JUST IN: Florida EXECUTES Its OLDEST Death Row Inmate Ever – His Last Words Are Chilling

He is 80 years old, but they still had to make him lie strapped to a gurney. An IV line runs into his arm. A spiritual advisor stands near his feet. The room is silent. The witnesses watch. His name is Dominic Anthony Ochicone Jr. And in a matter of minutes, he will become the oldest prisoner ever executed in the state of Florida.

 But here is what makes this day truly unlike any other. Dominic is not the first man executed in that chamber today. Hours earlier, at 1:19 in the afternoon, another man died in that same room. >> Right now, Florida is carrying out the execution of 80-year-old Dominic Ochicone, convicted of murder in 1986. >> Two executions, one day, six hours apart.

 Florida had not done anything like this since 1964. Before the injection begins, Dominic is asked if he has any final words. He does. 40 years. That is how long it took to reach this moment. 40 years since the crime that put him here. 40 years since two people lost their lives in a quiet neighborhood in Holiday, Florida. Was this justice finally served? Or was the state of Florida putting a frail, dying old man to death for something he did four decades ago? To answer that question, we have to go back to Holiday, Florida and a door that should never

have been answered. Welcome back to Red Mark Files. If this is your first time here, welcome. Hit that subscribe button and turn on your notifications. We cover the cases the world forgets, so the victims never are. Now, let’s get into it. Before we talk about the crime, we need to talk about the people who lost their lives.

 Because Raymond and Martha Artsner were not just victims in a court file. They were real people, a real family, and they deserved so much better than what happened to them. Raymond Artsner was 66 years old. Martha Artsner was 62. They were a retired couple living in Holiday, Florida, a small, quiet community on the Gulf Coast side of the state.

 They had worked hard their whole lives. Now they were settled, at peace, enjoying the kind of slow, simple retirement most people dream about. Their daughter, Anita Garrity, lived with them at the time, along with her two children, a son and a daughter. Three generations under one roof. A family doing their best to take care of each other.

 And that is exactly what Raymond and Martha were doing, taking care of their family. They had watched Dominic Archiconi for years. They had seen how he treated Anita. They had seen the anger, the control, the abuse. Their concerns were not overreaction. They were not interfering parents causing trouble.

 They were a mother and a father who could see exactly where things were heading. They were right to be worried. Now let’s talk about Dominic Anthony Ochiconey Jr. He was born on August 29th, 1945 in Carmel, New York. He came from a three-generation Italian-American family. His father was an Italian immigrant who worked as a sanitary worker in New York City.

 By all accounts, his father was a gentleman, quiet, family-oriented, devoted. His son was none of those things. From an early age, Dominic had a temper that could not be controlled. As a teenager and young adult, he was constantly getting into fights, mostly in bars. He would come home bruised and bloodied over and over again. This was not a one-time thing.

This was a pattern. When the Vietnam War draft came, Dominic was called up for military service. He never showed up. He failed to report for conscription, was arrested, and faced a court-martial. He served approximately two years in a military prison at Fort Dix, New Jersey. After his release, he eventually moved with his parents to Holiday, Florida in 1977 following their retirement.

 In Florida, Dominic married a woman named Sharon. They had a son together. Then Sharon was diagnosed with cancer. She died when their boy was just two years old. The child was placed in the care of relatives. After losing Sharon, Dominic leaned heavily on alcohol. His drinking grew worse with every passing year.

There is one more detail worth noting. Back in the 1970s, while still living in New York, Dominic had a brief relationship with a woman who later became pregnant with his daughter. They had broken up before he ever found out. He would not learn this daughter existed until 2011, by which time he was already sitting on death row.

 By the early 1980s, Dominic Ochicone had a history of violence, unresolved loss, and a drinking problem that was getting worse. And he was about to meet Anita Gerardi. In the early 1980s, Dominic Ochicone started dating a woman named Anita Gerardi. The relationship lasted about 3 years. For roughly 6 months, they lived together under one roof.

 Dominic, Anita, her son, her daughter, and Dominic’s 5-year-old son. It should have been a fresh start. Instead, it became something much darker. Court records document that Dominic was abusive toward Anita and the children, both verbally and physically. This was not an occasional argument. This was a household living in fear.

 Despite everything, they got engaged. They planned to marry in 1985, but 2 months before the wedding date, Anita called it off. She cited his violent temper and his abusive behavior as the reason. She was done. Dominic refused to accept it. He kept calling. He kept showing up. He sent flowers. He would not let go.

 For months, he inserted himself back into her life at every opportunity. Then in May of 1986, Anita told him something that pushed him over the edge. She informed him she had ended a pregnancy. She refused to tell him who the father was, and she made it clear she had moved on with another man. That is when Dominic’s focus shifted to her parents.

He told Anita directly that he intended to harm her family. He blamed Raymond and Martha Artner for the breakup. He said, out loud, to multiple people that he was going to kill them. Court records confirm these threats were specific. They were repeated. They were documented, and nobody stopped him. No restraining order was issued.

 No formal intervention took place. The threats were heard and ignored. Multiple people knew what Dominic Archiconi was planning. What happened next is almost impossible to believe no one stopped it. Dominic Archiconi acted alone. There was no accomplice. No one else involved. Just one man and a decision he had clearly been building toward for a long time.

 This is the part the defense would later try to dismiss as a drunken impulsive act, but the evidence tells a completely different story. At some point before the night of June 10th, 1986, Dominic obtained a handgun. He did not borrow it that evening. He did not pick it up on the way. Court records confirm he arrived at the Artsner home already armed.

 That gun did not end up in his hand by accident. In the weeks leading up to that night, Dominic continued to harass Anita. He continued to express his rage toward her parents. He was not cooling down. He was building up, and people heard him. At trial, the prosecution called Anita Garrity to the stand. They also called two additional women who had been in relationships with Dominic.

 All three gave independent testimony. All three described the same thing. A man who had been stating repeatedly and specifically that he intended to harm Raymond and Martha Artsner. Not hinting at it. Not venting in the heat of the moment. Saying it out loud over and over again. He also knew the Artsner home well. He knew the layout.

 He knew exactly where the exterior phone lines ran along the outside of the house. He cut those phone lines before he ever knocked on the door. That one detail, more than anything else, told investigators everything they needed to know. We are just getting to the night that changed everything. Make sure you are subscribed so you never miss a case like this.

 Now, let’s get into what actually happened on June 10th, 1986. June 10th, 1986, Holiday, Florida. The sun had not yet risen. Dominic Ochicone showed up at the Artsner home in the early hours of the morning. He was heavily intoxicated. He walked up to the sliding glass door that led directly to Anita’s bedroom and began to knock.

 He wanted to see her. Court records show he was hoping to reconcile, to somehow undo months of rejection in the middle of the night. Anita did not open the door. She told him to leave. She threatened to call the police. Dominic walked away, but he did not go home. He came back. This time was different.

 This time he was armed with a handgun. And before he approached the door again, he did something that would later become one of the most damning pieces of evidence against him. He walked around the outside of the house and cut the telephone wires, every single line severed. The house was now completely cut off from the outside world.

 No calls in, no calls out. If anyone inside tried to dial for help, they would get nothing. Then he knocked again. Raymond Artsner came to the door. He was 66 years old. He had no gun. He was carrying a broomstick. He stepped outside and warned Dominic to leave his family alone. Dominic raised the handgun, but before he pulled the trigger, he did something that prosecutors would later describe in detail during the trial.

 He turned his head toward Anita and he smiled. That smile lasted only a second. Then he shot Raymond in the face at close range. Anita ran. She grabbed her young daughter and fled the house, escaping into the darkness outside. They made it out. Martha Artsner did not. Dominic forced his way through a locked door, breaking into the home.

 He moved through the house. Martha was still inside. She had nowhere to go and no time to get there. He shot her four times. Three of those bullets hit her in the chest. Martha Artsner died right there, inside the home she had lived in, in the community she had retired to, surrounded by everything that had been her life. Emergency services arrived and found Raymond gravely wounded outside.

 He was rushed to the hospital. His injuries were severe, but Raymond Artsner was not finished. From his hospital bed, despite everything his body had been through, Raymond gave responding officers a full, clear account of what had happened. He told them exactly who had come to his door.

 He gave them the name, Dominic Anthony Accikone Jr. Raymond Artsner died from his wounds shortly after, but not before making sure that the man who shot him would be identified. Even dying, Raymond Artsner made sure justice had a name. Martha Artsner, deceased at the scene. Raymond Artsner, deceased at the hospital.

 Two people in their 60s murdered in their own home before sunrise because one man could not accept that a relationship was over. There was no manhunt. There were no days of investigation before a suspect emerged. There were no press conferences asking the public for leads. Raymond Artsner had already taken care of that from his hospital bed.

 He gave police a name before he died, and that name led officers directly to Dominic Accikone. On the same day as the murders, June 10th, 1986, Dominic was arrested. Hours after killing two people, he was in custody, just like that. There was no dramatic ending to a chase, no standoff. He was found and taken in. There was no financial motive behind any of this, no life insurance policy, no inheritance, no money changed hands.

 This crime was driven by nothing more than a wounded ego and an obsession that had been left unchecked for far too long. That is what makes it both simple and deeply horrifying. Meanwhile, Anita Jerety was processing something no person should ever have to face. She had spent months trying to get away from Dominic.

 She had ended the engagement. She had moved on. And on the night everything collapsed, she grabbed her daughter and ran, and they both survived because she moved fast. But when the sun came up that morning, Anita learned that both of her parents were gone. Her mother and her father, dead before daylight. Her children had witnessed the chaos of that night firsthand.

 An entire family changed permanently in the space of a few hours. Dominic Akikuni did not run. He did not hide. He had done what he came to do. What he did not expect was that Raymond Artsner, shot in the face, would still be alive long enough to say his name. When investigators arrived at the Artsner home in Holiday, Florida, the crime scene told a very clear story.

Outside the house, severed telephone wires, cut cleanly, done deliberately before Dominic made his second approach to the front door. That single detail was impossible to explain away. You do not cut phone lines by accident. You do not cut phone lines in a drunken rage. You cut phone lines because you do not want anyone inside that house calling for help.

 Inside, a forced entry through a locked door. Shell casings on the ground. Four gunshot wounds on Martha Artsner. One gunshot wound on Raymond Artsner. The physical evidence alone painted a damning picture. Investigators then began reconstructing the full timeline of that morning. Dominic’s first approach to the house, his apparent departure, his return, the severing of the phone lines, the second confrontation.

 All of it was pieced together through physical evidence and the accounts of witnesses who had been there. Anita Garrity was interviewed, so was her daughter. Both had been present for the first confrontation. Both had witnessed Dominic’s presence at the house that morning. Anita had seen Raymond get shot before she ran. The handgun used in the murders became a central piece of physical evidence in the case.

 And then there was the matter of motive. Investigators did not have to look far. Multiple people already knew that Dominic had been threatening to kill Raymond and Martha Artsner. Those threats, specific, repeated, and documented, established motive beyond any reasonable doubt. On June 11th, 1986, one day after the murders, Dominic Anthony Ochicone Jr.

 was formally charged with two counts of first-degree murder. On July 16th, 1986, a Pasco County Grand Jury made it official. A formal indictment was returned on two counts of first-degree murder. The case was heading to trial. The case against Dominic Ochicone was not built on one single piece of evidence. It was built on layers, and every single layer pointed in the same direction.

 Start with the dying declaration. Raymond Artsner, shot in the face, fighting for his life, identified his killer by name before he died. That alone carried enormous weight. A dying man has nothing left to protect and nothing left to gain. His word meant everything. Then came the physical evidence, the severed phone lines, the forced entry through a locked door, the shell casings, the handgun.

 Each piece reinforced the same conclusion. This was not a spontaneous act. This was deliberate. But the testimonies are what truly locked the case into place. The prosecution called three women to the stand. Anita Gerardi was the first. The two others were women who had also been in relationships with Dominic at different points in his life.

All three gave independent testimony. None of them coordinated their accounts, and yet all three described the same pattern, a man who had been stating clearly and repeat- edly that he intended to harm Raymond and Martha Artsner. Months of threats, out loud, to multiple people. Court records show the defense struggled deeply with this.

 You cannot stand in front of a jury and argue that something was unplanned when multiple witnesses heard the defendant plan it out loud long before it happened. The prosecution also pointed to the moment Dominic turned and smiled at Anita before shooting her father. That was not the action of a man lost in a drunken haze.

 That was a man who knew exactly what he was doing. Three women, one dying declaration, a severed phone line outside a house on a quiet Florida street. What happened at trial would take the whole country by surprise. The trial took place in 1987 in Pasco County, Florida. Dominic Ochicone did not deny pulling the trigger. He admitted he killed Raymond and Martha Artsner, but his defense rested on one argument, that what happened was not premeditated.

 That his severe alcoholism, his depression, and his emotional breakdown following the end of his relationship with Anita had pushed him into a state where he could not truly be held fully responsible for his actions. It was a bold strategy, but it had one critical problem. The defense never backed it up.

 Not a single expert witness was called to the stand. No psychologist, no addiction specialist, no medical professional of any kind. The argument about alcoholism and emotional distress was made, and then left completely unsupported. The jury was simply asked to take the defense’s word for it. The prosecution did not make the same mistake.

 They walked the jury through every deliberate decision Dominic made that morning. He brought a gun. He came back after leaving. He cut the phone lines. He smiled before he fired. Four separate actions, each one intentional. Each one planned. None of them consistent with a man who had lost control. Anita Garrity testified.

 So did the two additional women. Together, their accounts confirmed what the physical evidence had already shown. This was a man who had been announcing these murders for months. The jury came back with guilty verdicts on both counts of first-degree murder. During the penalty phase, that same jury recommended death for both counts by a vote of seven to five.

 On November 9th, 1987, the trial judge handed down the sentence. Life imprisonment for the murder of Raymond Artsner. Death for the murder of Martha Artsner, Dominic Ochicone was going to death row and the appeals began almost immediately stretching on for nearly four decades. Dominic Ochicone arrived on death row in 1987.

 What followed was nearly four decades of appeals, each one denied. On October 11th, 1990, the Florida Supreme Court rejected his direct appeal. The following year, in 1991, the United States Supreme Court declined to review his case. On April 8th, 1993, the Florida Supreme Court rejected his second appeal. On June 29th, 2000, a further appeal to the same court was dismissed.

 On July 14th, 2006, the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals denied him relief. In January of 2018, the Florida Supreme Court denied his petition for resentencing. A newer law had been passed requiring a unanimous jury vote before a death sentence could be handed down, but because Dominic’s sentence was finalized before 2002, the court ruled he was not eligible.

 His 7-5 jury recommendation stood untouched. By 2019, he was one of six Pasco County inmates still waiting on Florida’s death row. By June of 2026, he was one of five death row inmates across the state who had all been born in the same year, 1945. Five old men, all still waiting. Then the waiting ended.

 On June 26th, 2026, Governor Ron DeSantis signed Dominic’s death warrant. Execution date, July 28th, 2026. At 80 years old, he became the oldest death row prisoner in Florida history to receive an active execution order. His attorneys filed a motion for a stay of execution on July 8th, arguing that his age-related health conditions, including kidney and prostate problems, made execution cruel and unusual punishment.

The motion was denied the very next day. Every appeal that followed to the Florida Supreme Court, the 11th Circuit, and finally the United States Supreme Court was rejected. The night before his execution, Dominic received a final prison visit from his daughter, the child he had not known existed until 2011 when she found him on death row.

 On the morning of July 28th, he woke at 4:45 in his cell. His final meal was eggplant parmesan, garlic bread, salad, [music] and a Pepsi. At 6:02 in the evening, the lethal injection began in the same chamber where former police officer James R. Duckett had been executed 5 hours earlier. It was Florida’s first double execution in 62 years.

 Before the injection started, Dominic was asked if he had any final words. “I know it don’t mean much, but I’m sorry. I never meant to do what I did.” At 6:13 in the evening, Dominic Anthony Achille Coney, Jr. was pronounced dead. The oldest prisoner ever executed in Florida, the second oldest person executed by lethal injection in modern United States history.

 After the execution, the Artsner family released a statement. They spoke of 40 years of sleepless nights, missed birthdays, conversations that would never happen. They said the execution closed a chapter, but nothing could erase what had been taken from them. Raymond and Martha Artsner were in their 60s when Dominic came to their door. They did not end his relationship.

They did not destroy his life. They were simply parents, and they paid for that with everything they had. Dominic spent 39 years, 1 month, and 18 days on death row, longer than many people live entire chapters of their lives. He blamed them for the end of a relationship. In the end, that decision defined and ended the rest of his own life.

 Tell me in the comments, what moment in this story hit you hardest? Was it Raymond walking out with that broomstick? Martha, who never got the chance to run? Or Dominic’s daughter meeting her father for the first time on death row. Drop it below. If this story stayed with you, subscribe. Share it with someone who needs to hear it.

 Raymond and Martha Artsner deserve to be remembered.