David Alan Gore was caught on July 26, 1983, because a 17-year-old girl ran. Lynn Elliott and a 14-year-old friend had been picked up while hitchhiking to Wabasso Beach, in Indian River County, Florida, by Gore and his cousin, Fred Waterfield, and taken at gunpoint to the house of Gore's parents. Lynn got away and ran down the driveway. Gore caught her and shot her. A 15-year-old boy saw it, and police were called. Gore surrendered, and officers found the younger girl alive in the attic.
Gore worked in an orange grove in Indian River County. After his arrest he confessed to five more killings: a mother and daughter in 1981, a woman who vanished in July 1981, and two 14-year-old girls from Orlando in May 1983. He led investigators to the remains of four of his victims. A jury convicted him of Lynn Elliott's murder in March 1984 and recommended death. He received life sentences for other killings. After a federal court threw out his first death sentence, a second jury voted unanimously for death in 1992. He was executed on April 12, 2012, at the age of 58.
Records of the Florida Commission on Capital Cases give his date of birth as August 21, 1953. Little has been reported about his childhood. At his 1992 resentencing, the defense presented him as the son of hard-working parents and as a shy young man, and the trial judge accepted, as a mitigating point, that he had an impoverished childhood. His mother testified at his first sentencing, and the earlier trial judge had found, among other things, that Gore was affectionate toward his family.
He worked in an orange grove in Indian River County. He married; a detective later interviewed his wife, and an ex-wife visited him on the day he was executed. At resentencing the judge also accepted his love for his children as a mitigating factor.
His first cousin, Fred Waterfield (named "Freddy" in the court opinions and "Freddie" in the state's case history), would later be tried for two of the killings.
The first known victims were a mother and daughter. Ying Hua Ling was 17. Her mother, Hsiang Huang Ling, was 48. The Associated Press, in an account of the detective work published in 2012, described them as a Taiwanese woman and her daughter. About five months before Judy Daley's death in July 1981, according to AP reports, Gore kidnapped and killed them both.
For more than two years nobody knew what had happened to them. Tom White, then a detective with the Indian River County Sheriff's Office and later the mayor of Vero Beach, came to suspect Gore in their disappearance. He told the AP in 2012 that he searched for a week and found nothing. Later he and another officer, with the help of county jail inmates, dug a long trench. It too turned up nothing.
The answer came only after Gore's arrest for Lynn Elliott's death. He led investigators to them, and the remains of Ying Hua Ling and her mother were recovered. "I couldn't believe it," White told the AP.
Judith Kay Daley, known as Judy, was 35. In July 1981 she was alone at a beach in Indian River County. Gore disabled her car, and when it would not start he offered her a ride, according to AP reports. She was not seen again. A caller told her relatives that she had car trouble.
Her disappearance was the case that put Tom White on Gore's trail. A tip placed Gore at the beach that afternoon. When White asked him about it, Gore said he had been checking the tides, an answer White found odd from a man who worked in a grove. Another tip placed Gore at a pay phone, with blood on his shirt, around the time of the call to Daley's relatives. By the time investigators reached the shirt it had been washed.
White found two hairs caught in a bracket that held a two-way radio in Gore's truck. Daley's husband mailed the detective her hairbrush, and her hair matched the strands. The assistant state attorney would not seek a warrant. White recalled being told there was nothing to be done "without a body and without more evidence." Bob Stone, the prosecutor, looking back in 2012, said there had been "no way to prove it."
More than two years later, after his arrest in the Elliott case, Gore led investigators to part of her remains. Her husband was still waiting in 2012. "I've been waiting for this day for years," he told the AP in 2012. He said he would have carried out the sentence himself if he had been allowed.
Days after Judy Daley disappeared, Gore was found hiding in the back of a car belonging to the wife of a Vero Beach police officer. The AP reported that he had a gun; the Florida Supreme Court said he had been found crouching in the woman's car with a loaded gun while she was under a threat of violence.
He was convicted of armed trespass and sentenced to five years in prison. The AP said he was paroled after about a year and a half. The federal court recorded that he committed the Elliott murder four months after leaving prison.
The detective did not let the Daley case go. While Gore was in prison, White tried to question him, but Gore had hired a lawyer and refused to talk. White interviewed Gore's wife. She described an argument that began when the family dog pulled women's undergarments that were not hers out of Gore's truck; White said they matched the size the Lings would have worn. Gore's mother complained to the office of Governor Bob Graham, and a supervisor ordered White to stay away from Gore. After Gore came out of prison, White kept him under surveillance. "I just had a feeling that he was going to do it again," White said in 2012. "Sometimes you sit there and think I could have done more."
In May 1983, Gore and Waterfield picked up two 14-year-old hitchhikers from Orlando, Barbara Ann Byer and Angelica LaVallee. Both girls were killed. It is the only case in which a court found Waterfield guilty of murder.
Barbara's mother traveled from Asheville, North Carolina, to witness the execution. "It's gone on so long that it's just exhausting," she told the AP.
Lynn Elliott was 17. On July 26, 1983, she and a 14-year-old friend set out to hitchhike to Wabasso Beach.
The facts of what followed are set out in the Florida Supreme Court's opinions. Gore and Waterfield picked up the two girls in a truck. Gore took a gun and had the girls taken to his parents' home, where they were held. The AP reported that Waterfield then left. Gore committed further crimes against the younger girl, for which he was later convicted.
Lynn got away and ran. A 15-year-old boy saw Gore catch her and shoot her, and police were called. The younger girl survived.
Gore surrendered to police. Lynn Elliott's body was found, and the murder weapon was found in the house. A police officer rescued the younger girl from the attic.
Her friend's survival was a comfort to Lynn's family. News 13 reported in 2012 that her parents took some comfort in knowing that Lynn's escape had saved her friend's life and ended the killings.
Gore was taken to the Indian River County Jail and given his Miranda warnings. He made a statement to detectives. He asked for a lawyer only after the questions became more pointed, and the Florida Supreme Court later held that he had "intelligently and voluntarily waived" his right to counsel before speaking. The statement was admitted at his trial.
After his arrest he confessed to the five earlier killings and led investigators to the remains of four of his victims, the AP reported. Gore said that Waterfield had been his partner throughout. Waterfield was convicted of murder only in the deaths of Barbara Byer and Angelica LaVallee.
A grand jury indicted Gore on August 10, 1983, for first-degree premeditated murder, two counts of kidnapping and three further felony counts concerning the younger girl. He pleaded not guilty on August 15. On January 6, 1984, the trial was moved out of Indian River County to Pinellas County, and it was heard in St. Petersburg. His trial lawyer was James T. Long.
The jury convicted him on all six counts. The 15-year-old eyewitness testified. So did the surviving girl. The defense tried to argue at sentencing that if Waterfield had been the actual killer and Gore was guilty only of felony murder, two of the state's aggravating factors could not apply; the judge stopped that argument as a misstatement of the law. A defense witness was said to have seen Waterfield running from the scene with a gun, but the trial court kept that testimony out as hearsay. During closing arguments a juror with epilepsy had outbursts; the judge replaced him with an alternate.
On March 15, 1984, the jury recommended death by 11 votes to 1. The next day Judge L. B. Vocelle sentenced Gore to death for the murder and to life on the other five counts. He found five aggravating circumstances: Gore was on parole; the murder was committed during the kidnappings and other felonies; it was committed to avoid arrest; it was especially atrocious or cruel, in the words of the statute's cruelty factor; and it was cold, calculated and premeditated. He found no statutory mitigation. He did consider that Gore was affectionate toward his family and had become a "born again" Christian since his arrest, and found that this did not outweigh the aggravating factors.
The Florida Supreme Court affirmed the convictions and the death sentence on August 22, 1985. It held that one of the trial judge's rulings during jury selection was an error but harmless. The United States Supreme Court declined to hear the case on February 24, 1986.
The Florida Supreme Court's 1997 opinion records that Gore pleaded guilty to three other murders under a plea agreement that included a promise to testify against Waterfield. When it became clear that Gore's testimony at his cousin's trial would have played down Waterfield's part, the state did not call him. In the Elliott case Waterfield was convicted of manslaughter, and he was sentenced on July 25, 1984, to 15 years. In the Byer and LaVallee case he was convicted of murder and given consecutive life sentences, the AP reported in 2012.
Accounts differ on how many of the other killings ended in a formal conviction. The 1997 opinion speaks of three murder pleas. News 13 in Orlando reported in 2012 that Gore had been sentenced to life for three of the other murders. AP reports the same week said he was sentenced to life for the other murders, and one AP story described him as having been convicted of all six. The court record does not name the victims in the three pleas.
Gore's first round of appeals in the state courts failed. Clemency was denied after a hearing on December 7, 1987. Governor Bob Martinez signed a death warrant on March 3, 1988, and the Florida Supreme Court stayed it on April 28. In August 1988 the court rejected his claim that his trial lawyer should have presented evidence of Waterfield's influence over him. It said such evidence should have been admitted at sentencing. A second death warrant was signed on January 31, 1989, and a federal judge stayed it on February 14.
In August 1989 Judge Hodges of the federal district court for the Middle District of Florida granted Gore's petition on one of his 17 claims. The trial court, he held, had kept from the sentencing jury evidence of Gore's drinking and drug use, which could have supported a mitigating inference, in violation of the Supreme Court's decisions in Lockett v. Ohio and Hitchcock v. Dugger. Family members had been prepared to say he acted strangely, and a half-empty vodka bottle and pills had been found in his bedroom. The judge rejected the other 16 claims and gave the state 120 days to hold a new sentencing hearing or resentence him to less than death.
On May 29, 1991, a panel of the Eleventh Circuit affirmed, saying the error "cannot be found to be harmless" given the circumstances of the trial. The Supreme Court refused the state's appeal on January 21, 1992.
The new penalty-phase hearing took place in 1992 before Dan L. Vaughn, a county court judge on temporary assignment. The state's psychiatrist, Dr. Cheshire, testified that Gore was not an alcoholic and had no mental illness, only adult antisocial behavior. Witnesses to the crime, including the surviving girl, the eyewitness boy and police officers, said he showed no sign of being impaired. The defense called about ten witnesses, among them two mental health experts, Dr. Maher and Peter Maculuso. They described the son of hard-working parents, shy, troubled by separation from his family, and drinking.
The defense also called Bob Stone, who had prosecuted both Gore and Waterfield, to make the point that Waterfield, whom Stone had once called "just as guilty as Gore," had not been sentenced to death. The state answered that Waterfield's manslaughter verdict came about because Gore had backed out of his plea deal, not because the state had gone easy on his cousin. On cross-examination Stone said that none of Gore's life sentences carried a minimum mandatory term.
This time the jury voted 12 to 0 for death. On December 8, 1992, Judge Vaughn sentenced Gore to death again. He found six aggravating circumstances: Gore was under a sentence of imprisonment, on parole for the armed trespass; he had a prior violent felony; the murder was committed during the kidnappings and other felonies; it was committed to stop Lynn Elliott from identifying him as she tried to escape; it met the statute's factor for an especially atrocious or cruel killing; and it was cold, calculated and premeditated. The last finding rested in part on Gore's having told the surviving girl he was "going to do it anyway." Judge Vaughn found no statutory mitigation and five nonstatutory factors: Gore's conduct in prison, his impoverished childhood, his conduct at the resentencing, depression at the time of the murder and his love for his children. They were, he wrote, "substantially outweighed."
The Florida Supreme Court affirmed on July 17, 1997. It held that the jury had been correctly told that a life sentence for the murder would carry parole eligibility after 25 years, that the armed trespass could count as a violent felony on its facts, and that Stone's testimony was allowed because the defense had opened the door. It found it was an error to let a police officer tell the jury Gore had lied, but a harmless one. Justice Shaw, joined by Justice Anstead, dissented over a juror who had discussed the case with her husband and whose own experiences, Shaw wrote, made her an interested party. The United States Supreme Court denied review on October 5, 1998.
His next state motion was filed in 1999 and heard in 2003. Gore claimed that his resentencing lawyers had failed him. The lead lawyer, Nickerson, had practiced for only about three years at the time and did not testify at the hearing; his co-counsel, Robert Udell, said he had deferred to him. Gore also argued that pesticides in the citrus groves had damaged his nervous system. Two entomologists disputed the theory, and the court called it "tenuous at best," noting that Gore had never told his lawyers about the exposure. He argued too that 23 years on death row was itself cruel and unusual punishment. On July 5, 2007, the Florida Supreme Court rejected every claim, with no dissent.
Federal courts denied a second habeas petition in April 2008, and the Eleventh Circuit refused to hear an appeal in September 2008. The United States Supreme Court turned him down on February 19, 2008, and again on May 18, 2009.
Governor Rick Scott signed Gore's death warrant on February 28, 2012, setting the execution for April 12. The AP reported that he did so after Scripps Treasure Coast Newspapers asked him about the case.
Gore's last appeals argued that the clemency process was arbitrary, that Udell's 2009 disbarment for false fee affidavits showed he had been ineffective in 1992, and that so long a stay on death row was unconstitutional. Judge Vaughn, by then sitting in Indian River County, denied the claims on March 15, 2012. The Florida Supreme Court affirmed on April 9, 2012, with no dissent. It noted that the disbarment concerned conduct from 2005 to 2008 and said nothing about his work in 1992.
Lynn Elliott's parents waited through his 28 years on death row. Her father had just turned 81. He told the AP the long wait had been very hard for the family, coming just as he turned 81. "I was beginning to think that I might die before he went." Her mother had been in a coma about two years earlier, and doctors had told the couple's son to make funeral arrangements. She recovered, and she believed her wish to see Gore die first was the reason. Her parents described Gore as "an animal," News 13 reported.
On April 12, 2012, Gore met with a spiritual adviser and was visited by his mother and an ex-wife. A Department of Corrections spokeswoman, Ann Howard, said he was calm and cooperative. The United States Supreme Court denied his final appeal less than two hours before the scheduled time.
The Elliotts watched through a glass partition at Florida State Prison in Starke. Barbara Byer's mother and her husband had come to witness it too. In his last statement Gore apologized to the Elliott family. "I am sorry for the death of your daughter," he said. He told them he was not the man he had been 28 years earlier, that he was a Christian, and that he hoped they could find peace and forgive him. "I don't fear death," he said. He did not look at them. He was pronounced dead at 6:19 p.m. He was 58. The family left without making a statement.
Waterfield's part. Gore said his cousin was his partner throughout the killings. Waterfield was convicted of murder only for the deaths of Barbara Byer and Angelica LaVallee, and of manslaughter in Lynn Elliott's death. The defense at Gore's trial suggested that Waterfield could have been the actual killer of Lynn Elliott, and a defense witness was said to have seen him run from the scene with a gun, but the trial court excluded that account and the eyewitness boy saw Gore fire. The Florida Supreme Court found in 1988 that evidence of Waterfield's influence over Gore should have been admitted at sentencing.
The number of convictions. Gore was convicted by a jury of one murder. The Florida Supreme Court's 1997 opinion records guilty pleas to three others. Some 2012 news reports said he was sentenced to life for all the other killings, or that he was convicted of all six. The court records do not settle the point.
The Daley case before 1983. Investigators had physical evidence linking Judy Daley to Gore's truck in 1981, but prosecutors did not think it was enough to charge him without her body. Whether more could have been done was a question the detective, Tom White, said he still asked himself.
August 21, 1953: David Alan Gore born (state record).
1981, about five months before the Daley killing: Ying Hua Ling, 17, and her mother, Hsiang Huang Ling, 48, are kidnapped and killed in Indian River County.
July 1981: Judith Kay Daley, 35, disappears in Indian River County.
July 1981: Gore is found hiding in a woman's car with a loaded gun; he is later convicted of armed trespass and sentenced to five years.
May 1983: Barbara Ann Byer and Angelica LaVallee, both 14, are abducted and killed.
July 26, 1983: Lynn Elliott, 17, is shot while trying to escape; Gore surrenders and her friend is rescued.
August 10, 1983: Indicted for murder, kidnapping and other felonies.
After his arrest: Gore confesses to five earlier killings and leads investigators to the remains of four victims.
January 6, 1984: Venue moved to Pinellas County.
March 15 and 16, 1984: Jury recommends death, 11 to 1; Gore is sentenced to death.
July 25, 1984: Waterfield sentenced to 15 years for manslaughter in the Elliott case.
August 22, 1985: Florida Supreme Court affirms.
February 24, 1986: United States Supreme Court denies review.
March 3, 1988: Governor Bob Martinez signs a death warrant; stayed April 28, 1988.
January 31, 1989: Second death warrant; stayed by a federal court February 14, 1989.
August 1989: Federal district court vacates the death sentence.
May 29, 1991: Eleventh Circuit affirms.
December 8, 1992: Resentenced to death after a 12 to 0 jury vote.
July 17, 1997: Florida Supreme Court affirms the new death sentence.
July 5, 2007: Florida Supreme Court rejects postconviction claims.
May 18, 2009: United States Supreme Court denies review.
February 28, 2012: Governor Rick Scott signs a death warrant.
April 9, 2012: Florida Supreme Court rejects final claims.
April 12, 2012: Gore is executed at Florida State Prison, Starke.