Thomas Lee Gudinas executed for 'monstrous' murder of homecoming queen with big dreams
The execution came as his attorneys argued that he was too mentally ill to be executed under the U.S. Constitution. His victim's family felt it was just the latest in three decades of legal wrangling.
Florida has executed death row inmate Thomas Lee Gudinas for the "monstrous" rape and murder of a former homecoming queen who was enjoying a night out on the town when she was attacked while walking to her car.
Gudinas, 51, was executed by lethal injection on Tuesday, June 24, for the murder of 27-year-old Michelle McGrath in Orlando on May 24, 1994. He became the 24th inmate executed in the U.S. this year and the seventh in Florida, more than any other state.
Gudinas, whose last meal was pizza, fries, and soda, was pronounced dead at 6:13 p.m. His last words were inaudible to media witnesses, who said the noise of an air-conditioning unit interfered. A prison spokesman said Gudinas said some sort of prayer.
Gudinas' attorneys had been arguing that he was too mentally ill to be legally executed under the U.S. Constitution, pointing to Gudinas' writings, including a letter he wrote to President Donald Trump, as examples of his condition.
McGrath's family dismissed the arguments as more legal wrangling following 31 years of appeals and red tape.
Here's what you need to know about the execution.
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What was Thomas Gudinas convicted of?
Michelle McGrath was walking alone to her car around 2:45 a.m. on May 24, 1994, after having a fun night out with a friend at a downtown Orlando club called Barbarella.
Gudinas had been partying at the same club and was lying in wait in the parking lot. He attacked McGrath, dragged her into a nearby alley and then raped and beat her in an attack described by a trial judge as "savage and inhuman," according to court records.
A woman found McGrath's battered body about five hours after the attack soon after opening the gate of a nearby school for girls, court records say.
The crime shocked the people of Orlando and got so much publicity that Gudinas' trial was moved about 200 miles south to Naples.
Gudinas was described as showing little to no emotion during the trial except when he burst into tears after being found guilty and again at his sentencing, when Orange Circuit Judge Belvin Perry affirmed the jury's 10-2 vote for the death penalty.
Gudinas had asked for a life sentence in a letter he wrote to Judge Perry, saying he could prove his innocence from prison, according to reporting at the time from the Naples Daily News, part of the Paste BN Network.
"All I know inside my heart, I didn't kill anybody," Gudinas wrote, the Daily News reported.
Perry rejected his request and cited the viciousness of McGrath's murder, saying to Gudinas: "There is no question that she was alive and conscious during significant portions of this attack."
Who was Michelle McGrath?
McGrath grew up in a large, tightknit family and was the second oldest of six siblings. At the time of her murder, she was enjoying life as a career woman with her own apartment and a good job, with dreams of one day becoming a mom and a customs broker, her family told Paste BN this week.
McGrath's older brother and two of her younger sisters described her as funny, sarcastic, full of life and so caring that the homeless in her neighborhood greeted her by name. She was known to pass out blankets, let them bend her ear and even invite them to dinner, they said.
"She never met a stranger," sister Patty Milam said. McGrath's sister-in-law, Cheryl McGrath, added: "Michelle was a different kind of special."
Shortly before her murder, McGrath had just served as maid of honor for Patty, who was pregnant with McGrath's first niece. At the time, McGrath only had one nephew but had she lived, she would have been an aunt to 13 nieces and nephews.
"I think that’s what provoked most of my anger," Cheryl McGrath said. "My children were not going to get to know her and that’s not fair."
McGrath's family recalled how her nails were always elaborately done and how much she loved Mexican food. Her specialty was homemade guacamole and one of her favorite holidays was Cinco de Mayo.
"She lit up the room," her older brother, Joey McGrath, said. "When she came in the room, she changed the dynamic. It was more happy, more fun."
Now every year for Cinco de Mayo, McGrath's loved ones gathered to swap photos and memories.
Ahead of Gudinas' sentencing, McGrath's father showed pictures of the blue-eyed, brunette, telling the judge that one image showed her fun-loving side and another showed her serious side, the Naples Daily News reported.
A third photo showed her grave. Douglas McGrath told the judge: "This marker from the cemetery is what the defendant has left me."
Who was Thomas Lee Gudinas?
From a young age in his home state of Massachusetts, Gudinas exhibited disturbing behavior, with his mother reporting extreme temper tantrums. His mother sought help from the Massachusetts Division of Youth Services, which placed him in over 100 different facilities over the next several years, according to court records.
"He was just bounced from facility to facility. I think it was a terrible injustice," his mother, Karen Goldthwaite, told the Orlando Sentinel in 1994. "When you're locked up like an animal, I can't tell you what that does to someone."
Though Goldthwaite was eventually told that her son needed a long-term residential program, that never happened and he began using alcohol, marijuana, cocaine and LSD as a juvenile, court records say.
In 1991, when he was just 18, Gudinas was convicted in a sexually motivated attack on an 18-year-old developmentally disabled woman who was walking with her niece to a Christmas party when she said Gudinas approached her, grabbed her and said he would drag her into the woods and rape her, according to an archived story in the Orlando Sentinel. The woman was able to break away and get help.
Gudinas was sentenced to two years behind bars in the attack and caught more time after briefly escaping prison. In 1994, he moved to North Carolina to be near his mother but soon got charged with stealing a car and skipped town, the Sentinel reported.
He arrived in Orlando shortly after that and got a job as a busboy the same month as McGrath's murder.
Thomas Lee Gudinas' attorneys argued for reprieve
Gudinas' attorneys argued that he was too mentally ill to execute, sharing his rambling writings with the Florida Supreme Court, including a letter addressed to President Donald Trump blaming his incarceration on "a secret system running under the nose of the government."
"I believe it is a worldwide system with secret passages," Gudinas wrote to Trump in February, asking to be pardoned. "This system could be the reason why someone tried to shoot you and you should know everything about this system. It's not right at all, Mr. President, that decent people can get railroaded by this secret system."
Citing mental illness, Gudinas' attorneys said in a recent filing in Florida Supreme Court that the execution "would serve no purpose beyond base vengeance."
McGrath's loved ones dismissed the arguments as nothing but legal wrangling. Most of them chose not to witness his execution, calling it "trauma on top of trauma."
"I don’t think there is a way to get closure," younger sister Kerry McGrath said. "I think it'll just be over."