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A ‘good ‘ol American boy’ and a bubbly woman everyone loved. Who were James Ford's victims?


At least once a month, Linda Griffin made it a point to talk to her two daughters. But instead of going out to eat or chatting on the phone, she had to visit them at their gravesite in a tiny Florida cemetery.

One of them, Kimberly Malnory, was brutally murdered at the age of 26 alongside her husband Gregory in 1997. The other died in a car crash two years later at the age of 18. Both left behind baby daughters.

"It just kind of keeps them in the family," Griffin told the Sarasota Herald-Tribune, part of the Paste BN Network, in 2003, explaining why she visited the graves so frequently. She also would bring both her granddaughters to visit their moms. "We've always told the girls they're angels in heaven."

Now the man convicted of killing Malnory, Griffin's oldest daughter, is set to be executed for murdering her and her husband. After being on death row for almost three decades, James Dennis Ford is expected to be executed by lethal injection in Florida on Thursday, the same day as Texas executes Richard Lee Tabler for a double murder of two men in 2004.

“She was just starting to live her life with a new husband and baby girl. ... She was a great ma, daughter and person," a woman identifying herself as Griffin said in a blog comment in 2009. "She was the beat in my heart, she was my first baby and she was so special."

What happened to Greg and Kimberly Malnory?

On April 6, 1997, court records say that Ford invited his co-worker Gregory Malnory and Malnory's wife Kimberly on a fishing trip to the South Florida Sod Farm in Punta Gorda, a southwestern Florida city just north of Fort Myers. The Malnorys brought along their 23-month-old daughter Maranda.

Police believe Ford first attacked Gregory, shooting him in the back of the head, bludgeoning him and slitting his throat. Kimberly, who was injured during the initial attack, managed to save Maranda by strapping her in the backseat of the couple's truck. But court records say Ford returned, then raped and beat her before shooting her dead.

About 18 hours later, an employee of the sod farm found the Malnorys' bodies. Maranda survived but the 23-month-old was dehydrated, full of insect bites and covered in her mother's blood.

Ford told police that he went fishing with the family and that they were alive when he left them to go hunting, records show.

Witnesses at the sod farm told police they had seen Ford with blood on his face, hands, and clothes, and had large scratches on his body. Prosecutors say Ford's DNA and gun connected him to the crime scene.

During Ford's trial, Griffin said that she had lost not only a daughter but a friend, according to an archived story in the Sarasota Herald-Tribune. "She was my life, my laughter and my tears,” she said.

A ‘good ‘ol American boy’ and a woman everyone loved

Days after the murder, the Sarasota Herald-Tribune interviewed Greg’s co-workers at the South Florida Sod Farm. They remembered the couple fondly.

“He was an all-American good ol’ boy. He loved to hunt and fish,” Wiley McCall, Greg’s supervisor said. “He was a model employee, always on time.”

Joseph Shackleford, Greg's childhood friend, knew the Malnorys well and described Kimberly as a selfless person.

“She was the kind of person that would give you the shirt off her back. Everybody loved her,” Shackleford said. 

Connie Ankney, Greg’s mother, told WINK-TV in 2019 that: “She would have been a wonderful mother, had she lived."

During the trial against Ford in 1999, Ankney described her son Greg as a loving husband a loyal friend and a dedicated father. “Greg will never get to walk his daughter down the aisle when she gets married,” she said.

Dee Parkinson, Kimberly’s stepmother since the age of 6, described her stepdaughter as having "a vivacious, bubbly, talkative personality."

"I liked to make her laugh," Parkinson said. "It was so easy and fun. She'd laugh until she could hardly breathe."

She added that their friends and family would never get over their deaths. "Words cannot express how much we miss them both."

Heartbroken mom becomes victim advocate

In the years after the tragic loss of her son and daughter-in-law, Ankney has become an advocate for the Southwest Florida Chapter of the Parents of Murdered Children, a nonprofit that offers grief support and other help to family members of homicide victims.

In 2019, she told WINK-TV that the group helped her cope with losing her son and daughter-in-law.

“They understand your pain,” Ankney said. “They understand your anger, they don’t judge.”

But moving on and fighting through does not mean that Ankney does not keep the spirit of both Kimberly and Greg alive. “I’ve always been a fighter, so I’ve got to fight for my kids, whether they’re living or dying,” she said.

Ankney declined to be interviewed for this story.

Kimberly's mom, Linda Griffin, died in a car accident at the age of 67 in 2016. She was buried alongside her two daughters.

"Her heart was broken with the deaths of her daughters within two years of each other," Griffin's obituary said. "She is at peace with them now."

Fernando Cervantes Jr. is a trending news reporter for Paste BN. Reach him at fernando.cervantes@gannett.com and follow him on X @fern_cerv_.