The family of an 18-year-old woman killed after a New Year’s Eve gathering says her murderer went to his death in Florida without ever revealing where he hid her remains.
Dennis Sochor, 74, was executed Tuesday for the murder of Patricia Gifford on January 1, 1982, only hours after the two had met. Officials said he was pronounced dead at 6:16 p.m. following a three-drug lethal injection at Florida State Prison.
After witnessing the execution, Patricia’s sister, Marilyn Gifford, said Sochor’s death offered the family a measure of closure, but the moment remained painful because Patricia’s body has never been recovered.
“He had 45 years to return Patty’s remains to us, but he cruelly chose not to,” Marilyn said as she read from a prepared statement.
“We never got a chance to lay her to rest in God’s arms,” she added. “Without closure, every happy memory of Patty is immediately crushed by the tragedy of her murder.”
“Tonight’s execution was appropriate because Dennis Sochor was a lifelong brutal and sadistic man,” she said.
For more than four decades, the question of where Patricia’s body was left has remained unanswered. Ahead of the execution, her sister told the South Florida Sun Sentinel: “Even with the death penalty, he lived twice as long on death row as Patty ever lived at all.”
Sochor’s own brother testified that Sochor, who was 29 at the time of the killing, raped and murdered Patricia before concealing her body.
Dennis Sochor, 74, was executed Tuesday at Florida State Prison. He was pronounced dead at 6.16pm after receiving a three-drug lethal injection
Sochor was convicted of killing Patricia Gifford on January 1, 1982, just hours after meeting the 18-year-old woman at a New Year´s Eve party
‘He has, multiple times, told law enforcement, and also told me, that he was too drunk to remember where the body is,’ Jeff Hood, an anti-death penalty advocate who has met with Sochor as a spiritual adviser, told the outlet.
‘He has been unable to remember,’ he added. ‘He wants people to know that if he could help locate the body, he, of course, would.’
Sochor’s brother Gary also testified under oath that he believed Sochor was ‘demon-possessed’ when he attacked and raped Patricia and said he didn’t know where her body was.
In an interview with the Sun Sentinel earlier this month, Patricia’s sister questioned the sincerity of Sochor’s claims that he wanted to help police find her body.
‘I don’t believe him for a second,’ Marilyn told the outlet.
She said his supposed willingness to help was strikingly similar to his brother’s own efforts after Sochor was arrested and charged with murder in 1986.
‘He knows damn well where she is,’ she said. ‘I don’t believe him for a second. He’s a liar. He’s a murderer. He’s a brutal killer whose word cannot be trusted.’
Marilyn said Sochor’s death meant the secret of her sister’s remains would die with him, leaving her family without the answers they had spent decades waiting for.
In Sochor’s final statement, he repeatedly apologized to the Gifford family, saying he was ‘deeply sorry’ and expressed gratitude to his own loved ones for standing by him
With an IV in his arm and strapped to a gurney on Tuesday, Sochor watched as the curtain to the death chamber opened. Asked by the warden if he had any last words, he answered that he did.
In his final statement, he repeatedly apologized to the Gifford family, saying he was ‘deeply sorry’ and expressed gratitude to his own loved ones for standing by him.
He then commended his spirit to Jesus Christ shortly before the lethal drugs began flowing at 6.03pm. Sochor breathed heavily for roughly a minute and briefly sputtered before becoming still.
After about two minutes without movement, the warden looked into his eyes, shook his shoulders and called his name. A medic was then summoned, and Sochor was officially pronounced dead.
Patricia was celebrating the New Year with a friend at the Banana Boat lounge in Fort Lauderdale when she met Sochor and his brother.
She was later supposed to meet her boyfriend, chef Johnny Vasel, who was working a nearby hotel party, according to the Sun Sentinel.
The group spent hours talking before Patricia’s friend became ill and went to sleep in her car. Investigators said she then left with Sochor and his brother to get breakfast, but he instead drove to a secluded area and attacked her.
At the time of Patricia’s killing, Sochor was already on probation for a 1980 rape in Oakland Park.
According to authorities, his brother told police that Sochor was responsible for the teen’s disappearance, and Sochor later confessed on tape to choking her and disposing of her body.
In 1986, he was arrested in Georgia on unrelated charges and later extradited to Florida. A jury convicted him of first-degree murder and kidnapping in 1987, sending him to death row.
‘The death penalty guaranteed he would never go free,’ Marilyn told the Sun Sentinel. ‘Imagine how many more he would have killed.’
His last legal challenge ended Tuesday when the US Supreme Court rejected his final appeal without comment.
Florida executed another 74-year-old inmate just last month, only a week younger than Sochor. Now, the state is preparing to execute an 80-year-old later this month, a first for Florida.
The back-to-back executions highlight the growing age of death row inmates and Florida’s unusually active death chamber. The state has carried out 10 of the 16 executions nationwide this year – more than every other state combined.
It remains unclear why the Sunshine State scheduled the three executions within the span of a month.
Maria DeLiberato, legal director of Floridians for Alternatives to the Death Penalty, said Florida’s governor has broad authority to set execution dates, while courts typically handle that role in many other states.
On June 25, Florida executed 74-year-old Dusty Ray Spencer for the killing of his wife, Karen. Until Tuesday’s execution, Spencer was the oldest inmate put to death in the state.
Florida executed another 74-year-old inmate last month, only a week younger than Sochor. Now, the state is preparing to execute an 80-year-old later this month
Meanwhile, Dominick Anthony Occhicone, 80, is scheduled to be executed on July 28 for the killings of his ex-girlfriend’s parents. Governor Ron DeSantis signed his death warrant late last month.
Occhicone was sentenced to death in 1987 for fatally shooting Raymond and Martha Artzner at their home, just months after their daughter called off the engagement.
His legal team filed a motion in Pasco County last week in an attempt to stop his execution, arguing that his advanced age and poor health should spare him, according to the Orlando Sentinel.
They argued that, over the past 39 years, Occhicone has rarely slept more than three hours at a time each night and now suffers from poor vision and hearing loss, requiring the use of a hearing aid.
According to court documents, he has declining renal function, kidney disease and cysts on one of his kidneys. His attorneys also claimed that their client has a blocked artery and suffers from irregular heart rhythms.
His defense argued that carrying out executions places a significant mental burden on prison staff, urging the judge to impose a six-month moratorium on all state executions.
If executed as scheduled, Occhicone would become the second-oldest person executed in modern US history, behind Walter Moody Jr, who was put to death in Alabama in 2018 at age 83 for killing a federal judge and a black civil rights attorney in mail bomb attacks.
