Posted: 2008-07-02 03:55:00
By HENRY FREDERICK / Headline Surfer
Bog: People, Places & Things
ORLANDO, Fla. -- So child killer Mark Dean Schwab, 31, was put to death at the Starke Prison by lethal injection Tuesday night for the 1991 rape and murder of 11-year-old Junny Rio-Martinez after befriending the Cocoa boy and his family by pretending to be a newspaper reporter and kidnapping him.
Justice finally came for the grieving parents 17 years later. I would have loved to have witnessed his execution like I did in 2002, when serial killer Aileen Wuornos was strapped down to the gurney.
Much closer to home here in Southeast Volusia, Oak Hill's Jonathan Trull lucked out when a jury opted for two life sentences instead of death after he led his two brothers and a pack of others in the murders of two Spring Breakers at a New Smyrna Beach timeshare.
According to the Orlando Sentinel and other media reports, Schwab said nothing before his execution, a painless affair, in which a series of injections are administered to paralyze the offender, stop his breathing an then his heart.
Schwab was declared dead 13 minutes later. It couldn't have happened to a nicer guy after what he did to that helpless child. Too bad it took so long for him to meet his maker.
Whether the death penalty is a deterrent is open to debate. Whether truly innocent people are executed is also open to debate. But one thing is certain: The likes of Mark Dean Schwab and Aileen Wuornos can't repeat their crimes having themselves receiving the ultimate punishment of death. State executions are always a circus.
I remember Wuornos' like it was yesterday. While demonstrators outside the grounds of the Starke prison held up protest signs, Wuornos gave her last words: "I'd just like to say I'm sailing with the Rock and I'll be back like 'Independence Day' with Jesus -- June 6 -- like the movie -- big mother ship and all. I'll be back."
The Rock is a Biblical reference to Jesus and Independence Day referred to the blockbuster movie starring Will Smith.
The morning of Oct. 9, 2002 was a weird experience, to say the least: I was among 28 eyewitnesses to the execution of the nation's famed female serial killer who had received six death sentences for shooting six men along Central Florida highways, including Richard Mallory in a wooded area just north of Ormond Beach a decade earlier.
She admitted killing a seventh man, but the state couldn't prove it. I sat behind State Attorney John Tanner, who prosecuted her, and Circuit Judge R. Michael Hutcheson, who presided over most of her post-conviction appeals and agreed to let her drop her remaining appeals. After her less than monumental speech, all eyes behind the glass plate were fixated on Wuornos, who swallowed repeatedly as the injections worked their way into her system.
After a few minutes, Wuornos' breathing stopped. Her chest no longer moved up and down. In 14 minutes' time, she lay dead. As her skin turned whitish in color, the backs of the necks of the witnesses in front of me turned red. That was the most eerie part of it all for me. Basically as the blood stopped flowing in her lifeless body, it was boiling in those of the witnesses, mine as well, I'm sure, the result of heightened blood pressure.
After a few minutes, Wuornos' breathing stopped. Her chest no longer moved up and down. In 14 minutes' time, she lay dead. As her skin turned whitish in color, the backs of the necks of the witnesses in front of me turned red. That was the most eerie part of it all for me. Basically as the blood stopped flowing in her lifeless body, it was boiling in those of the witnesses, mine as well, I'm sure, the result of heightened blood pressure.
Hutcheson told me after the execution that he found it unsettling: "Not for her herself, but the way it was done. There's no movement. It's just knowing they're pumping deadly chemicals in her. Not that she didn't deserve it. She admitted killing seven men."
Tanner later told reporters outside the Florida State Prison gates that justice was served. "I said a prayer for her and the victims and myself," Tanner said. "This is a tough business. Lethal injection is certainly a more humane way to terminate life."
Relatives of some of the victims said the method was too easy for Wuornos. "I think she should have suffered a little more," said Terry Slay Griffith, 39, of Citrus County. Her father, Dick Humphrey, was among the men killed along Central and North Florida interstates between 1989 and 1990.
As for Jonathan Trull, he was given two consecutive life sentences for the capital murder convictions in the 1998 slayings of Kevans Hall II, 23, and Mathew Wichita, 21, and the attempted murder of Seth Qubeck, 21, all of Maryland. Trull, then 27, led six young men, including his two younger brothers, to an NSB timeshare where the Maryland Spring Breakers were staying on April 16, 1998, and under the cover of darkness, attacked them with knives, baseball bats and a cue ball in a sock.
The bloody rampage that ensued was revenge for Joshua Trull, then 17, getting his butt kicked for getting into an argument with another family there and starting a fight. The elder Trull's defense attorney, Gerard Keating, told the jury in 2001: "You may think he's a monster -- this his life is worth much less than the lives that are gone. Jonathan Trull is a good person who had one bad night. Jonathan Trull is too good a person to be put to death."
Keating was right about one thing. Jonathan Trull is a monster. And so were Aileen Wuornos and Mark Dean Schwab. The difference is, society has to pay for Trull's imprisonment the rest of his life.
Henry Frederick is publisher of Headline Surfer, the award-winning 24/7 internet news outlet launched 12 years ago that serves greater Daytona Beach, Sanford & Orlando, Florida via HeadlineSurfer.com. Frederick has amassed more than a hundred journalism industry awards in print & online -- more than than all other members of the working press combined in Central Florida since the mid-1990s. He earned his Master of Arts in New Media Journalism with academic honors from Full Sail University in 2019. Having witnessed the execution of serial killer Aileen Wuornos in Florida's death chamber and other high profile cases, Frederick has appeared on national crime documentary programs on Discovery ID and Reelz for his investigative reporting and cops & courts breaking news stories.