This story contains details of a violent crime that some readers may find disturbing.
A Florida man who stabbed a stay-at-home mom to death and later orchestrated a daring jailbreak has become the 18th man executed in the state this year, an all-time high for the state.
Mark Allen Geralds, 58, was executed by lethal injection on Tuesday, Dec. 9, for the 1989 murder of Tressa Lynn Pettibone, whose brutalized body was found by her 8-year-old son in their Panama City Beach home. He was pronounced dead at 6:15 p.m. ET.
At trial, prosecutor Jim Appleman called Pettibone's murder "one of the most cruel cases ever" in the region.
"The cruel beating he put on Tressa Pettibone is outrageous," Appleman told jurors, according to an archived report by the Associated Press.
