Florida Man Set for Execution Next Month, Extending State Record

Samuel Lee Smithers, a 72-year-old Florida man convicted of murdering two women whose bodies were found in a rural pond in 1996, is scheduled for execution by lethal injection on October 14 at Florida State Prison. Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis signed the death warrant, marking Smithers as the 14th person set for execution in Florida in 2025, the highest number overseen by any Florida governor in a single year since the death penalty was reinstated in 1976. Smithers met his victims, Christy Cowan and Denise Roach, at a Tampa motel where he paid them for sex; he was maintaining landscaping on a nearby 27-acre property in Plant City, Florida, where the bodies were discovered. The victims were severely beaten, strangled, and left in a pond to die. Property owner Marion Whitehurst, who knew Smithers from church, found him cleaning an axe and noticed blood at the scene, which led to the discovery of the victims' bodies. Smithers confessed to the murders, was sentenced to death in 1999, and his convictions have been upheld by the Florida Supreme Court.