James Duckett, a former mascot police officer convicted of the rape and murder of an 11-year-old girl.

 His execution was set for noon. Together they made July 28th the first double execution in Florida since 1964 and the first in the United States since Arkansas in 2017. A joint federal lawsuit filed on July 24th, 2026 sought to block both executions. Every court that heard it said no. The night before his execution, Dominic’s daughter came to Florida State Prison to see him.

 the child he had never known existed until she tracked him down on death row in 2011. On the morning of July 28th, he woke at 4:45. He met with a spiritual adviser. No other visitors came. His last meal was eggplant parmesan, garlic bread, salad, and a Pepsi. At 6:00 in the evening, the window shade in the execution chamber rose. Dominic was strapped to a gurnie.

27 witnesses sat behind the glass. His spiritual advisor stood at his right side, moving a rosary slowly from palm to palm. The room was silent. His final words to his own family. I’m sorry for the hurt I’ve caused my family. To the Artsner family, he said. I know it don’t mean much, but I’m sorry.

 I never meant to do what I did. Within minutes, his eyes closed. He gave no response to the warden. At 6:13 in the evening, Dominic Anthony Oikon Jr. was pronounced dead. He was the oldest person executed in modern Florida history. The 12th inmate put to death in Florida in 2026. Pasco County Sheriff Chris Noako spoke outside the prison afterward.

 His words were direct. he wasn’t too old or too frail when he murdered two people. If the issue is he’s too old, then maybe the issue is it took too long to execute him. After the execution, the Artsner children released a statement. They wrote of 40 years of sleepless nights, 40 years of missed birthdays and conversations that never happened.

 They wrote that the execution does not erase the pain, but that it closes a chapter. and they pledged to honor Raymond and Martha by living with kindness and love. As officials finished reading that statement outside Florida State Prison, rain began to pour. Thunder rolled across the Florida sky. No further narration is needed for that.

 Here is what this case leaves behind. Dominic Achone told everyone around him for weeks exactly what he intended to do. He blamed Raymond and Martha Artsner for a relationship he had destroyed himself. He took everything from their children. And in the end, his final words were not defiance.

 They were an apology that by his own admission he knew didn’t mean much. Raymond and Martha Artsner deserved better than 40 years. But tonight, their children finally get to sleep. Which moment in this case hit you the hardest? the threats nobody reported or the 40 years it took to get here. Drop it in the comments below. And if you’re new here, subscribe.

 We’re not done yet.