STARKE, Fla. — (AP) — A Florida man convicted of killing a husband and wife at a remote farm in an attack witnessed by the couple’s toddler was put to death Thursday in the state's first execution of the year.

James Dennis Ford, 64, was pronounced dead at 6:19 p.m. following a three-drug injection at Florida State Prison. He was convicted of the murders of Gregory Malnory, 25, and his wife Kimberly, 26. Both were killed during a 1997 fishing trip at a sod farm in southwest Florida's Charlotte County where court records showed the two men worked.

Ford had nothing to say Thursday evening to about 25 witnesses present as he lay strapped on a gurney. But the Corrections Department said the inmate did write a message on paper that read: “Hugs Prayer Love!!! God bless everyone.”

At first, as the injection began, his chest began heaving and then, slowly, all movements ceased. A few minutes later a staffer shook him and yelled “Ford! Ford!” to see if he was still conscious. There was no response.

At the time of the killings, the couple’s 22-month-old daughter witnessed the attack. She was strapped in a seat in the family’s open pickup truck and survived an 18-hour ordeal before workers came upon the crime scene. They found the girl covered in her mother’s blood and suffering from numerous insect bites, according to investigators.

The victims’ daughter, Maranda Malnory, was not present for Thursday's execution but issued a written statement describing the pain of losing her parents.

“Living my whole life without them left me with a void that I had no idea would hurt so bad,” she wrote. “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 recently told Fort Myers television station WBBH that she had no recollection of the killings and only remembers her parents through photos and the memories of others. “I told one of my grandmas the other day you grieve the people you knew,” she added. “But I grieve what could have been.”

Ford's execution was the first in Florida in 2025. One person was put to death in 2024, down from six in 2023, when Gov. Ron DeSantis was campaigning for the Republican presidential nomination. During the previous three years, the governor didn't sign off on any executions. He signed Ford's death warrant in January.

Also Thursday evening, a man who murdered his strip club manager and another man, then later prompted a massive lockdown of the state prison system, was executed in Texas.

Court documents show Ford attacked Gregory Malnory after the group arrived to go fishing, shooting him in the head with a .22-caliber rifle, beating him with an axe-like blunt instrument and finally slitting his throat. Kimberly Malnory was beaten, raped and then shot with the same rifle, authorities had said.

Ford initially told investigators that the Malnorys were alive when he left them to go hunting, suggesting someone else killed them. Prosecutors said in a court filing that there was “overwhelming proof that Ford was responsible for the murders and the rape.”

The rifle was found later in a ditch near where Ford’s truck had run out of gas and prosecutors presented DNA evidence at his trial connecting him to both slayings. The jury voted 11-1 to recommend the death penalty in the killings, to which the trial judge agreed.

The U.S. Supreme Court denied Ford’s final appeal Wednesday without comment.

Ford’s lawyers had filed numerous appeals since his sentencing, all unsuccessful. Recently the Florida Supreme Court rejected claims that his IQ of about 65 at the time of the murders put him in an intellectually disabled category with a mental age then of about 14 — therefore ineligible for execution, court documents show.

The court noted that only defendants whose chronological age was under 18 at the time of a crime can be ineligible for the death penalty “and because Ford was 36 at the time of the murders, it was "impossible for him to demonstrate that he falls within the ages of exemption.”

It’s not clear from court records why these killings happened. Part of Ford’s defense was that he suffered from abuse as a child and became an alcoholic like his father, drinking about a case of beer a day along with liquor. He also suffered from untreated diabetes, sometimes leading to blackouts and erratic behavior.

At trial, Ford also was convicted of sexual battery with a firearm and child abuse.

The Death Penalty Information Center said Florida uses a three-drug injection of a sedative, a paralytic and a drug that stops the heart to put inmates to death.

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