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Florida carries out executions
The Star
|October 16, 2025
A FLORIDA man convicted of murdering two women he hired for sex was put to death by lethal injection this week, one of four executions to be carried out in the US this week.
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Samuel Smithers, 72, was sentenced to death in 1999 for the 1996 killings of Christy Cowan and Denise Roach in Tampa. They had been beaten and strangled and their bodies were found in a pond.
Smithers was executed at a Florida state prison at 6:15pm, the 14th execution in the southern state this year.
Another convicted murderer was also put to death by lethal injection in the mid-western state of Missouri this week.
This story is from the October 16, 2025 edition of The Star.
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