8 people from SW Florida currently on death row
Wade Wilson’s first appearance for first-degree murder
Wade Wilson makes his initial court appearance in Fort Myers on Wednesday, November 20, 2019, via video chat from the Lee County Jail.
Amanda Inscore, [email protected]
A Fort Myers man convicted of two murders in Lee County could join eight other men from Lee and Collier counties on Florida’s death row.
On June 12, 2024, Wade Wilson was found guilty of two counts of first-degree murder in the 2019 deaths of Kristine Melton and Diane Ruiz.
Wilson is scheduled to return to court on Thursday, June 20, for sentencing. Any conviction of first-degree murder makes him eligible for the death penalty.
Eight inmates currently on Florida’s death row were sentenced in Lee or Collier County.
Here’s what we know about the conviction of Wade Wilson and death row inmates in Southwest Florida:
Conviction of Wade Wilson
Wade Wilson’s sentencing hearing is scheduled to begin on Thursday, June 20, and the jury will decide his fate.
The jury will hear evidence to determine aggravating and mitigating circumstances and, based on those considerations, recommend a life sentence or the death penalty.
The trial judge decides whether the penalty will be imposed.
Florida juries had until April 2023 to vote unanimously to recommend the death penalty. Then Governor Ron DeSantis signed a law allowing jurors to recommend the death penalty with just eight votes.
Here are the eight Southwest Florida men who could join Wilson on death row if he is sentenced to death:
Lee County
Harold Lucas
Harold Lucas has been on death row since 1977. He was convicted in 1976 of murdering 16-year-old Anthia Jill Piper in her home in Bonita Springs. Piper was shot seven times.
Anton Krawczuk
Anton Krawczuk was sentenced to death in 1990 for the murder of David Staker in his North Fort Myers home.
Krawczuk choked Staker for about ten minutes and then poured drain cleaner and water down his throat. Krawczuk’s co-defendant William Poirier then put a washcloth in Staker’s mouth and taped it shut.
The couple disposed of the body in Charlotte County.
Joshua Nelson
Joshua Nelson was convicted in 1996 of killing Cape Coral teenager Tommy Owens.
Nelson and his co-defendant Keith Brennan reportedly planned to kill the 18-year-old and steal his car. They lured Owens to a remote street in Cape Coral and beat him multiple times with a baseball bat before slitting his throat with a box cutter.
Owens was still conscious and begged to be put down. Nelson hit him again and the pair dragged his body into nearby bushes, where Owens later died.
Kevin Foster
Kevin Foster, the leader of the Lords of Chaos, a self-proclaimed militia group that terrorized Lee County in the 1990s, was convicted in 1998 of the April 1996 murder of Mark Schwebes, a music teacher at Riverdale High School.
Schwebes reportedly caught Foster and his group vandalizing the East Fort Myers high school auditorium and said he would turn them in the next day. Foster and three other teens went to Schwebes’ Pine Manor home, where Foster shot him.
Mark Sievers
Mark Sievers is on death row for the contract murder of his wife, Teresa Sievers, a 46-year-old doctor from southwest Florida.
Teresa Sievers left a family vacation and returned alone to her home in Bonita Springs on June 28, 2015.
After entering the house, she was beaten to death with hammers by Curtis Wayne Wright and Jimmy Ray Rodgers.
Joseph Zieler
Joseph Zieler of North Fort Myers was sentenced to death for the brutal rape and murder of 11-year-old Robin Cornell and her babysitter Lisa Story (32) in Cape Coral in 1990.
Collier County
Brandy Jennings
Brandy Jennings was sentenced to death for the infamous “Cracker Barrel Killings” in Collier County in November 1995.
Jennings and his co-defendant Charles Graves killed 18-year-old Jason Wiggins, 27-year-old Vicki Smith and 38-year-old Dorothy Siddle during a robbery at the Collier Boulevard restaurant where both had previously worked.
The victims had their hands tied, their throats slit and were left in a restaurant freezer.
Mesac Damas
Mesac Damas is on death row for the murder of his wife and five children.
Damas killed Guerline Dieu Damas and her five children – Michzach, 9, Marven, 6, Maven, 5, Megan, 3, and Morgan, 1 – by slitting their throats with a fillet knife in their North Naples townhouse between September 17 and 18, 2009.
Damas fled to Haiti, where he was born and raised, but was soon found and returned to Florida.
Execution methods in Florida
In 1923, the Florida legislature passed a law replacing execution with the electric chair. Prison inmates built a chair out of oak that year.
The current three-legged electric chair in Florida, nicknamed “Old Sparky,” was built from oak by Florida Department of Corrections employees and installed at the Florida State Prison in Raiford in 1999.
A law passed in 2000 allows lethal injection as an alternative to the electric chair.
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