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Edward Zakrzewski’s wife had known him since they were in the fourth grade. Growing up in the same neighborhood in Michigan, she and Zakrzewski had a close friendship. “I always had a crush on him, but I always knew that he was a ladies’ man in high school, and I was a good girl, so I wasn’t having that,” she said. As happens with many childhood friendships, they lost touch when her family moved away to Illinois. After decades of not being in touch, in a conversation with some old friends, she found out that Zakrzewski was on death row in Florida.

“I wrote him a letter, and all I said was, ‘I’m there for you if you need somebody to talk to, you probably don’t even remember me,’” she said. He wrote her back. “I went to visit him. And one thing led to another.” This December would have been their 11th marriage anniversary, but Zakrzewski was executed in July this year for the murder of his then-wife and their two children, in 1994.

His current wife did not want to be named to avoid attracting negative attention as the widow of a man who was executed. “It was like somebody had grabbed my heart and yanked it out of my chest,” she said when she heard that his execution warrant had been signed. “These guys are not all monsters. They are human beings that people exploit in the worst moments of their life. They don’t know the whole entire back story.”

Zakrzewski was an Air Force veteran who pled guilty without a plea agreement from the state, and only faced a jury for sentencing, according to a statement by Floridians for Alternatives to the Death Penalty (FADP). Almost half of his capital jury believed that the murders of his family were heavily mitigated by his exemplary military service and his “deep mental anguish” at the time of the crime. Five jurors wanted to spare his life for two of the murders, and six voted to sentence him to life without parole for the third, according to the same statement. But at the time, Florida law only required a simple majority to sentence someone to death row. Under Florida’s current law passed in 2023, Zakrzewski may not have qualified for execution, as the jury vote currently required for a death sentence is at least 8-4 (and is still the lowest in the nation).

His execution in July was the ninth execution in Florida in 2025, marking a state record for executions in one year since the restoration of the death penalty in the U.S. in 1976. The state surpassed its record of eight executions, which was set in 2014. Florida has executed 19 people since February 13, making it the state with the highest number of executions carried out in any given year since the death penalty was reinstated.

“That means we’re looking at execution roughly every 16 days. This is a really phenomenal pace,” said Grace Hanna, Executive Director of FADP. “In [some] other states, there have actually been court orders saying that they need to

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