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Chadwick Scott Willacy, convicted of first degree murder for setting his elderly neighbor on fire after she allegedly caught him burglarizing her home, maintained his innocence right before being executed by the State of Florida on Tuesday.
“To the victim’s family, I hope this brings you peace. If it does, that’s good,” Willacy said, according to The Associated Press. “But this is not right.”
The state pronounced the 58-year-old dead at 6:15 p.m. after administering him a three-drug lethal injection at Florida State Prison.
Willacy was convicted in 1991 for the 1990 murder of 56-year-old Marlys Sather, according to court documents.
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Storm clouds form over Florida State Prison, Aug. 24, 2017. Inset: A mugshot of Chadwick Scott Willacy, courtesy of the Florida Department of Corrections. (REUTERS/Phil Sears; Florida Department of Corrections)
On Sept. 5, 1990, Sather had returned from work to find Willacy, her next-door-neighbor, burglarizing her Palm Bay home. Willacy then bludgeoned her head, tied her hands and feet with wire and duct tape and “choked and strangled her with a cord with a force so intense that a portion of her skull was dislodged,” according to court documents.
He then took her ATM card and her car to withdraw money from her bank account. When he returned, he disabled her smoke detectors, covered her in gasoline and set her on fire with matches, placing a fan at her feet to provide more oxygen for the fire, according to court documents.
An autopsy report determined Sathey’s cause of death to be smoke inhalation, indicating she was still alive when she was set on fire.
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Clouds hover over the entrance of Florida State Prison in Starke, Fla., on Aug. 3, 2023. (AP)
“We have waited 36.5 years for justice for our mother,” Sather’s family wrote, according to the Independent Florida Alligator. “The pain has been unbearable without her with us every day.”
The family also indicated her death occurred just weeks after she lost her husband to cancer.
Willacy maintained his innocence, saying he would never kill his friend, the AP reported.
He did, however, express remorse to his family and told his “brothers on the row” to stay strong, per the AP. He was injected with the three-drug mix of an anesthetic, a paralytic and potassium acetate, which stops the heart. The combination is the standard in Florida lethal injections.
Infographic explaining death by lethal injection, the method used to administer the death penalty in the state of Florida. (JEAN-MICHEL CORNU, LUCA MATTEUCCI/AFP via Getty Images)
During an investigation into Sather’s murder, law enforcement officers found Willacy’s fingerprints on the fan at Sathey’s feet and on a gas can taken from her garage. Witnesses also reported seeing a man matching Willacy’s description near Sather’s house and driving her vehicle on the day of the murder.
Willacy’s girlfriend, told police she found a woman’s check register in Willacy’s trash. When police recognized the check register as belonging to Sather, they arrested Willacy. At Willacy’s house, police found some of Sather’s property, clothes with blood matching Sather’s blood type.
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Willacy was convicted of first-degree murder, burglary, robbery and arson and sentenced to death in 1991 after a 9-3 jury vote recommending the death penalty.
In 1994, the Florida Supreme Court ordered a new sentencing, citing the trial judge’s failure to give defense attorneys a chance to rehabilitate a potential juror who indicated she couldn’t recommend the death penalty, according to the AP.
In 1995, Willacy was again sentenced to death after a new jury recommended the death penalty in an 11-1 vote.
“Our mother, Marlys Mae Sather should be remembered as a beautiful and loving daughter, wife, mother of 3, grandmother of 5, great grandmother of 5, aunt, cousin and friend,” the Sather family’s statement read.
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“She was a new widow trying to take one day at a time,” it said. “We miss her so much every day.”
Willacy’s execution was the fifth in Florida this year, following a record-breaking 2025 in which the state executed 19 death row inmates. The execution was the ninth in the U.S. this year.