Last Tuesday, October 14, a killer known as the “Deacon of Death” was executed for the murders of two women whose bodies were found at the bottom of a pond in 1996, in one of the most shocking cases in Florida.
The 72-year-old man, identified as Samuel Lee Smithers, was pronounced dead at 6:15 p.m. after receiving the lethal injection inside the Florida State Prison. Just 15 minutes before the curtain to the execution chamber where Smithers was being held opened, revealing him strapped to a table with an IV.
Samuel Lee Smithers was a Baptist deacon. He met his two victims, Christy Cowan and Denise Roach, on separate occasions in May 1996 outside a Tampa motel, an area known for frequent prostitution, and that was the beginning of his terrible plan.
Both women were lured by Samuel Lee Smithers to a house where he had been asked to do gardening work. There, it was discovered that the man had had sex with both women before taking them to a garage and murdering them, dumping their bodies in one of the ponds on the premises. It was the owner, who knew the “Deacon of Death” from church, who discovered him cleaning an axe near a pool of blood inside the garage just a few days after he was supposed to have finished the gardening work as requested.
Samuel Lee Smithers claimed he had returned to the property to cut tree branches and blamed the pool of blood on someone who had killed an animal inside; However, the owner called the police and when authorities arrived they discovered the body of one of the two girls floating.
