TALLAHASEE – Gov. Ron DeSantis signed a death warrant Wednesday for Dennis Michael Sochor, who was convicted of strangling an 18-year-old woman he met at a New Year’s celebration in a Broward County bar 44 years ago.
Sochor, 74, is scheduled to die by lethal injection July 14 at Florida State Prison in Stark, according to the warrant. The window to carry out the sentence runs from noon, July 14 through noon, July 21.
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DeSantis has signed 11 death warrants this year and the latest comes a week after Andrew Richard Lukehart was put to death for killing his girlfriend’s five-month-old daughter in Jacksonville 30 years ago.
Lukehart was the eighth execution carried out this year by the state, which set a modern era record with 19 in 2025.
According to court documents, Patricia Gifford went to the Banana Boat with a friend to celebrate New Year’s Eve 1981, where they met Dennis Sochor and his brother Gary Sochor. The friend was escorted to a car in the parking lot, where she fell asleep. Gifford left with the brothers in Dennis Sochor’s work truck, intending to get breakfast. Instead, Dennis Sochor stopped his truck in a secluded spot and took Gifford out of the vehicle.
Sochor confessed that when Gifford refused to have sex with him, he became angry, choked her until she died, and disposed of her body, which was never found, records state. Sochor told police his brother wasn’t with him at the time.
Police began searching for Gifford after her friend called the police.
A photo of Gifford at the New Year’s celebration with an unknown man was shown on the news and Sochor’s roommates testified that he left after seeing the photo.
Sochor wasn’t arrested until 1986, when he was stopped for running a red light in DeKalb County, Georgia.
Prior to the murder, Sochor was sentenced to a year in jail and five years’ probation for the abduction and rape of an Oakland Park woman in 1980.
He told police he abandoned his employer’s truck in Tampa before going to New Orleans and later Atlanta.
Convicted of first-degree murder after three confessions by Sochor were played to the jury, he was sentenced to death on Nov. 2, 1987.
The warrant for Sochor means the state again has two Death Row inmates scheduled for execution.
Dusty Ray Spencer, 74, is scheduled to die by lethal injection June 25 for murdering his wife 34 years ago in Orange County.