Florida Death Row inmate Edward Zakrzewski was executed more than 30 years after he brutally murdered his whole family. On Thursday, July 31, at 6:12 p.m. ET, Zakrzewski was declared deceased at Florida State Prison in Raiford.
In his final words, Zakrzewski said, “I want to thank the good people of the Sunshine State for killing me in the most cold and calculated, clean, humane and efficient way possible. I have no complaints whatsoever,” reports Pensacola News Journal.
With two more prisoners already set to be the 10th and 11th executions of the year, Zakrzewski became the ninth prisoner executed in Florida in the first half of 2025, shattering previous records. According to some involved in the case, Zakrzewski’s death was justice long overdue.
In 1994, Zakrzewski, a 29-year-old tech sergeant assigned to Eglin Air Force Base, was upset that his wife, Sylvia, was thinking about divorcing him. Zakrzewski beat and strangled his wife with a crowbar and a rope because he couldn’t bear the idea that Sylvia would take the couple’s two kids, Anna, aged five, and Edward, aged seven, back to her home country of South Korea.
Then, using a machete he had bought that day, he called each of his kids into a bathroom in their Mary Esther house and hacked them to death. The principal investigator tasked with constructing the case against Zakrzewski was Joe Nelson, a retired detective from the Okaloosa County Sheriff’s Office. It was his first time attending an execution, and he traveled four hours to be there.
BREAKING: Florida has executed Edward Zakrzewski for the gruesome 1994 machete murders of his wife and two kids, who were ages 7 and 5.
His wife had sought a divorce before the killings.
LAST WORDS: “I want to thank the good people of the Sunshine State for killing me in the… pic.twitter.com/ihRfteMkHc
— Breaking911 (@Breaking911) July 31, 2025
Nelson claimed that after the murders on June 9, 1994, he worked long, exhausting hours at the crime scene. He remembered a young child drenched in blood, lying in a bathtub with his mother’s and sister’s bodies draped over it.
“Personally, I have never seen a more violent crime scene than that,” he said. “It was terrible. You could see the rage in the way the kids were cut.” In the past 30 years, Nelson, who has been retired for 17 years, has questioned whether Zakrzewski will outlive him.
It has provided him with the closure he has always sought. It’s over now, he remarked. He felt like “it needed to stop.” “I wasn’t sure if he would pass away during my lifetime at one point. It has taken a while to happen,” he said.
Eglin Air Force Base airman Edward Zakrzewski, 60, convicted of killing his wife and two children with a machete in 1994 was executed Thursday.https://t.co/GI2FtaFKl4
— WEAR ABC 3 (@weartv) August 1, 2025
According to Paul Walker, deputy director of communications for the Florida Department of Corrections, Zakrzewski woke up around five in the morning on his last day. His final dinner consisted of coffee, ice cream, pie, fried pork chops, fried onions, potatoes, bacon, toast, and root beer.
He did not utilize the opportunity to meet with a spiritual advisor, and he had one unidentified visitor on Thursday morning. According to Nelson, neither Zakrzewski nor his victims’ relatives attended the execution.
Robert Frost’s well-known poem, “He Stopped by Woods on a Snowy Evening,” was repeated by Zakrzewski before his execution, but he paused halfway through. After he finished speaking, at approximately 6:04 p.m., the execution phase began. After a few sharp gasps, his respiration almost instantly slowed, and by 6:13 p.m., he was declared dead.
