A man convicted of killing his girlfriend’s two children was executed by lethal injection on Thursday.
Jeffrey Weisheit killed eight-year-old Alyssa Lynch and five-year-old Caleb Lynch after setting fire to his partner’s home in Evansville, Indiana, in 2010.
Alyssa was found dead inside a closet, while Caleb was discovered on a mattress with duct tape restraining him. A railroad flare was found in his underwear and another beneath his body.
The children’s mother, Lisa Lynch, was at work when the fire was set and had left them in Weisheit’s care. Investigators said the couple were in a relationship that was deteriorating.
Weisheit, 50, was pronounced dead at Indiana State Prison in Michigan City on Thursday.
The execution began shortly after midnight, and Weisheit was declared dead at 12.45am local time, Noelle Russell, chief communications officer for the Indiana Department of Correction, said.
His final meal was barbecue ribs, and he did not make any final statement, Russell said.
Executions were also scheduled in Florida and Alabama on Thursday. If carried out, it would be only the second time this year that three people in the United States were put to death on the same day.
Jeffrey Weisheit was executed by lethal injection for the murders of Alyssa Lynch, eight, and five-year-old Caleb Lynch
The execution was Indiana’s first of the year. In Florida, it would be the 19th carried out under Republican Governor Ron DeSantis, matching the state’s record from 2025.
The death penalty has come under renewed scrutiny since the failed execution of Christa Pike in Tennessee in September. Courts have nevertheless rejected efforts to stop other executions after Pike survived two lethal doses of pentobarbital.
In court testimony, Lynch described Alyssa as creative and said the girl loved drawing pictures of her family.
Caleb, meanwhile, loved hugs, cooking, and playing with trucks and trains.
“Every day without them is a struggle,” she said. “Every birthday, every holiday, every landmark moment is marked by their agonising absence.
“Time passes, but the weight of losing them never fades. They will always be my children.”
Weisheit’s lawyers had asked Indiana Republican Governor Mike Braun to allow brain scans, arguing that they could support claims he had suffered head injuries and experienced mental health problems.
They maintained that his history of head injuries had not received sufficient consideration during his 2013 trial.
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Braun rejected the request and also declined to commute Weisheit’s sentence to life in prison.
Weisheit’s latest legal challenge focused on Indiana’s planned use of lethal drugs obtained from a pharmacy scheduled to face a disciplinary hearing before the Indiana Pharmacy Board the following week.
The Indiana Department of Correction said it was confident “in our ability to humanely carry out” the execution.
After the execution, Braun issued a short statement saying Weisheit’s case had been reviewed repeatedly by state and federal courts.
“These reviews have never resulted in an overturned sentence,” he said. “Today, Weisheit’s sentence has been carried out as ordered by the court.”
Indiana Attorney General Todd Rokita said the execution delivered “long-awaited justice for Alyssa Lynch and her brother Caleb, two innocent children whose lives were stolen in an act of unspeakable cruelty”.
In Florida, Jesse Guardado was also scheduled for execution on Thursday. He confessed and pleaded guilty to fatally stabbing a 75-year-old woman in her Walton County home in 2004 before taking her jewellery box, $80, and other valuables to support his drug habit.
The woman had helped Guardado find both work and housing.
A federal appeals court ruled in 2024 that Guardado, now 64, had received a “full and fair” hearing during the death penalty phase of his case.
Florida has carried out more than half of the 32 executions conducted across the United States so far this year.
DeSantis, who leaves office in January, has said he wants to deliver justice to families who have waited decades for death sentences to be carried out.
In Alabama, Michael Taylor, 54, was also facing execution on Thursday, 35 years after fatally beating an older couple with a metal bar during a robbery at their home in Gadsden.
Police arrested Taylor, who was 19 at the time, in Birmingham, about an hour away, while he was driving the victims’ Cadillac. The execution would be Alabama’s third this year.
Opponents of the death penalty had urged Republican Governor Kay Ivey to commute Taylor’s sentence to life in prison, citing his age and immaturity when the killings occurred. She declined.
“If the state kills Michael, it is not the 19-year-old who made the worst mistake of his life who it kills. But the mature, well-respected, God-fearing man sitting in that cell today,” said Esther Brown of Project Hope to Abolish the Death Penalty.
The state planned to execute Taylor by lethal injection after a judge ruled that the nitrogen gas method was unconstitutional.
Taylor’s attorneys objected to the last-minute change because he had selected nitrogen gas as his execution method several years earlier. A judge, however, ruled against him.
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