James Dennis Ford was executed by lethal injection Thursday evening at Florida State Prison in Stark, ending a 25-year odyssey through the appeals process for the brutal 1997 murders of a young couple whose toddler daughter survived alone in a blood-soaked truck for 18 hours. Ford, 64, was pronounced dead at 6:19 p. m.
after the three-𝒹𝓇𝓊𝑔 protocol began at 6:00 p. m. He declined to speak his final words aloud but left a written statement: “Hugs, prayers, love, God bless everyone.”
The execution was the first in Florida in 2025 and the fourth in the United States this year. More than 25 witnesses, including family members of the victims, watched from the chamber. Outside the prison, about 70 death penalty opponents gathered, ringing a bell before the lethal injection began.
The sound was audible from death row.
Ford’s last meal consisted of steak, macaroni and cheese, fried okra, sweet potato, pumpkin pie, and sweet tea. Florida law caps last meals at $40, purchased locally. He had spent his final hours in Bible study with neighboring inmates, thanking one with tears in his eyes for teaching him scripture.
The case began on a quiet Sunday morning, April 6, 1997, in Charlotte County, Florida. Ford, then 36 and a laborer at the South Florida Sod Farm, invited his co-worker Greg Malnery, 25, to go fishing at the remote 7,000-acre property. Greg brought his wife, Kimberly, 26, and their 22-month-old daughter, Miranda.
The family had no idea they were driving toward a massacre.
Ford had stashed a . 22-caliber single-shot bolt-action rifle he called “Old Betsy.” He shot Greg in the back of the head, then beat him at least seven times with a blunt instrument consistent with an axe, and finally slit his throat from ear to ear.
Greg died in an open field, his wounds so severe he was barely recognizable.
Kimberly witnessed the attack. Despite being injured, she ran to the truck, strapped Miranda securely into her car seat, and then was dragged away. Ford sexually assaulted her, beat her with nine separate blows to the skull, forced the rifle barrel into her mouth, and pulled the trigger.
She was 26, married just six months.
Ford left the baby in the car seat, covered in her mother’s blood, with the truck doors open. He drove away, ran out of gas, and ditched the rifle in a ditch. Miranda remained alone for 18 hours, swarmed by mosquitoes, dehydrated, and covered in insect bites.
She was found the next afternoon by co-workers who saw the bodies.
The forensic evidence was overwhelming. Ford’s rifle parts were recovered at the scene. His pocketknife contained Greg’s DNA.
Kimberly’s DNA was found in Ford’s truck. Semen recovered from her body matched Ford. He had raped her before killing her.
Ford’s childhood was troubled. His father was an alcoholic, his mother abandoned the family. He dropped out of school to work as a cemetery caretaker alongside his father.
When his father died, Ford’s grief spiraled into heavy drinking, consuming up to 24 beers a day plus whiskey. Psychological testing showed he functioned mentally at the level of an 11 to 14-year-old, with an IQ of 65, below the threshold for intellectual disability.
Despite that, he was found competent to stand trial. The trial lasted 11 days in February 1999. The jury found him guilty of two counts of first-degree murder, sexual battery with a firearm, and child 𝓪𝓫𝓾𝓼𝓮.
The penalty phase ended with an 11-to-1 recommendation for death. On June 3, 1999, Judge Cynthia Ellis sentenced him to death, calling the murders “heinous, atrocious, and cruel.”
Ford spent the next 25 years on death row in a 6-by-9-foot cell at Florida State Prison. His appeals were repeatedly rejected by the Florida Supreme Court, the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals, and the U. S.
Supreme Court. In 2016, the U. S.
Supreme Court ruling in Hurst v. Florida required unanimous jury recommendations for death sentences, but Ford’s case was finalized in May 2002, missing the retroactive cutoff by 27 days.
On January 10, 2025, Governor Ron DeSantis signed Ford’s death warrant. His attorneys launched final appeals, arguing that his mental age was below 18, citing the 2005 Roper v. Simmons decision that banned executing juvenile offenders.
A Charlotte County judge rejected that argument, and the Florida Supreme Court upheld the ruling. The U. S.
Supreme Court denied the appeal without comment on February 12, the eve of the execution.
Miranda Malnery, now 29, did not attend the execution. She said she debated for weeks but feared it could be “triggering” and bring up memories locked away for 27 years. She has no memory of her parents, only knowing them through photographs.
A picture of them holding her as a baby, taken the weekend before they were murdered, sits on her desk. “I grieve what could have been,” she said.
After the execution, Kimberly’s stepmother, D. Parkinson, said, “You don’t have justice as long as he’s alive. We have justice and relief now.”
Greg’s mother, Connie Ankney, added, “I got to see the day that my son’s murderer got to go to sleep. I hope he burns in hell.”
Miranda released a statement: “Living my whole life without them left me with a void that I had no idea would hurt so bad. While I know this will never bring me back to my mom and dad, I will never get a chance to meet them. It is giving me peace of mind.”
She later revealed that Thursday night was the first good sleep she had gotten in years.
The case of James Dennis Ford is now closed. A brutal double murder, a baby left alone in a blood-soaked truck, 25 years of legal battles, and finally, on a Thursday evening in February 2025, justice was served. Greg and Kimberly Malnery are buried together.
Miranda lives in Cape Coral, Florida, carrying the weight of a tragedy that defined her life.
