Miami (AFP) – A former US Air Force sergeant who killed his wife and two young children was executed by lethal injection in the southern state of Florida on Thursday. Edward Zakrzewski, 60, pleaded guilty to the June 1994 murders of his wife, Sylvia, son Edward, 7, and daughter Anna, 5. His wife was beaten with a crowbar, strangled with a rope, and struck with a machete. The two children were hacked to death with the machete, which Zakrzewski had purchased during his lunch break after being informed that his wife planned to divorce him.
Zakrzewski fled to Hawaii and changed his name following the murders but turned himself in four months later after being identified by friends on a television show called “Unsolved Mysteries.” Zakrzewski was executed at 6:12 pm (2212 GMT) at the Florida State Prison in Raiford, after his appeal was denied by the US Supreme Court on Wednesday. The Pensacola News Journal reported his final words, in part, as “I want to thank the good people of the Sunshine State for killing me in the most cold and calculated, clean, humane and efficient way possible. I have no complaints whatsoever.”
There have been 27 executions in the United States this year, the most since the 28 executions of 2015. Including Zakrzewski, 22 have been carried out by lethal injection, two have been by firing squad, and three by nitrogen hypoxia, which involves pumping nitrogen gas into a face mask, causing the prisoner to suffocate. The use of nitrogen gas as a method of capital punishment has been denounced by United Nations experts as cruel and inhumane.
Florida has carried out the most executions in 2025 — nine. The death penalty has been abolished in 23 of the 50 US states, while three others — California, Oregon, and Pennsylvania — have moratoriums in place. President Donald Trump is a proponent of capital punishment, and on his first day in office called for an expansion of its use “for the vilest crimes.”
© 2024 AFP
