Florida killer to be executed by lethal injection

A man who admitted killing two women and four girls is scheduled to be executed Thursday after spending almost 29 years in a Florida prison.

David Alan Gore on Thursday met with his mother and an ex-wife and is scheduled to be put to death at 6 p.m. EDT.

Gore, now 58, had confessed to killing four teenage girls and two women in the 1980s in the eastern Florida town of Vero Beach, but was condemned to death for killing 17-year-old Lynn Elliott. He was simultaneously serving five life sentences for the other slayings, the Florida Department of Corrections reported on its website.

On July 26, 1983, Gore and his cousin, Fred Waterfield, picked up Elliott and her 14-year-old friend who were hitchhiking. According to the Associated Press, the men took them at gunpoint to Gore’s parents’ house. Waterfield left and Gore raped the girls, who were bound in separate rooms. Waterfield is serving two life sentences in prison.

Elliott freed her legs and ran naked from the house, hands still tied behind her back. Gore, also naked, chased her, dragged her back toward the house as she kicked and screamed and then shot her twice in the head. Police were called after a boy witnessed the murder. Gore was caught and the other girl was rescued, the Associated Press reported.

His last meal was fried chicken, French fries, a soda and butter pecan ice cream. Florida Department of Corrections spokeswoman Jo Ellyn Rackleff said in an email.

The execution comes less than a day after Connecticut legislators voted to abolish the death penalty, landing the state into the final stages of being the fifth in five years and the 17th in the country to do so. Gov. Dannel Malloy has said he will sign the bill.

Connecticut’s bill abolishes the death penalty for all future cases, but leaves the 11 inmates currently on Connecticut’s death row.

Individuals convicted under the proposed legislation would receive sentences of life imprisonment without the possibility of release in lieu of the death penalty.

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