RAIFORD, Fla. -- Nearly 24 years after he murdered a young Lake County couple, Robert Hendrix was executed Wednesday evening by lethal injection at Florida State Prison.
Hendrix, who made no final statement, died at 6:21 p.m., 10 minutes after being injected with the first of three lethal drugs.
He was put to death for the brutal slayings of his cousin Elmer Bryant Scott Jr., 25, and his wife, Michelle Scott, 18. Hendrix slashed Scott's throat, put a bullet in his head and clubbed him with the gun so many times that the trigger broke off in the victim's scalp.
Then he shot Michelle Scott twice in the head, stabbed her more than 30 times and cut her throat. He left the couple's 5-month-old baby, Rachel, unharmed in her crib.
Rachel, now 24, joined relatives of the victims in the front row of Florida State Prison's viewing room, separated from Hendrix by a long window.
When the curtain was opened, Hendrix was lying on his back, his feet to the witnesses. He was strapped to a gurney and covered by a white sheet.
Only a portion of his left arm was visible. His left hand was bandaged and secured to an armrest. The bandages are used to prevent condemned killers from flashing gang signs or making obscene gestures, Florida Department of Corrections spokeswoman Jessica Cary said.
Hendrix's breathing was visible during the first five minutes. Then his chest stopped moving.
Minutes later, a doctor examined him briefly before a corrections official announced that the death sentence had been carried out.
Hendrix's fate was sealed earlier in the day when the U.S. Supreme Court rejected his appeal.
He ate a last meal of pork chops, sausage gravy, biscuits, German chocolate cake and Mountain Dew.
After the execution, Rachel Scott said she will keep the memory of her parents alive in her heart.
"May they rest in peace," she said. "Thank you for never allowing them to be forgotten."
Hendrix's attorney argued to the end in court motions that the evidence and witnesses were unreliable and his client deserved a new trial.
But retired Lake County Assistant State Attorney Bill Gross said there was no doubt about Hendrix's guilt.
Hendrix went to the Scotts' mobile home in Sorrento on Aug. 27, 1990, with a .22-caliber Magnum revolver equipped with a homemade silencer and emerged after the killings wearing a mask, gloves and a cap, court records show.
Scott's mother found the bodies the evening of Aug. 28 after he didn't show up for his job as a truck driver and no one could reach him.
"This is the bloodiest murder scene I've ever been to," Gross said.
Hendrix killed Scott to prevent him from testifying against him in a burglary case. In the late 1980s, the cousins had broken into a home east of Eustis, and Scott got caught.
Law officers found a cartridge for a .22-caliber Magnum in the closet of the bedroom Hendrix and his 19-year-old girlfriend shared just outside Apopka. In a fire pit out back, more cartridges were found in the pocket of a shirt that had been burned along with more of Hendrix's clothes, Gross said.
More than a dozen witnesses testified that Hendrix had asked to borrow a gun, that they heard him threaten Scott or that Hendrix's girlfriend, Alma Denise Turbyville, told them the details of the killings. Turbyville, 43, cut a plea deal and has 10 more years on her prison sentence.
Rachel Scott said she doesn't harbor the harsh feelings for Hendrix that people who knew her parents do. Now raising two young sons in upstate New York, Scott said she hopes to find peace by learning about her parents from their friends and relatives.
"It's been a tough time for everyone, and I'm glad everyone will find closure in their own way," she said.
Hendrix was visited in the morning by his parents, who are in their 70s, and a Catholic spiritual adviser, Cary said.
His execution was the fifth in Florida in the last year. The state executed seven people in 2013.
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McClatchy-Tribune News Service
