John Spenkelink, who shot to death a drifter in a Tallahassee hotel room in 1973, was the first person Florida executed in the post-Furman era of capital punishment and America's second overall after Gary Ridgeway. He was born in Le Mars, Iowa on March 29, 1949 and moved with his family to Buena Park, California at some point during his childhood, the details of which are unclear. When John was 12, his alcoholic father committed suicide inside his truck and the trauma of that event seems to have driven him over the edge. He was arrested for the first time at the age of 14 for stealing a car and taking it for a joyride. Spenkelink was arrested more times for robbery, burglary, and creating a public disturbance. Stints in juvenile detention failed to set him straight.
He got married in 1967, shortly after his 18th birthday, but separated from his wife in a few months. Spenkelink's probation officer only said that he had not gotten in any trouble as a child and that he'd been a reliable paper boy. Convicted of a robbery spree in which he robbed a fast food restaurant, five gas stations, and two people, he was sentenced to five to life and placed in the minimum security Slack Canyon Conservation Camp near Big Sur. Spenkelink escaped the facility shortly after Christmas 1972, stole a car, and drove out to the Midwest. In Nebraska, he picked up Joe Szymankiewicz while the latter was hitchhiking.Szymankiewicz, 43, was an Ohio native and career criminal who had served 16 years for assorted property crimes. The pair roamed the country for a few weeks, finally ending up in Florida where, on February 3, 1973, they checked into Room 4 at Ponce de Leon Motel in Tallahassee. Spenkelink then checked out of the motel and told the clerk at the front desk that Szymankiewicz was his brother, was extremely drunk and unable to get into his car, and he had to leave him where he was. He paid for an additional night's lodging and left--this was a ruse to delay discovery of the body until he could make his getaway. The next morning, a maid entered the room to find Szymankiewicz dead, beaten and shot twice. Autopsy found that he'd been killed in his sleep, a gunshot behind the left ear and another in the back, which cut through his spine and ruptured his aorta--the latter was the ultimate cause of death.
However, the physical evidence at the crime scene indicated that Szymankiewicz was shot in his sleep and there had been no struggle the way Spenkelink claimed. A jury did not buy his version of events and he was found guilty and sentenced to death--Frank Bruum was later acquitted of any involvement in the murder. Spenkelink fought his conviction--on death row in Florida State Prison, he experienced a religious conversion and read books such as the prophecies of Edgar Cayce. He drew cartoons with religious messages and once sent his mother a drawing of a red, white, and blue electric chair captioned "Spirit of '76." He spent much of his day answering mail, inscribing envelopes wiht the message "Capital punishment means those without capital get the punishment!" Twice a week Spenkelink was visited by a pen pal girlfriend, Carla Key.The Supreme Court had ordered a hiatus to the death penalty in the United States in 1972, until states redrew their capital punishment guidelines. Florida was the first state to revise theirs and it met the Court's approval. The state of Utah executed serial killer Gary Ridgeway in January 1977, marking the return of the death penalty in the US after a decade--unlike Spenkelink, Ridgeway did not choose to fight his execution.
Despite his continued efforts to appeal, Spenkelink was strapped into the electric chair on May 25, 1979 as anti-death penalty protesters demonstrated outside the prison. His execution was the first Florida carried out in 15 years and it vied for headline space in the national news with the deadly crash of an American Airlines DC-10 airliner in Chicago the same day that claimed the lives of 271 persons. Contrary to popular belief, Spenkelink's execution did not open a floodgate as Florida did not execute another person for four years. There were anti-death penalty activists who claimed Spenkelink was forcibly dragged to the chair and beaten, even that he was already dead when the switch was pulled, however an autopsy disproved those claims. The execution created complications as nobody knew how to operate the chair after 15 long years and prison officials had to rely on people's memories.Over the years, two executions would be botched, when Pedro Medina and Jesse Tafero's heads caught on fire. The last use of the electric chair in Florida happened after Allen "Tiny" Davis was executed in 1999 and graphic photos of his dead body appeared on the Internet. The state legislature shortly afterwards voted to replace "Old Sparky" with lethal injection.
>>18519530oh well, at least it was just some lowlife killing another lowlife and nobody anyone cared about died
>>18519532why is Florida so obsessed with killing people?
>>18519532>only six years from trial to executionat what point did they start dragging these things out multiple decades?
>>18519530>five years in a minimum security facility for several armed robberiesI love the 70s.
>>18519530>drives out to the Midwest in fucking JanuaryReally, John? Wouldn't you rather go down to Arizona where it's warm? Well ok it does seem he and Szymankiewicz eventually decided to go to Florida.
>>18519524man, what finding your dad's body after he suicides himself can do to a mf-er
>>18519524https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/3432747/bernard-spenkelinkhis father died May 3, 1961. poor guy probably had untreated war PTSD, and his mother was a lot older than his father.
