FORMER FLORIDA CHURCH DEACON GETS THE NEEDLE... FLORIDA'S 14TH EXECUTION THIS YEAR LEAVES TEXAS WITH NONE FAR BEHIND

'Deacon of Death' executed in Florida for murder of two women nearly 30 years ago

 

By Brittany Chain 

 

Daily Mail

Oct 14, 2025

 

 

Samuel Lee Smithers, 72, was pronounced dead at 6.15pm after receiving the lethal injection in Florida State Prison

 

A convicted double murderer known as the 'Deacon of Death' has been executed in Florida. 

Samuel Lee Smithers, 72, was pronounced dead at 6.15pm after receiving the lethal injection in Florida State Prison.

His death comes almost 30 years after he murdered two women, Christy Cowan and Denise Roach, in 1996.

At the time he was working as a church deacon while also providing landscaping maintenance on a 27-acre property in rural Plant City.

He met the two women at a Tampa motel to pay them for sex on two different dates in May 1996. Later that month on May 28, the property owner found Smithers in the carport cleaning an ax near a pool of blood.

The woman contacted authorities and a sheriff's deputy noticed later that day drag marks leading to one of three ponds on the property. There, they found the bodies of both Cowan and Roach.    

Both women had been severely beaten, strangled and left in the pond to die. After his arrest, he was nicknamed the Deacon of Death.

Smithers was Florida's 14th execution this year, marking a record for the state.