Edward Zkarzewski was executed by lethal injection at Florida State Prison in Raiford on Thursday evening. Photo courtesy of Florida Department of Corrections/Website
Florida has executed a 60-year-old Air Force veteran for killing his wife and two children in 1994, marking a record ninth execution for the Sunshine State.
Edward Zakrzewski was executed by lethal injection at Florida State Prison in Raiford, about 46 miles southwest of Jacksonville. He was pronounced dead at 6:12 p.m. EST, the Florida Department of Corrections said in a statement.
With Zakrzewski’s death, Florida has killed nine people so far in 2025, its most in a calendar year since the resumption of executions in the United States in 1976, according to the Death Penalty Information Center.
It is also the United States’ 27th execution of the year, the nation’s most since 2015 when there were 28, as executions were on a near-yearly decline from a height of 98 in 1999.
Zakrzewski was sentenced to death after pleading guilty to killing his 34-year-old wife, Sylvia, his 7-year-old son, Edward, and his 5-year-old daughter, Anna, on June 9, 1994.
He was accused of hitting his wife, who wanted a divorce, on the head with a crowbar multiple times before strangling her with a rope and then striking her with a machete. He then used the machete to kill his two children.
Following the murders, he left for Hawaii, where he lived with a family that ran a religious commune. Zakrzewski turned himself in to police after the family saw his picture during a broadcast of the television show Unsolved Mysteries.
The jury voted seven to five to recommend he be executed for killing his wife and Edward, and life in prison without the possibility of parol for the murder of Anna.
His defense, according to court documents, argued their client was under extreme mental and emotional disturbance and had expressed remorse since the crime.
They also filed numerous appeals in the years since the conviction, with the final one being rejected Wednesday by the Supreme Court.
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis signed his death warrant on July 1.
“Gov. Ron DeSantis now holds the dishonorable distinction of executing more people in one year than any prior governor in Florida’s history,” Floridians for Alternatives to the Death Penalty said in a statement.
“There have been many media inquiries about the reasons for the unrelenting number and pace of these executions, all asking one thing — why now? And the response from the administration? Deafening silence. This killing spree has taken place on a desolate road in the middle of nowhere, far from the governor’s mansion, without rhyme or reason.
“The people of the State of Florida deserve better than executions shrouded in silence and secrecy,” the group said.
Florida has scheduled two more executions for this month, Kayle Bates on Aug. 19, and Curtis Windom on Aug. 28.
There are, so far, 10 more executions scheduled throughout the United States this year.
