If Wade Wilson gets death sentence he’ll join 8 from Lee, Collier on Florida death row

A Fort Myers man convicted of two Lee County murders could join eight other men from Lee and Collier counties on Florida’s death row.

On June 12, 2024, Wade Wilson was convicted on two counts of first-degree murder in the 2019 deaths of Kristine Melton and Diane Ruiz.

Wilson is scheduled to be back in court on Thursday, June 20 for the trial’s penalty phase. Each first-degree murder conviction makes him eligible for a death sentence.

Eight inmates currently sitting on Florida’s death row were convicted in Lee or Collier County.

Here’s what we know about Wade Wilson’s sentencing, Southwest Florida inmates under death sentences:

Wade Wilson sentencing

The penalty phase of Wade Wilson’s trial is set to begin Thursday, June 20 and the jury will decide his fate.

The jury will hear evidence to establish aggravating factors and mitigating circumstances and recommend life imprisonment or death based on those considerations.

The trial judge decides whether the sentence is imposed.

Florida juries were required to vote unanimously for a death sentence recommendation until April 2023 when Gov. Ron DeSantis signed into law a bill allowing the jury to recommend death with as few as 8 votes.

Here are the eight men from Southwest Florida Wilson could join 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 the 1976 murder of 16-year-old Anthia Jill Piper in her Bonita Springs home. Piper was shot seven times.

Anton Krawczuk

Anton Krawczuk was sentenced to death in the 1990 murder of David Staker in his North Fort Myers home.

Krawczuk choked Staker for about 10 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 in.

The pair dumped the body in Charlotte County.

Joshua Nelson

Joshua Nelson was convicted of killing Cape Coral teen Tommy Owens in 1996.

According to reports, Nelson and his co-defendant Keith Brennan planned to kill the 18-year-old and steal his car. They lured Owens to a remote street in Cape Coral and hit him multiple times with a baseball bat before using a box cutter to slit his throat.

Owens was still conscious and begged to be knocked out. Nelson hit him again and the pair dragged his body to nearby bushes where Owens later died. 

Kevin Foster

Kevin Foster, the ringleader of the “Lords of Chaos,” a self-proclaimed militia group that terrorized Lee County in the 1990s, was convicted in 1998 of killing Mark Schwebes, a Riverdale High School music teacher in April of 1996.

Schwebes reportedly caught Foster and his group vandalizing the east Fort Myers high school’s auditorium and said he would turn them in the next day. Foster and three other teens went to Schwebes’ Pine Manor home where Foster fatally shot him.

Mark Sievers

Mark Sievers is on death row for the murder-for-hire death of his wife Teresa Sievers, a 46-year-old Southwest Florida doctor.

Teresa Sievers left a family vacation and returned alone to her Bonita Springs home on June 28, 2015.

After she walked into the house, Curtis Wayne Wright and Jimmy Ray Rodgers used hammers to bludgeon her to death.

Joseph Zieler

Joseph Zieler, of North Fort Myers, was sentenced to death in the brutal 1990 rape and murder of 11-year-old Robin Cornell and her babysitter, Lisa Story, 32, in Cape Coral.

Collier County

Brandy Jennings

Brandy Jennings received the death penalty for the infamous “Cracker Barrel Killings” in Collier County in November of 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 restaurant which was located off Collier Boulevard where both were previously employed.

The victims had their hands bound, throats slit and were left in a restaurant freezer.

Mesac Damas

Mesac Damas is on death row for the murders of his wife and five children.

Damas killed Guerline Dieu Damas, and their five children – Michzach, 9; Marven, 6; Maven, 5; Megan, 3; and Morgan, 1 – by slicing their throats with a filet knife in their North Naples townhouse between Sept. 17 and 18, 2009.

Damas fled to Haiti, where he was born and raised, but was soon located and returned to Florida.

Methods of execution in Florida

In 1923, the Florida Legislature passed a law replacing hanging with the electric chair. An oak chair was built by prison inmates in that year.

Florida’s current three-legged electric chair, nicknamed “Old Sparky,” was built of oak by Florida Department of Corrections staff and installed at Florida State Prison in Raiford in 1999.

Legislation passed in 2000 allows for lethal injection as an alternative to the electric chair.

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