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Florida Executes Duane Owen for the 1984 Murders of Karen Slattery and Georgianna Worden

Owen, 62, was put to death after the U.S. Supreme Court turned down his claim that he was too mentally ill to be executed. He was one of Florida's longest-held death row prisoners.

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Illustration: a Florida state prison with palms and a guard tower at dusk

Thirty-nine years after Karen Slattery was killed, her sister was among the witnesses when the man convicted of it was put to death. Florida executed Duane Eugene Owen by lethal injection at Florida State Prison on Thursday, June 15, 2023, and he was pronounced dead at 6:14 p.m., according to Gov. Ron DeSantis's office. He was 62, and one of the longest-held prisoners on Florida's death row. He made no final statement, his victim's sister said.

Owen was sentenced to death for two killings in Palm Beach County in 1984, committed when he was 23. On March 24, 1984, he broke into a home in Delray Beach where Karen Slattery, 14, was babysitting two young children, and repeatedly stabbed and raped her while the children slept; they were unharmed. Two months later, in May 1984, he struck Georgianna Worden, 38, several times with a hammer and raped her as she slept in her Boca Raton home. One of her children found her body the next morning while getting ready for school, according to court records. Authorities said he also attacked two other women in Palm Beach County who survived. Besides his two death sentences, he had received six life sentences.

DeSantis signed the death warrant, in the Worden case, on May 9. Owen's lawyers argued that he should not be executed on grounds of insanity, that he was schizophrenic and suffered from delusions, and that he had dementia and gender dysphoria. Psychiatrists for the state testified that he had a good memory, that his schizophrenia was an act he had discussed during evaluations, and that he understood his execution was punishment for his crimes. The Florida Supreme Court rejected his last appeal the week before, and the U.S. Supreme Court turned him down on Wednesday, June 14. It was Florida's fourth execution of 2023.

Several members of the victims' families witnessed it. Debbi Johnson, Karen's sister, is a deputy sheriff in Monroe County. "Thirty-nine years of this process is finally over," she said. "The Slattery family may now close Karen's book, put it on a shelf and move forward."

Outside the prison, opponents of the death penalty held a vigil, and two people who had befriended Owen in his last years stood with signs bearing pictures of him as a boy.

Some reports, including WUFT's, spelled his surname "Owens." The Associated Press and the governor's office give it as Owen.

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