Gov. Ron DeSantis has signed the death warrant for Willie Crain, a convicted child molester found guilty in the 1998 death of 7-year-old Amanda Brown in Hillsborough County.
Crain's death sentence concluded one of the Tampa Bay region's most shocking and high-profile murder cases.
Crain, 80, is scheduled to be executed Dec. 10 at Florida State Prison in Raiford.
He is slated to be Florida's 22nd execution of the year, which would be the most in a year since 1976, when U.S. Supreme Court reinstituted the death penalty. DeSantis, who exits office in January, has already overseen nearly 50 executions during his eight years in office.
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Executions are also scheduled for Thomas Mitchell Overton, 71, on Nov. 19 for the deaths of a Tavernier couple in 1992, and for Richardo Gonzalez, 56, on Dec. 1 for killing North Miami Beach police officer Steven Bauer during a 1992 bank robbery.
According to court records, Crain was introduced to Brown by her mother, Kathryn Hartman, whom he had met at a Hillsborough bar. A day after meeting Hartman, Crain went to her trailer in Seffner, where he ate dinner and he played with the child. All three went to watch movies at Crain’s trailer before returning to Hartman’s home, where they all went to sleep.
The next morning, Crain and Brown were gone. When contacted by Hartman, Crain said he was loading his boat at a boat landing and did not know Brown’s location.
Investigators believe Crain threw Brown’s body into Old Tampa Bay, where he set traps as a commercial crab fisherman. The girl's body was never found.
Prosecutors said traces of Brown’s blood were found in Crain’s bathroom and on his boxer shorts.
Crain, convicted in 1985 in a separate case of sexual battery on a child, has maintained his innocence.
In November 1999, Crain was sentenced to death for Brown’s death and received a life sentence for her kidnapping. The jury unanimously recommended the death penalty.
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In 2000, Crain appealed the ruling, claiming the state failed to establish sufficient evidence of premeditation, gave different jury instructions on the elements of kidnapping, relied on an aggravating circumstance not proven by the evidence, and that the death penalty was unconstitutional.
The Florida Supreme Court affirmed the convictions and sentences in 2004.
Harris, 67, who now lives in Lakeland, told the Tampa Bay Times that she will attend Crain's execution “to see him finally meet the maker after all this time, because he needs to pay for his sins.”
Meantime, a group of people exonerated after sitting on Florida’s death row are asking the next governor to slow the record setting pace., the News Service of Florida reports.
Floridians for Alternatives to The Death Penalty, which has asked Governor-elect Byron Donalds to pause executions, is holding an event with two exonerees who previously sat on death row in Florida.
“This pace has to stop,” Jeff Hood, who has served as spiritual advisor to several executed inmates, wrote in a letter to Donalds. “I oppose the death penalty with everything I have seen. I am asking you for less than abolition. Six months. January 5 through July 5. Sign no warrant. Authorize no execution. Commission an independent examination of the pace, the procedures and the human cost. Make the findings public before the six months are out.”
In March, responding to questions about how he would approach the death penalty as governor, Donalds said in a statement that “criminals will not run our communities” and he would “ensure violent criminals swiftly face the full weight of justice.”
WUSF's Rick Mayer contributed to this report.
