STARKE, Fla. — A convicted murderer and rapist who terrorized downtown Orlando 30 years ago is set to die by lethal injection.
On Friday, Gov. Ron DeSantis signed the death warrant for Thomas Gudinas, 50.
The execution is scheduled for June 24. If it happens, it will be Florida’s seventh lethal injection this year.
Gudinas was convicted in the 1994 murder of 27-year-old Michelle McGrath in Orlando.
Investigators say McGrath was last seen leaving a bar called Barbarella’s around closing time in May 1994. They believe Gudinas attacked her in a nearby parking lot while she was walking to her car.
An autopsy found she was brutally raped and beaten to death.
McGrath was a 1984 graduate graduate of Pak Ridge High School, where she was her class’ homecoming queen.
A jury in Naples convicted Gudinas in 1995 for the rape and murder.
In issuing the death penalty, then-Judge Belvin Perry wrote “the evidence quite clearly establishes that the victim did not meet a swift, merciful and painless death.”
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