On Sept. 11, Gov. Ron DeSantis issued a death warrant for William Thompson, convicted of the 1976 kidnapping, rape and murder of 23-year-old Sally Ivester.
Thompson, now 74, and another man were staying in a Miami Beach hotel room with Ivester and another woman, according to court records. After Ivester was unable to get money from her mother, the men beat and tortured her, prosecutors said. She died from internal bleeding and multiple injuries. Thompson was convicted in 1978 of kidnapping, rape, and first-degree murder.
Thompson's conviction was overturned twice but was reinstated in resentencing trials in 1978 and 1989. By the date of his execution, Thompson will have been on Florida's death row for 48 years, the fourth-longest span of anyone
currently there.
The next scheduled execution is Curtis W. Beasley, set to die on Sept. 29 for bludgeoning Carolyn Monfort, 62, to death with a claw hammer in 1995 at her Polk County home.
If both scheduled executions go as planned, Thompson will be the 17th person put to death in Florida this year in an even more rapid schedule than last year's record-shattering 19 executions. Before that, the most executions carried out in a single year in Florida was eight.
When will William Lee Thompson be executed in Florida?
Barring a successful appeal or request for stay of execution, Thompson will be executed by lethal injection starting at 6 p.m. on Tuesday, Oct. 13, at Florida State Prison in Raiford, about 45 miles southwest of Jacksonville.
Who did William Thompson kill? How did Sally Ivester die?
On March 30, 1976, William Lee Thompson, who was 23 at the time, was staying in a North Miami Beach hotel room with Rocco Surace and two young women, Ivester and Barbara Savage. Ivester had left Doraville, Georgia, for Miami 10 days previously and had written her mother about meeting "someone special," according to a 1976 article in The Miami News.
During a previous conversation, the women had both told the men they could get several hundred dollars from their parents if they wanted, The Miami News reported. Thompson and Surace demanded they do so. Savage received the money she promised, but Ivester received only $25 after promising she could get $200 or $300.
The men became enraged, prosecutors said, and began beating and torturing her. Surace ordered Ivester into the bedroom where he struck her in the face with his chain belt before forcing her to undress.
The two men beat her with the chain and sexually assaulted her with a chair leg and a night stick, causing internal tearing and bleeding, court records show. They also tortured her with lit cigarettes and lighters, followed by "further severe beatings with the chain, club, and chair leg," according to a Florida Supreme Court document.
Thompson and Surace only stopped to take Ivester to a phone booth, where she was told to call her mother and request more money. Her mother, Betty June Ivester, said her daughter's voice sounded strange, but Sally Ivester told her she had been running. The call was cut short when she screamed "Momma" and the line went dead, Betty June Ivester said.
The men took Ivester back to the room and resumed the beatings. Savage was a witness to the attacks but testified she feared for her life if she tried to intervene or flee. Ivester died of internal bleeding and multiple injuries.
Both Surace and Thompson initially pleaded not guilty, but changed their pleas a month later to guilty. They were convicted of kidnapping, sexual assault, and first-degree murder.
William Thompson's appeals
In 1977, the Florida Supreme Court unanimously overturned the sentences and ordered retrials for both men after Thompson and Surace said they had changed their pleas to guilty after being promised life sentences.
At Surace's trial, Thimpson testified and took responsibility. Surace was found guilty of second-degree murder and sentenced to life. He died in prison in 1993.
Thompson pleaded guilty again to first-degree murder and was again sentenced to death. An appeal against it was dismissed two years later.
Thompson narrowly avoided the electric chair twice. Then-Gov. Bob Graham issued a death warrant for him in 1982, but he was granted a stay of execution. In 1987, after another appeal had been shot down, then-Gov. Bob Martinez issued another, but the Florida Supreme Court stayed that one, overturned his sentence a second time, and ordered a resentencing because the judge had not considered mitigating factors that might have led to a lesser sentence.
A jury recommended the death penalty again, with a vote of 7 to 5, and he was sentenced to death again. Multiple further appeals since then requesting further psychiatric evaluations and claiming that Surace forced him to take responsibility for the murder have been dismissed.
Thompson apparently attempted suicide
In September 1981, Thompson was found in his cell with a homemade knife protruding from his stomach, according a Florida Department of Corrections spokesperson.
Thompson was stabilized at the prison clinic and sent to a nearby hospital to remove the knife, AP reported.
Who has been on Florida's death row the longest?
Earlier this year, Gov. Ron DeSantis said his newly accelerated death warrant schedule was to bring justice for families who had waited decades.
On Sept. 1, the state executed Harold Gene Lucas nearly 50 years after he was convicted of murdering 16-year-old Jill Piper, topping the record set by James E. Hitchcock, who was executed in April 49 years after being sentenced for the rape and murder of his 13-year-old step-niece, Cynthia Driggers. Last year, Kayle Bates was put to death 42 years after his conviction for the 1982 kidnapping, attempted sexual battery and murder of Janet White.
Thompson is the longest-serving death row inmate from Miami, but he's only one of about 20 inmates who have been there for more than 40 years. The people on Florida's death row the longest are:
- William "Tommy" Zeigler, Jr., 50 years, 2 months: Sentenced to death for the Christmas Eve, 1975 murders of his wife, Eunice Edwards-Zeigler, her parents Perry and Virginia Edwards, and Charles Mays Jr., in his Winter Garden furniture store. Zeigler is the longest-serving death row inmate in Florida and in the nation.
- Henry Perry Sireci, 49 years, 10 months: Sentenced to death for the 1975 beating and stabbing murder of car salesman Howard Poteet.
- James Franklin Rose, 49 years, 4 months: Sentenced to death for kidnapping and murdering his former girlfriend's 8-year-old daughter with a hammer on Oct. 22, 1976. Rose also confessed to the 1975 rape and murder of 37-year-old Jean Savage after DNA testing linked him 41 years later.
- William Lee Thompson, 48 years as of Sept. 20: Sentenced to death for the 1976 kidnapping, rape and murder of Sally Ivester.
- Paul William Scott, 46 years, 10 months: Sentenced to death for the 1978 bludgeoning death of Boca Raton florist and jeweler James Alessi during a robbery.
C. A. Bridges is a journalist for the USA TODAY Network-Florida's service journalism Connect team. You can get all of Florida’s best content directly in your inbox each weekday by signing up for the free newsletter, Florida TODAY.
This article originally appeared on Palm Beach Post: Florida to execute William Thompson after nearly 48 years on death row
