ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. (AP) — A Florida man, convicted of murdering two women whose remains were discovered in a rural pond in 1996, is set to be executed in October, following the signing of a death warrant by Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis. DeSantis continues to set a record pace for executions.
Samuel Lee Smithers, 72, will face lethal injection on Oct. 14 at Florida State Prison. Smithers is the 14th individual scheduled for execution in Florida in 2025, marking the most executions overseen by a Florida governor in a single year since the death penalty was reinstated in 1976.
DeSantis signed the death warrant on Friday night, just days before David Joseph Pittman’s scheduled execution on Wednesday. Another convicted murderer, Victor Tony Jones, is slated for execution on Sept. 30.
According to court records, Smithers met his two victims, Christy Cowan and Denise Roach, on separate occasions at a Tampa motel, where he paid them for sex. During that period, he was maintaining landscaping on a 27-acre property in rural Plant City, Florida, which had three ponds.
On May 28, 1996, property owner Marion Whitehurst, who knew Smithers through church as he was a Baptist deacon, visited the site and found Smithers cleaning an axe in the carport. He claimed it was for trimming tree branches.
“Whitehurst noticed a pool of blood in the carport,” the records state. “Smithers told her someone must have come by and killed a small animal.”
Whitehurst reported her discovery to law enforcement, and a sheriff’s deputy met her on the property later that day. Although Smithers had cleaned up the blood, the deputy observed drag marks leading to a pond, where the bodies of Cowan and Roach were found, according to court records.
Both Cowan and Roach were severely beaten, strangled and left in the pond to die. Smithers confessed to the murders and was handed two death sentences after his trial in 1999. His convictions and sentences have been upheld by the Florida Supreme Court.
So far 30 people have been executed in the U.S. in 2025, with Florida leading the way behind a flurry of death warrants signed by DeSantis. The last execution in Florida was the Aug. 28 lethal injection of 59-year-old Curtis Windom, convicted in the 1992 murders of his girlfriend, her mother and another man.
The previous record for executions in one year in Florida was eight, most recently in 2014.
