An inmate convicted of raping and killing a woman near a downtown Orlando bar has been scheduled for execution under a death warrant signed Friday by Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, the seventh this year.
Thomas Lee Gudinas, 51, is set to die by lethal injection June 24 at Florida State Prison near Starke.
Gudinas was convicted in 1995 and sentenced to death for the murder of Michelle McGrath.
McGrath was last seen at a downtown bar called Barbarella’s around closing time in May 1994. Her body was found in an alley next to a nearby school the next morning with evidence of serious trauma and sexual assault.
Gudinas had been at the same bar with friends the night before, but they all later testified that they had left without him.
A school employee who found McGrath’s body later identified Gudinas as a man who was fleeing the area shortly before the body was discovered.
Another woman also identified Gudinas as the person who chased her to her car the previous night and threatened to assault her.
Five other executions have taken place in Florida this year:
- James Dennis Ford, 64, on Feb. 13 for the 1997 murders of a married couple while out on a fishing trip.
- Edward James, 63, on March 29 for killing an 8-year-old girl and her grandmother in 1993.
- Michael Tanzi, 48, on April 8 for kidnapping and murdering a woman in the Florida Keys in 2000.
- Jeffrey Hutchinson, 59, on May 1 after killing his girlfriend and her three children with a shotgun in 1998.
- Glenn Edward Rogers, 62, on May 15 for the fatal stabbing of a Gibsonton woman in an East Tampa hotel in 1995.
On June 10, Anthony Wainwright, 54, is scheduled to die for the kidnapping, rape and murder of Carmen Gayheart in 1994. Gayheart was abducted from a grocery store parking lot in Lake City.
Florida uses a three-drug cocktail for its lethal injection: a sedative, a paralytic and a drug that stops the heart, according to the Corrections Department.
