TALLAHASSEE, Fla. – Chadwick Willacy was put to death by lethal injection Tuesday evening at Florida State Prison in Starke for the 1990 murder of his Palm Bay neighbor who found him burglarizing her home.
Willacy, 58, was pronounced dead at 6:15 p.m. by the state Department of Corrections.
The announcement came several hours after the U.S. Supreme Court denied his latest application to stay the scheduled execution.
Last week, the Florida Supreme Court denied Willacy’s motions for a delay and a rehearing as his legal team requested public records on Florida’s lethal injection protocol and later questioned if the death warrant was signed in response to the public records request.
Willacy was convicted in the death of Marlys Mae Sather.
Sather, 56, found her next-door neighbor Willacy burglarizing her home when she returned unexpectedly from work around lunchtime on Sept. 5, 1990, according to court documents.
Willacy struck Sather in the head several times with a blunt object, then bound her hands and ankles before attempting to strangle her with a telephone cord. Willacy later doused Sather in gasoline, disabled the smoke detectors in the home, and placed a fan at her feet to provide oxygen to the ensuing fire.
Sather’s body was discovered by her son-in-law after receiving a call from her employer that she hadn’t returned from her lunch break.
The cause of death was recorded as smoke inhalation, indicating Sather was alive when she was set on fire.
Sather’s checkbook was found at Willacy’s house. Her late husband’s car and an ATM card were stolen. Photos taken by an ATM showed Willacy attempting to make withdrawals with the stolen car in the background.
Willacy was found guilty of first-degree murder, first-degree premeditated murder, burglary with an assault, robbery with a firearm, and first-degree arson in December 1991. The jury recommended the death sentence in a 9-3 vote.
In 1994, the Florida Supreme Court affirmed the convictions but reversed his death sentence and remanded the case to the trial court for a new penalty phase.
One year later, a jury recommended the death penalty with an 11-1 majority.
During his sentencing, Willacy asked the court to consider that he had no “significant” history of prior criminal activity, and his age, 22 at the time.
The execution was the fifth carried out this year by the state and the first since the Florida Supreme Court issued a rare stay in the scheduled March 31 execution of James Duckett over DNA testing.
The warrant signed by Gov. Ron DeSantis for Duckett’s execution expired on April 7.
Duckett, 68, a former Mascotte police officer, has been convicted in the rape and murder of an 11-year-old girl in 1987.
There are nearly 250 inmates on Florida’s death row.
The state is next scheduled to execute James Ernest Hitchcock, 69, for the 1976 rape and murder of his step-niece Cynthia Driggers in her bedroom in Orange County.
DeSantis has signed seven death warrants this year after a modern era record of 19 in 2025.