Florida executes inmate for 1997 double murder in front of toddler, while Texas puts to death nightclub killer
The state of Florida has executed James Dennis Ford, 64, for the 1997 murders of Gregory and Kimberly Malnory, who were brutally slain on a fishing trip in front of their young daughter, the first of two executions that occurred on Thursday.
Ford was pronounced dead at 6:19pm ET, after being given lethal injection drugs at the Florida State Prison in Raiford.
Maranda Malnory was 23 months old when, according to prosecutors, Ford shot Gregory Malnory in the head with a .22-caliber rifle, bludgeoned him, and slit his throat, then raped, beat, and shot Kimberly Malnory.
The couple’s daughter, Maranda Malnory, was left behind as Ford fled the scene, and found nearly a day later dehydrated and covered in insect bites by an employee of a nearby sod farm.
Malnory, now an adult, said she has little recollection of the killings, but grieves her parents nonetheless.
“I told one of my grandmas the other day you grieve the people you knew,” she told Gulf Coast News Now ahead of the execution. “But I grieve what could have been.”
Malnory was 13 when she learned the full truth of what happened to her parents.
“I would want to know why,” she added in her interview with Gulf Coast News Now. “Just because nobody has been able to pinpoint that. But, to be honest, I don’t really care anymore.”
Both the U.S. Supreme Court and Florida Supreme Court rejected recent appeals from Ford ahead of the execution.
His lawyers had argued that while Ford was 36 at the time of the murders, he had a mental age of 14, and diabetes-related symptoms that caused him to black out and act erratically.
State officials said that on his last day, Ford woke up at 3:30am, received three family visitors, and later consumed a final meal of steak, macaroni and cheese, fried okra, sweet potato, pumpkin pie, and sweet tea.
He reportedly did not offer any final public statements.
Ford was the first execution in the state this year, and the fourth nationwide.
Later Thursday, Texas executed Richard Lee Tabler, who officials say killed four people in the city of Killeen in 2004.
