Florida set to execute 77-year-old Curtis Beasley in 1995 hammer murder case
A 77-year-old Florida man convicted of beating a woman to death with a hammer is scheduled to be executed on Tuesday, in what would be the 16th execution this year in the state. Curtis Wilkie Beasley was sentenced to death after being convicted of first-degree murder, robbery and grand theft auto in the 1995 killing of Carolyn Monfort.
Last week, the Florida Supreme Court rejected appeals that argued executing Beasley at his age, and while he is suffering from cognitive decline, would amount to cruel and unusual punishment. A final appeal is still pending before the US Supreme Court.
Beasley is due to receive a three-drug lethal injection at the state prison from 6 pm. If carried out, he would be Florida’s seventh prisoner aged over 70 to be executed this year. It is one of two executions scheduled in the US this week. In Tennessee, Christa Pike, 50, is due to be executed on Wednesday. She was convicted of killing a classmate in a jealous rage when they were both teenagers, and would become the first woman executed in the state in 200 years.
According to court records, Beasley had been staying at Monfort’s home in Dundee, south of Orlando, in August 1995 while he was pressure washing and painting nearby apartments owned by her son-in-law. Monfort’s daughter went to the house after being unable to contact her for two days and found her body in a blood-spattered laundry room. Investigators said Monfort had suffered multiple blunt-force injuries to the head, and a bloody hammer head was found wrapped in a towel nearby.
Authorities began looking for Beasley after a witness reported seeing him driving what was later identified as Monfort’s car. Investigators said he travelled to Miami and later moved to Alabama, where he was arrested while working under a fake name for an electrical company. He was convicted of murder and sentenced to death in 1998.
Beasley would be the 29th person executed in the US this year, with Florida accounting for more than half of the total, according to the report. The state is nearing last year’s figure of 19 executions, which was a record in Florida since the death penalty was reinstated in 1976. In July, Florida executed two prisoners on the same day, becoming the first state in nearly a decade to do so.
Two more executions are scheduled in Florida this year, although Republican Governor Ron DeSantis has temporarily paused the next one. William Lee Thompson, 74, is scheduled to be executed on October 13 for raping and fatally beating a woman at a Florida motel in 1976. After a doctor said this month that Thompson might be suffering from dementia, DeSantis ordered a panel of three psychiatrists to examine him on Thursday to determine whether he is competent to be executed. DeSantis had issued similar stays in 2023 and 2025, but both executions later went ahead after evaluations. William Reaves, 77, has an execution date of October 20 after being convicted of fatally shooting a deputy outside a convenience store in 1986.
All executions in Florida are carried out by lethal injection using a sedative, a paralytic and a drug that stops the heart, according to the Department of Corrections. Beasley’s case now stands alongside a pending final appeal and a wider run of executions in Florida this year.
