Featured Image Credit: Tennessee Department of Correction
Topics: Florida, Crime, US News, True crime
Joe Yates
Topics: Florida, Crime, US News, True crime
A man convicted of brutally killing two women before dumping their bodies in a pond almost 30 years ago has been executed.
Sex workers Christy Cowan and Denise Roach had met up with Samuel Lee Smithers, then 43, at a motel in Tampa, Florida, on different dates in May 1996.
At the time, the Baptist deacon was carrying out landscape maintenance on a vast 27-acre property - which boasts three ponds - in rural Plant City.
On May 28 of that year, the owner of the property noticed Smithers in the carport cleaning an axe. When she asked him what he was doing, he explained that he had used it to trim branches off the trees on the property.
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According to court documents, the woman then spotted a pool of blood inside the carport, and when she pressed him on it, he explained that somebody must have killed a small animal on the property.
Suspicious of his alibi, the property owner called the cops and a sheriff's deputy visited the estate later that day - only to find the blood had been cleaned up.
However, the officer noticed marks - similar to that of if someone had being dragged - on the ground leading to one of the ponds.
After diving into the pool of water, they found the cold corpses of both Cowan and Roach.
Both had been beaten and strangled before being left to die in the pond.
Following Smithers' arrest, he was sentenced to death in 1999 after having been convicted of two counts of first-degree murder.
His sentence was carried out on Tuesday evening (October 14) at Florida State Prison near Starke - a city located roughly a 45-minute drive southeast of Jacksonville, in northern Florida.
Before his death by lethal injection, he muttered his final words when asked if he had a statement.
"No, sir," the 72-year-old replied.
Strapped to the gurney, Smithers could be seen breathing heavily before convulsing slightly. He then eventually fell limp, the Washington Post reports.
He was pronounced dead after a medic entered the chamber at 6.14pm - with his time of death being declared at 6.15pm.
Prior to his execution, Smithers - who was dubbed the Deacon of Death by tabloids at the time of his arrest - requested fried chicken, fried fish, a baked potato and apple pie with vanilla ice cream and a sweet tea for his last meal.