{"id":58419,"date":"2026-07-29T20:06:17","date_gmt":"2026-07-29T20:06:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/58419\/"},"modified":"2026-07-29T20:06:17","modified_gmt":"2026-07-29T20:06:17","slug":"florida-inmates-last-meals-revealed-after-double-execution-as-grisly-details-of-final-hours-emerge","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/58419\/","title":{"rendered":"Florida inmates’ last meals revealed after double-execution \u2014 as grisly details of final hours emerge"},"content":{"rendered":"

The last meals of two Florida death row inmates executed less than five hours apart<\/a> have been revealed \u2013\u2013 after the state became the first in nearly a decade to carry out a double execution in one day.<\/p>\n

Former police officer James Duckett, 68, and Dominick Occhicone, who at 80 became the state\u2019s oldest prisoner in modern history to be executed, died by lethal injection Tuesday in the same death chamber at Florida state prison near Starke.<\/p>\n

Duckett, who was sentenced to death for raping and murdering an 11-year-old girl while on duty near Orlando in 1987, asked for eggs, grits, bacon, biscuits and chocolate milk for his last meal, the Tampa Bay Times reported<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Occhicone, a murderer who gunned down his ex-girlfriend\u2019s parents in 1986 in Holiday, just north of Clearwater, requested eggplant parmesan, a salad, garlic bread and a Pepsi, according to the outlet.<\/p>\n

\"CollageJames Aren Duckett (left) and Dominick Anthony Occhicone were executed on the same day. Florida Department of Corrections via AP<\/p>\n

The last state to hold back-to-back executions in one day was Arkansas in April 2017 and the last time two inmates were executed on the same day in Florida was in 1964.<\/p>\n

Duckett was the 11th and Occhicone the 12th inmates executed in Florida this year after the US Supreme Court on Tuesday denied their appeals and requests for stays of execution.<\/p>\n

Occhicone is now the second oldest prisoner known to have been put to death in modern US history.<\/p>\n

Both of the inmates woke up in death watch cells at 4:45 a.m. Tuesday, a Florida Department of Corrections spokesperson told the Tampa Bay Times.<\/p>\n

Duckett said \u201cNo sir\u201d when asked if he wanted to make a final statement and about four minutes after the three-drug injection began, the prison warden shook him and shouted his name, receiving no response.<\/p>\n

He was pronounced dead at 1:19 p.m.<\/p>\n

His attorney, Mary Elizabeth Wells, previously said that he had \u201cconsistently maintained his innocence\u201d and blasted Florida\u2019s handling of DNA evidence.<\/p>\n

But relatives of his victim, Teresa McAbee, spoke of their relief at the sentence being carried out after decades of pain following her brutal death.<\/p>\n

\u201cI waited nearly 40 years to have him dead,\u201d the victim\u2019s mom, Dorthy Tula, said before breaking down.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis man took advantage of his badge,\u201d said Tracy Mcfall-Buskirk, the girl\u2019s cousin.<\/p>\n

\"BlackTeresa Mae McAbee was kidnapped, raped and murdered by Duckett. Family handout<\/p>\n

Duckett was the sole police officer on patrol duty in Mascotte, near Orlando, on the evening of May 11, 1987, and witnesses said they saw McAbee getting into his patrol car before her mom reported her missing hours later.<\/p>\n

Her body was found in a nearby lake the next morning, with DNA and hair collected from the girl\u2019s body found to be probable matches to Duckett.<\/p>\n

Fingerprints matching Duckett and the victim were found on his patrol car, according to investigators.<\/p>\n

The second execution got underway at the scheduled hour of 6 p.m., with Occhicone strapped to a gurney with an IV in his arm and a spiritual adviser nearby.<\/p>\n

\u201cSorry for all the hurt I caused,\u201d Occhicone said when asked if he wanted to make a statement.<\/p>\n

\u201cI know it don\u2019t mean much, but I\u2019m sorry. I never meant to do what I did.\u201d<\/p>\n

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He also thanked all of his Christian brothers for visiting him over the years.<\/p>\n

Occhicone\u00a0spent nearly four decades on death row after being sentenced in the murders of Raymond and Martha Artzner at a home in Holiday on June 10, 1986.<\/p>\n

He had shown up to the property where his former girlfriend, Anita Gerrety, was living with her parents and two children \u2014 but after she refused to speak with him, he returned with a handgun, according to investigators.<\/p>\n

Occhicone\u00a0then cut the phone lines and shot the Artzners while Gerrety fled with her daughter.<\/p>\n

He did not deny the shootings but his legal team argued at trial that the slayings were not premeditated.<\/p>\n

Lawyers for\u00a0Occhicone, who would have turned 81 next month, had argued that executing him was \u201ccruel and unusual punishment\u201d due to his age and condition, and therefore unconstitutional.<\/p>\n

The oldest prisoner known to have been executed in US history is Walter Moody Jr., who was put to death at 83 in Alabama in 2018 after being convicted over a mail bomb campaign in 1989 that killed a federal judge and a civil rights attorney.<\/p>\n

Earlier this month, Dennis Sochor briefly became the eldest inmate executed in Florida when he was put to death aged 74 for killing a woman he met at a New Year\u2019s Eve party in the first hours of 1982.<\/p>\n

Another 74-year-old inmate, Dusty Ray Spencer \u2014 who was just one week younger than Sochor at time of execution \u2014 was put to death in June.<\/p>\n

Almost half of the executions carried out across the US since the beginning of 2025 have been in Florida.<\/p>\n

With Post wires<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The last meals of two Florida death row inmates executed less than five hours apart have been revealed…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":58420,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[4],"tags":[3384,3385,817,8,9,7,1250],"class_list":["post-58419","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-top-stories","tag-death-row","tag-executions","tag-florida","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-top-stories","tag-us-news"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@news\/117005070306460166","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58419","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=58419"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58419\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/58420"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=58419"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=58419"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=58419"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}