A KILLER dubbed the “Deacon of Death” who brutally murdered two women and dumped their bodies in a lake has been executed.
Samuel Lee Smithers, 72, was put to death by lethal injection inside the Florida State Prison in Bradford County, officials announced.
Just moments before the execution, Smithers was strapped to the table with an IV in his arm.
He refused to give a final statement before dying, only responding with “no sire” when asked.
He declined to give a final statement, only responding with “No, sir” when asked.
Hours before dying, the convicted killer made a bizarre last meal request.
He demanded to have peanut butter, three packs of oatmeal, water and two sports drinks.
Smithers was convicted of two counts of first-degree murder and sentenced to death in 1999.
Smithers, a Baptist deacon, met Christy Cowan and Denise Roach – both prostitutes – at a Tampa motel to pay them for sex.
Smithers, a Baptist deacon, met his two victims – Christy Cowan and Denise Roach – on separate occasions in May 1996 outside a Tampa Motel on Hillsborough Avenue, a street notorious for prostitution.
At the time, he was working as a landscaper on a sprawling property that included three ponds in rural Plant City, Florida.
The killer lured the women into the 27-acre property where he had sex with them before murdering them.
He then dumped their bodies in one of the ponds.
The property owner noticed a pool of blood in the carport, and Smithers told her that someone must have come by and killed a small animal, according to court records.
The woman contacted law enforcement, and a sheriff’s deputy met her later that day at the property.
The blood had been cleaned up, but the deputy noticed drag marks leading to one of the ponds, according to court records.
That’s where authorities found the bodies of Cowan and Roach. Both women had been severely beaten, strangled and left in the pond to die.
Smithers is believed to have used both an axe and a hoe in the murders.
Smithers’ death marks the 14th time this year Florida has executed someone on death row — a record for total executions by the state in a single year.
Meanwhile, A Mississippi man convicted of kidnapping, raping and killing a 20-year-old community college student is set to be executed Wednesday evening at the Mississippi State Penitentiary in Parchman.
Charles Crawford, 59, has been on death row for more than 30 years. The scheduled lethal injection comes several months after the execution of Mississippis longest-serving death row inmate in a year of increasing executions nationwide.
It comes after the longest-serving death row inmate uttered a chilling set of last words with his dying breath.
Richard Jordan, 79, spent almost five decades waiting to die – and was finally killed by lethal injection in June this year.
Jordan kidnapped and killed a bank loan officer’s wife called Edwina Marter, in a violent ransom plot in 1976.
The Vietnam veteran, who suffered from PTSD, was denied his final appeal by the Supreme Court.
His final words were: “I will see you on the other side, all of you.”
