Death row inmate issues chilling final words to family before execution | World | News
Dennis Sochor (centre) is one of three people to be executed after their 70th birthday this year (Image: Florida Department of Corrections via AP)
The oldest criminal to be executed by Florida this year used his final words to apologise for murdering a teenager at a New Year’s Eve party decades ago.
Dennis Sochor was sentenced to death after being convicted of killing Patricia Gifford on Jan. 1, 1982, just hours after meeting the 18-year-old woman at a New Year’s Eve party.
The 74-year-old became one of the oldest prisoners ever executed by the state on Tuesday (July 14). Sochor used his last words to apologise several times to the Gifford family, saying he was “deeply sorry” for his actions and thanked his own loved ones for their support over the years. Then, he finished by commending his spirit to Jesus Christ.
The murderer was one of three older inmates scheduled for execution within the span of a month in the nation’s busiest death penalty state. Sochor was pronounced dead at 6:16 p.m. following a three-drug injection at Florida State Prison near Starke.
Another 74-year-old inmate, just a week younger than Sochor at the time of execution, was put to death late last month. And later this month, the state is preparing to execute an 80-year-old, the state’s first octogenarian scheduled to receive a lethal injection.
File photo of Florida state prison (Image: AP Photo/Curt Anderson)
The execution plans highlight the ageing death row population in the U.S. and the busy death chamber in Florida, which has now carried out 10 of the 16 executions conducted in the nation this year — more than every other state combined.
It’s unclear why Florida scheduled the executions of the three prisoners consecutively.
Maria DeLiberato, legal director of Floridians for Alternatives to the Death Penalty, noted that in Florida the governor has practically sole discretion when it comes to scheduling executions. In many other death penalty states, the scheduling is up to the courts.
The office of Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis did not respond to an email prior to Tuesday’s lethal injection seeking comment about the executions.
According to court records, Gifford was celebrating the upcoming New Year, 1982, with a friend at a Fort Lauderdale area bar when they met Sochor and his brother.
The four spent several hours talking, but after the friend became ill and went to sleep in her car, Gifford left with Sochor and his brother to get breakfast. But instead of going for food, Sochor stopped his truck in a secluded area and attacked Gifford when she refused to have sex with him, according to investigators.
Sochor was later arrested in Georgia in 1986 on unrelated charges and extradited to Florida. Sochor’s brother told police that Sochor was responsible for Gifford’s disappearance, and Sochor himself confessed on tape to choking Gifford and disposing of her body, which was never found. A jury found him guilty of first-degree murder and kidnapping in 1987, and he was sentenced to death.
On Tuesday, the U.S. Supreme Court rejected Sochor’s last request to intervene.
And last week, the state Supreme Court denied Sochor’s appeals, including arguments that the state violated his right to a fair trial by failing to disclose a 2022 letter sent to Sochor’s brother from a detective asking for information about the location of Gifford’s body.
Uniquely in America, Florida state governor Ron DeSantis decides execution schedules, not the court (Image: Getty)
On June 25, Florida executed 74-year-old Dusty Ray Spencer for the killing of his wife Karen. Until Tuesday, Spencer was the oldest inmate executed in Florida.
According to Florida Department of Corrections records, the oldest inmates executed by the state before Spencer were both 72. Samuel Lee Smithers on Oct. 14, 2025, for the 1996 killings of two women and R. Charlie Gifford on Feb. 21, 1951, for the 1950 shooting of a state representative, Charles Schuh Jr.
Meanwhile, Dominick Anthony Occhicone, 80, is scheduled to be executed July 28 for the killings of his ex-girlfriend’s parents.
He would become the second oldest prisoner known to be put to death in modern U.S. times after 83-year-old Walter Moody Jr. Moody was executed in Alabama in 2018 for killing a federal judge and a black civil rights attorney during a wave of Southern mail bombs.
Florida carried out a record 19 executions in 2025. DeSantis oversaw more executions in a single year in 2025 than any other Florida governor since the death penalty was reinstated in 1976. The previous record was eight executions set in 2014.
