Florida Executed Its Oldest Inmate Ever, 74-Year-Old Dennis Sochor
by Jerome London · Thought CatalogUpdated 5 minutes ago, July 15, 2026
Dennis Sochor spent nearly 40 years on death row before Florida put him to death Tuesday, making him the second 74-year-old the state has executed in three weeks. Dusty Ray Spencer, executed June 25 for killing his wife, had briefly held the same record.
A former Army paratrooper, Sochor was pronounced dead at 6:16 p.m. at Florida State Prison in Starke after a three-drug lethal injection. Witnesses said he spoke too quickly for his final statement to be fully transcribed, but he apologized to the Gifford family, thanked loved ones, and committed his spirit to Jesus. About a minute of heavy breathing and sputtering followed before he went still. It was the state’s 10th execution of 2026 and the 38th since Gov. Ron DeSantis took office.
On New Year’s Eve 1981, 18-year-old Patricia “Patty” Gifford was celebrating with a friend at a Broward County lounge when she met Sochor and his brother Gary. When her friend got sick, the brothers helped carry her outside to a car. Gifford went back inside and never came out with her friend again.
Police later recovered a photo from that night showing an unidentified man sitting near Gifford at the bar. After it aired on television, roommates identified him as Sochor and said he left abruptly after seeing himself on the broadcast. Gary implicated him to investigators and later testified that he saw Sochor on top of Gifford with her hands pinned, and heard her scream for help after the three left the lounge under the pretense of getting breakfast. Prosecutors played three taped confessions in which Sochor said he choked her after she rejected his advances and dumped her body.
Her sister, Marilyn Gifford, told reporters the execution brought the family “a modicum of closure” after more than four decades. She said they keep grieving because Patty’s remains have never been found, and asked anyone with information about the body’s location to contact the Broward Sheriff’s Office. She remembered her sister as “fun with a capital F-U-N,” with a smile that “lit up every room she entered.”
“We hope and pray that now, after tonight, when we think of Patty, it will be about the 18 years she lived and not the awful way she died,” Marilyn said.
Outside the prison, roughly 50 protesters from Floridians for Alternatives to the Death Penalty and Our Lady of Lourdes Catholic Church held a prayer vigil. Across the lawn, lone supporter Bill Campbell drowned them out with Bluetooth speakers, opening his playlist with the Soviet Army march because, he said, he believes the protesters are “a bunch of communists.”
The U.S. Supreme Court denied Sochor’s final appeal, a challenge to Florida’s lethal injection protocol, without comment hours before he was put to death.
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