Frank Walls is set to become the 19th person executed in Florida this year.
State and federal courts rejected final appeals based on the argument of intellectual disability.
Walls was convicted of five brutal murders that terrorized Okaloosa County in the 1980s.
Frank Walls, a convicted serial killer responsible for five murders in Okaloosa County during the mid-1980s, is scheduled to be executed Thursday evening at Florida State Prison, following the denial of his final appeals.
Walls, 66, is set to become the 19th inmate executed in Florida this year — a new state record. The execution is scheduled for a tentative time of 6 p.m. EST and will be carried out by lethal injection.
In a last-minute effort to halt the execution, Walls’ attorneys petitioned the U.S. Supreme Court for a stay, arguing that Walls is intellectually disabled and that his execution would violate the Eighth Amendment’s prohibition on cruel and unusual punishment. His legal team cited IQ test scores of 72 and 74 as evidence of intellectual disability and claimed Florida courts failed to properly evaluate the issue.
State attorneys strongly rejected those claims. In court filings, the Florida Attorney General’s Office stated, “Walls is not now intellectually disabled and never was.” Both the Florida Supreme Court and a federal appeals court previously denied requests to stop the execution.
Walls’ crimes left a lasting scar on Northwest Florida, particularly in Okaloosa County, where fear gripped the community during the years the murders went unsolved.
His victims include Tommie Lou Whiddon, a 19-year-old junior college student whose throat was cut on a beach in March 1985; Cynthia Sue Condra, 24, who was stabbed 21 times in September 1986; and Audrey Gygi, a 47-year-old Fort Walton Beach waitress who was raped and stabbed to death in her mobile home in May 1987.
Walls was first convicted for the July 1987 murders of Edward Alger, an Eglin Air Force Base airman, and his girlfriend, Ann Peterson. Investigators said the couple was tied with curtain cords inside their mobile home. Peterson was shot twice in the head, while Alger’s throat was slashed before he was shot three times.
Years later, advances in DNA technology linked Walls to Gygi’s murder. He subsequently confessed to the Whiddon and Condra killings, closing some of the region’s most haunting cold cases.
As the execution approaches, the case continues to draw attention for both its brutal history and the legal debate surrounding intellectual disability and capital punishment — issues that remain deeply divisive across Florida and the nation.
Pro Communi Bono
St. Francis De Sales, Ora Pro Nobis!
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