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A 74-year-old man is set to become the oldest inmate executed in Florida history.
Dennis Sochor was found guilty of first-degree murder and kidnapping after 18-year-old Patricia Gifford refused to have sex with him on Jan. 1, 1982. He has been on death row since the 1980s and will be executed on Tuesday after the Supreme Court denied his appeal.
Sochor is set to be executed through a three-drug injection that is scheduled to start at 6 p.m. at Florida State Prison in Bradford County.
Sochor was with his brother when he met Gifford as she was celebrating on New Year’s Day at a bar in the Fort Lauderdale area, according to Fox 13.
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74-year-old Dennis Sochor was convicted of murdering an 18-year-old woman in the 1980s. (Florida Department of Corrections.)
The group talked through the night but Gifford left with Sochor and his brother to get breakfast. Sochor drove his truck to a secluded area and asked Gifford if she wanted to have sex, to which she refused. Sochor then attacked the then-teenager, according to investigators.
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Sochor was arrested in 1986 on unrelated charges and extradited to Florida, where he confessed to choking Gifford and disposing of her body.
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Clouds hover over the entrance of the Florida State Prison in Starke, Fla., Aug. 3, 2023. (AP)
His brother told authorities that Sochor was responsible for Gifford’s disappearance, with her body never being found.
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Photo of the view from outside an execution chamber in Florida (Courtesy, Florida Department of Corrections)
In 1987, a jury convicted Sochor of first-degree murder and kidnapping, and was sentenced to death.
While Sochor will be the oldest inmate in Florida who has been executed, an 80-year-old prisoner is scheduled to be executed later in July.
