On April 21st, 2026, after spending more than 34 years on death row, Chadwick Willacy was executed by lethal injection in Florida. In 1990, Chadwick broke into his next door neighbor’s home in Palm Bay, Florida. She was 56 years old and had been a widow for exactly 2 months. She wasn’t supposed to be home, but when she walked in and found him there, he attacked her. He tied her up.

 And then he left. He took her ATM card, drove her dead husband’s car to her bank, and withdrew cash from her account while she was still inside that house. Then he came back. And what he did when he returned is the reason the state of Florida put a needle in his arm 35 years later. This is the full story. His last meal and his last words.

Her name was Marla Saether. She had put herself through two college degrees later in life. She worked as a government contracts negotiator at Harris Corporation. She sang in the choir at First United Methodist Church in Melbourne. She had three children and three granddaughters. And her husband Dick had died of liver cancer just 2 months earlier.

She was still adjusting to life alone. And Chadwick Willacy lived right next door. He was 22. He had moved to Palm Bay from New York. His record was minor. A few drug offenses, nothing violent. He had mowed her lawn before. They had argued about what he charged, but she knew him. And she always waved to him in the driveway.

And that proximity is what made this crime possible. He knew her routine. He knew when she left. He knew when she would be back. September 5th was supposed to be a normal Wednesday where she would be gone until evening. But she came home early. That day, Marla left Harris Corporation during her lunch break and drove home to her house on Jarvis Street.

She walked through the front door and found Chadwick inside going through her things. He looked up but didn’t run. He didn’t panic. Instead, he bludgeoned her with a hammer and a squeegee. He bound her wrists and ankles with wire and duct tape so she couldn’t move. And then he ripped a cord from an iron and choked her with such force that a portion of her skull was physically dislodged.

She was still alive but she couldn’t fight back. She couldn’t escape. And Chadwick wasn’t done. What came next is what separates this case from almost anything else you’ll ever hear. He went through her things methodically. He took her ATM card and her PIN. He grabbed the keys to her late husband’s car.

 And then he drove to her bank and withdrew $200 from her account while she was tied up inside that house. While she was still breathing. After the bank, he drove back, hid the car around the block, and started making trips. Back and forth. Loading stolen items. Taking everything he wanted from her home and moving it to his own.

 A VCR, a television, a shotgun. He staged them on her back porch for later retrieval and moved the rest into his own house next door. Then he drove her car to Lynbrook Plaza, left it there, and jogged back. And then he came back to finish it. Chadwick went through the house and disabled the smoke detectors, every single one.

 Then he went to the garage and grabbed a gas can. He carried it to where Marlis was lying and doused her body with gasoline. He found an oscillating fan from the guest room and placed it at her feet angled to feed oxygen to what was coming. And then he struck several matches. He set her on fire while she was still alive. Marlis Sather did not die from the beating.

She did not die from the flames. Medical examiner Dr. Charles Wickham confirmed that soot was recovered from her trachea. She died from inhaling the smoke of her own burning body. She was conscious when that match was lit. And Chadwick Willacy walked out the door and went home. When Marla didn’t return to work after lunch, her employer called the family.

The next day, her son-in-law Denning Loveridge drove over to check on her. On the back porch, he found a shotgun and several electronic items just sitting there waiting to be collected. He went inside and he found his mother-in-law on the ground, her ankles bound and an electric cord around her neck. After this, the investigation moved fast.

 Detective George Santiago led the case. Chadwick’s fingerprints were found on the fan at Marla’s feet. His fingerprints were on the gas can. Witnesses had seen a man matching his description near the house and driving Marla’s car that same day. And the ATM security photos put him at her bank with her dead husband’s car in the frame. But the break that sealed it came from somewhere no one expected.

 Chadwick’s own girlfriend, Marissa Walcott was cleaning up around the house when she found something in his wastebasket, a woman’s check register. She didn’t know whose it was, but something felt wrong, so she called the police. Officers recognized it immediately. It belonged to Marla Sather. They arrested Chadwick and when they searched his home, they found Marla’s property inside.

 Her jewelry, her coins, and they found clothing with blood on it. Blood that was consistent with her type. When police first questioned him, he denied everything. Then when confronted with the evidence, his story changed. He admitted to being inside the house when it happened, but he claimed someone else killed Marla. However, that person was cleared.

 He was at work. And Chadwick had argued with Marlis over what she paid him to mow her lawn. Was that his motive? The jury heard all of it. The fingerprints, the timeline, the stolen items in his house, the blood on his clothes. And after everything was laid out in front of them, they found Chadwick Willacy guilty of first-degree premeditated murder, burglary, robbery, and arson.

They recommended death by a vote of 9 to 3. During sentencing, Chadwick asked the court to consider his age, 22, and that he had no significant history of prior criminal activity. The court considered it, and they sentenced him to death anyway. But, what should have been the end of this case became something much longer.

His sentence was later vacated on a legal technicality, and a new penalty phase was ordered. In 1995, a second jury heard the case and voted 11 to 1 for death. One juror out of 12 thought he should live. 11 did not. And then the waiting began. Chadwick Willacy spent more than 34 years on death row at Union Correctional Institution in Raiford, Florida.

He was 22 when he went in, and he was 58 when the death warrant was signed. During those decades, he filed appeal after appeal, but in the end, every single court denied him relief. Marlis Sather came home early on a September afternoon and found her neighbor in her house. She was 56 years old.

 She was bound and beaten and strangled and set on fire. She died breathing in the smoke of her own body. And the man who did it had been alive for 35 years after. Now, that was about to change. In March 2026, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis signed Chadwick’s death warrant. His execution was scheduled for April 21st, 2026. But Chadwick wasn’t spending his final days fighting for his own life.

 He was fighting for someone else’s. Just 2 weeks before his execution, Willacy appeared on Zoom from Florida State Prison. Not to fight his own case, to testify on behalf of another death row inmate named Rafael Andres, convicted of strangling a waitress with a rice cooker power cord and setting her apartment on fire.

Chadwick told the judge that Rafael was a peacekeeper who broke up fights in the yard, that Rafael had helped him with appealing his conviction and sentence. Rafael looked at him through the screen and said, “If you get to heaven before me, I will see you there.” Two men on death row, both convicted of strangling a woman and setting her on fire, calling each other brother.

Then, on April 21st, Chadwick’s final day came. That morning, he woke up at 5:00 a.m. He received visits from his mother, two sisters, and a cousin. He did not meet with a spiritual advisor. For his last meal, Chadwick requested chicken, Tater Tots, ice cream, and pie. The curtain to the execution chamber went up at the scheduled 6:00 p.m.

 time, and the lethal injection got underway 2 minutes later after Chadwick made a brief statement. He apologized to his own family and friends and urged his brothers on the row to stay strong. He maintained his innocence, saying that he would never kill his friend. To the victim’s family, “I hope this brings you peace.

 If it does, that’s good,” he said, “but this is not right.” Shortly after the lethal injection began, a warden shook Chadwick and shouted his name, but there was no response. His skin began to turn gray, and a medic eventually entered the chamber to examine Chadwick. He was pronounced dead at 6:15 p.m. Chadwick Williams he was 58 years old.