Edward J. Zakrzewski II, a former U. S.
Air Force technical sergeant who brutally murdered his wife and two children in 1994, was executed by lethal injection Thursday evening at Florida State Prison, uttering a chilling final statement thanking the state for killing him in what he called a “cold, calculated, clean, humane, efficient way possible.” The execution, Florida’s ninth of 2025, set a modern state record for the most executions in a single year since the death penalty was reinstated in 1976. Zakrzewski, 60, was pronounced dead at 6:12 p.
m. , exactly 31 years after he slaughtered his family inside their home on Shrewsbury Road in Mary Esther, near Eglin Air Force Base.
The case, which nearly vanished from national headlines because it unfolded the same week O. J. Simpson became the focus of a live televised police chase, involved a level of premeditation that prosecutors called unparalleled.
Zakrzewski, who had served 14 years in the Air Force and earned the rank of technical sergeant, spent the night before the murders withdrawing more than $5,400 from the couple’s joint bank account. The next morning, June 9, 1994, he reported for duty at Eglin, received a phone call from his 7-year-old son, Edward III, who told him his mother wanted a divorce and planned to take the children back to South Korea. During his lunch break, Zakrzewski purchased a machete at an Army surplus store, then went home to sharpen the blade, stage a crowbar in the bedroom, and cut a length of rope.
He returned to base and completed his shift without raising suspicion.
After work, he stopped at a bar and asked a fellow veteran what it felt like to 𝓀𝒾𝓁𝓁 someone. He then went home, struck his 34-year-old wife, Sylvia, with the crowbar, and strangled her with the rope. He called his son into the bathroom, told him to brush his teeth, then called his 5-year-old daughter, Anna, into the same room.
Autopsy reports showed both children had defensive wounds on their arms and hands. Anna was positioned over the edge of the bathtub, kneeling, after witnessing her brother’s death. Zakrzewski washed up, changed clothes, and drove to a bar, where he drank heavily until police found him passed out in his car.
They took his keys and told him to pick them up in the morning, unaware of the horror inside his home.
The bodies were not discovered until three days later, on June 13, 1994—the same day O. J. Simpson was named a suspect in the murders of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Goldman.
That Monday, an estimated 95 million Americans watched Simpson’s white Ford Bronco crawl down a California freeway. The Zakrzewski case received almost no national coverage. “Three people who deserved full national attention were passed over completely,” the documentary transcript noted.
Zakrzewski fled to Hawaii, living under the alias Michael Ray Green on the remote island of Molokai. He worked as a handyman at a religious commune until his photo aired on “Unsolved Mysteries” in October 1994. The pastor and his wife confronted him; he left a note saying “I’m sorry” and surrendered the next day.
He was extradited to Florida and pleaded guilty to three counts of first-degree murder in 1996. During the penalty phase, his defense argued he acted out of mercy, fearing his mixed-race children would face discrimination in South Korea. The prosecutor, Bobby Elmore, presented evidence of cold, calculated planning, including Zakrzewski’s writings referencing Friedrich Nietzsche.
The jury voted 7-5 for death on the murders of Sylvia and Edward III, and deadlocked 6-6 on Anna’s murder. Judge G. Robert Baron overrode the deadlock and sentenced Zakrzewski to death on all three counts, citing prior capital offenses, cold and calculated planning, and especially heinous cruelty.
Under current Florida law, a minimum 8-4 jury majority is required for a death sentence, and a judge cannot override a deadlock. Advocates argued that in no other state would those jury numbers have produced an execution. But every court—from the Florida Supreme Court to the U.
S. Supreme Court—upheld the sentence. The high court denied final review on July 30, 2025, without a single dissenting vote.
Governor Ron DeSantis signed the death warrant on July 1, 2025, marking the ninth execution of the year. Outside the prison, protesters from Floridians for Alternatives to the Death Penalty held a prayer service. Inside, Zakrzewski woke at 5:15 a.
m. , requested a final meal of fried pork chops, fried onions, potatoes, bacon, buttered toast, root beer, ice cream, pie, and coffee. He had one visitor, whose identity was not disclosed.
No spiritual adviser was present. Before the procedure, he recited lines from Robert Frost’s “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening” but stopped short. Then he delivered his final words, thanking the state for killing him in a “cold, calculated” manner—the same word Judge Baron used in 1996 to describe the planning behind the murders.
Detective Joe Nelson, the lead investigator who had worked the case since 1994, drove four hours to witness the execution. He told reporters afterward, “It’s over now. It needed to stop.”
The case leaves behind haunting questions: a neighbor heard Zakrzewski threaten to 𝓀𝒾𝓁𝓁 his family on multiple occasions and said nothing. The 7-year-old boy who made the phone call that morning never understood what he set in motion. Sylvia, who wanted to return to South Korea, never made it.
Anna, 5, never grew up. And the nation nearly missed it all because of a white Bronco on a California freeway.
Florida’s 2025 execution tally now stands at nine, a record unmatched since 1976. Texas and South Carolina each recorded nine executions this year as well, but Florida’s pace under Governor DeSantis has drawn intense scrutiny. The Zakrzewski case, buried for three decades, finally received attention in its final hours—but for the family of Sylvia, Edward III, and Anna, justice came too late for the living.
The state of Florida, as Zakrzewski himself noted, killed him efficiently. But the memory of three lives cut short will not be so easily erased.
