Dennis Michael Sochor was executed Tuesday evening for the death of 18-year-old Patricia “Patty” Gifford in Broward County 44 years ago, becoming the oldest person put to death by the state since executions were revived in 1977.
Sochor, 74, was executed by lethal injection at 6:16 p.m. at Florida State Prison, according to the Department of Corrections.
The execution occurred hours after the U.S. Supreme Court denied his latest motion for a stay.
Sochor was 18 days older than Dusty Ray Spencer when he was executed June 18 for killing his estranged wife. The execution was the tenth in Florida this year.
According to court documents, Gifford went to a bar with a friend to celebrate New Year’s Eve 1981, where they encountered Dennis Sochor and his brother Gary Sochor. The friend was escorted to a car in the parking lot, where she fell asleep. The brothers took Gifford in Dennis Sochor’s work truck, intending to get breakfast. Instead, Dennis Sochor stopped his truck in a secluded spot and took Gifford out of the vehicle.
Sochor confessed that when Gifford refused to have sex with him, he became angry, choked her until she died, and disposed of her body, which was never found, records state. Sochor told police his brother wasn’t with him at the time.
The Gifford family released a statement Tuesday thanking prosecutors, investigators and others who carried the case forward and to “correct a painful misconception” that Patty Gifford “willingly went off with Dennis Sochor and his brother Gary.”
“Sochor’s conviction and sentencing in 1987 gave our family a measure of justice, consolation, and closure in knowing that he would never again be free to hurt another woman,” according to the family’s statement provided by Patricia Gifford’s brother, Bob Gifford
“When he confessed in 1987 and led detectives to the Alligator Alley area in an attempt to locate Patty, we also came to understand that her remains would likely never be recovered.”
“Today marked the end of a legal process that lasted nearly half a century,” the statement continued. “Patty’s remains were never recovered, but her life was never lost to us. She was our sister, our daughter, our friend, and she mattered.”
Sochor is the 17th prisoner executed in the U.S. this year. Besides Florida, there have been four inmates put to death in Texas, two in Oklahoma and one in Arizona.
There were 47 executions last year, with Florida accounting for 19, the most in one year for the state in the modern era.
Because of the increased pace of executions, Rev. Jeff Hood, Sochor’s spiritual advisor, challenged Gov. Ron DeSantis to attend an execution to experience what corrections officials go through. Hood also questioned the selection of aged inmates for the latest round of executions.
Sochor may not hold the oldest executed distinction for long.
DeSantis has already signed a death warrant for Dominick Anthony Occhicone, 80, who is set to be executed on July 28 for killing his former girlfriend’s parents four decades ago.
–Jim Turner, News Service of Florida
Land of no turn signals says says
Keep the line moving.
JimboXYZ says
This is the Occhicone, next man up to sit in the chair for lethal injection. why he should be spared ? His attorney’s argue his declining health as a reason for allowing him the dignity to die ESRD with a failing heart condition. Let him expire in the middle of the night for systemic organ failure ? Hospice instead of an execution ?
https://www.wesh.com/article/former-local-officer-among-2-executions-scheduled-the-same-day-in-florida/71936826
https://www.wesh.com/article/former-local-officer-among-2-executions-scheduled-the-same-day-in-florida/71936826
R.S. says
A society has a right to protect itself from violence; it does not have a right to exercise revenge so as to get even. A 79-year-old incarcerated individual is no threat to anyone. This state and its pouting-baby-faced governor are indulging in state-approved murder with a relish; it’s disgusting.
A Concerned Observer says
No, what’s disgusting is that this POS continued to live for 39 years after his conviction. His life in prison was, to be sure, no bed of roses, but he was fed, clothed, had no bills to pay, did not have to worry about hurricanes, tornados or floods. His medical needs taken care of for all that time. I would like to know how much the state paid out over these years while he contributed nothing and the citizens of Florida did. One year is too much. By-By Bad Guy. You will not be missed.
JimboXYZ says
He was a threat to his fellow incarcerated inmates for at least potential. That prison population is it’s own society of individuals that have proven to be as warped & twisted as the society that assumes innocence until proven guilty. The rapists in prison continue to rape in prison. They must be supervised by a staff of prison guards. Micro managed for what they are about to do next as an encore. That’s the human race even in the not convicted & sentenced world. He made a choice that night, drunken or not, extreme liberals would see that as a learning moment, like a grade schooler flunking a spelling quiz. Patricia Gifford & the family have been living with this this for 4.5 decades. The PTSD for the execution staff is another cost. That’s why the spiritual adviser (Rev Hood) to Sochor challenged DeSantis to attend. Easy for hood to make that challenge, he isn’t a member of the Gifford Family living with the loss fr this long ? He made that challenge of a plea in behalf of Sochor’s position decades after the fact. And that bodes the question, does the actual execution reopen old wounds for a mental & emotional scarring for the victim’s family. July 15th each year is now a memorial day of it’s own. Imagine that as anyone’s day to day for a lifetime, living with the pain & suffering since 1980/1981, every New Year’s Day celebration. That’s not revenge, it’s a living hell for an entire family.
R.S. says
Intriguing what these vengeance-blinded folk spew forth. “That prison population is it’s own society of individuals that have proven to be as warped & twisted as the society that assumes innocence until proven guilty.” What on earth does that even mean? Is this Jimbo person advocating that people be assumed guilty and must prove themselves innocent? What is dangerous to prison populations is solitary confinement and its attendant mental stress, uneducated vindictive guards, sweltering heat in the summer, broken pipes that increase mold in cells, zero educational opportunities, bug-infested food, the areas without surveillance cameras where guards torture and beat inmates–all those are dangers to prison populations, not some 79-year-old in solitary on death row. I won’t respond to the remainder of the strange mishmash of verbal nonsense in that comment. Perhaps I’ll try to hire a psychiatrist to attempt to translate whatever that verbal salad might contain in possible meaning.
Mike Cocchiola says
Ah, the call for blood… for revenge.
I get that murder is horrific, but does state-sponsored revenge change anything? Does it advance our society? Should we allow it in our supposedly “great” country?
Atwp says
Was he a so called non person of color. Surprised post lynching, present day anti people of color, money wasting State of Florida executed a non person of color. Wow.
Pierre Tristam says
Atwp, while I sympathize with you historically (all the evidence is on your side and then some: this country has no equal in that regard) and sympathize with you philosophically, but colorlessly–the death penalty is a barbarity that makes us all barbarians when executed in our name, and I say this as I am covering a death penalty trial in which I wish the murderer the worst fate, having no doubt about his guilt or barbarism–I wish you would get past the tiresome black-and-white mantras that we know well, but that don’t add to the conversation, and that do not necessarily (or even generally) reflect case by case analyses, especially, amazingly, happily, in Flagler County. I have covered at least four trials in recent years in which all or nearly all-white juries exonerated Black defendants, two of them accused of murder (one was a shooting, the other was one of those atrocious murder charges for drug dealing: punish the dealer, no question, but punishing the dealer of murder upends all legal and moral norms), one of them accused of molesting little girls when he was in fact merely masturbating a bit too freely. Give credit to juries. Give credit to yoiur white neighbors. They’re not idiots. They’re not evil. They’re not without a conscience, and yes, the justice system can surprise you. The more you persist in black-and-white hammering, the less credible you are. You might wan t to get off your horse’s ass and attend a few court proceedings. You’d be surprised. (I’m not referring to plea bargains, which, I admit, can be their own circles of hell. But that’s another story.) I can see why you live in TR’s mind rent-free, but I’m sure you have more dignity than that of a moocher.
TR says
Moocher, that’s funny because I am no where near a moocher. However, it’s better than being a beggar.
Atwp says
Thank you Pierre, but I will continue to express the way I feel.
TR says
Don’t break your arm patting him on his back. But expressing true feelings are different when they are factual then making up lies to push your racism and hate.
Pierre Tristam says
Rent-free, despite Live Local.
TR says
Bless your heart. Think what you want but again you’re so wrong. Like always.