Florida is set to execute a man convicted of murdering two women in the 1990s, one of whom was stabbed to death with an oyster knife.
Michael Zack III, 54, is scheduled to receive a lethal injection at 6.00pm on Tuesday evening.
Zack was convicted of murder for the 1996 slayings of Ravonne Smith and Laura Rosillo, two women he met at bars in the Florida Panhandle.
He committed the crimes over the course of nine days, beginning on June 13, 1996 when he found out he was evicted from his apartment while drinking at a local bar in Tallahassee.
Zack was a regular at the bar, and befriended bartender Edith Pope, who he had previously told about how he witnessed his sister murder his mother with an axe.
Pope took pity on Zack, and occasionally offered him odd jobs around the bar.
This time, Pope offered to loan him a pickup truck, which he took and drove from Tallahassee to Panama City.
He met and befriended a man at another bar in the resort town, who also took pity on him and offered him a job at his construction company. Zack instead stole $42 and two guns from him, which he pawned for about $200.
He then drove to another bar in Panama City, where he met Laura Rosillo.
Zack invited Rosillo to a nearby beach to use drugs. He drove the victim to shore in Pope’s truck, but began beating her before she even left the vehicle.
He then ‘strangled her, dragged her body behind a sand dune, kicked dirt over her face,’ according to court filings.
Evidence also suggested Rosillo was sexually assaulted, but DNA recovered from her body was never matched to Zack.
His next stop was a bar in Pensacola, about two hours west. There, he met and befriended Ravonne Smith, who drove back to her apartment with him around 8.00pm.
Investigators determined Zack assaulted Smith with a glass beer bottle shortly after arriving at her home. He then chased her into a bedroom, which left a ‘trail of blood’ down her hallway.
He then sexually assaulted her in the bedroom, before continuing to beat her head against the floor. Finally, he went to Smith’s kitchen and grabbed a knife used to shuck oysters. He stabbed smith four times in the center of the chest with the knife.
Zack later confessed to the killing, but insisted their sex was consensual. He said he only became enraged after she made a comment about his mother’s murder.
After the bloody murder, Zack proceeded to steal Smith’s television, her VCR, and her purse. He drove them in her car to a pawn shop, where he tried to sell the items.
The pawn shop quickly alerted police, realizing that the items were likely stolen. Zack fled from the store, abandoned Smith’s car, and spent several days hiding in an abandoned house.
He was arrested a total of nine days after he borrowed the pickup truck from Edith Pope.
Zack was convicted at trial in 1997, and a jury recommended a death sentence after an 11-1 vote.
In the years since, Zack has tried to appeal his conviction, arguing that he suffered from fetal alcohol syndrome, post-traumatic stress disorder, and that his IQ was too low to qualify for the death penalty.
However, an appeals court found that Zack did meet the requirements to claim of ‘significantly subaverage intellectual functioning.’
They noted that he scored above a 75 on each IQ test he has been given, the maximum score needed to make the claim.
His case has also been supported by anti-death penalty groups, including Amnesty International.
‘Michael is remorseful, has been peaceful on death row, and with his limited intellectual functioning, has learned to read and write,’ according to a petition circulated by Floridians for Alternatives to the Death Penalty. ‘He has tried to make sense of how his traumatic upbringing impacted the choices he made as an adult. He can and should remain in prison for the remainder of his natural life.’
The Supreme Court declined to look at his appeal on Monday, upholding the previous appeals court ruling and paving the way for his execution.
Zack’s death warrant was signed by Florida Governor Ron DeSantis in August after spending almost 26 years on the state’s death row.
He will become the sixth person executed in the Sunshine State so far in 2023.
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