A man convicted of the 1994 rape and murder of a woman near a downtown Orlando bar has been scheduled for execution under a death warrant signed May 23 by Gov. Ron DeSantis.

This would make Thomas Lee Gudinas, 51, the seventh execution so far in 2025, more than one a month. In comparison, only one person was executed in Florida last year, and six in 2023.

Gudinas is set to die by lethal injection on June 24. He was convicted in 1995 and sentenced to death for the murder of Michelle McGrath.

McGrath was last seen at a bar called Barbarella’s around closing time in May 1994. Gudinas had been at the bar with friends, but they later testified that they left the bar without him. Her battered body was found in an alley next to a nearby school the next morning. Prosecutors said she had been beaten and showed evidence of serious blunt force trauma and sexual assault.

Five men have already been put to death in Florida this year. The next person scheduled to be executed is Anthony F. Wainwright, who escaped from a North Carolina prison with another man and kidnapped, raped and killed a North Florida woman they abducted from a Winn-Dixie parking lot. His execution has been set for 6 p.m., June 10, barring any challenges.

Since the death penalty was reinstated in 1976, the most executions in a year in Florida has been eight, which happened in 184 and 2014, according to Florida Department of Corrections data.

How did Michelle McGrath die?

McGrath was last seen alive at about 2:45 a.m. in the courtyard of Barbarella's on May 24, 2024.

Gudinas had arrived with three of his roommates after drinking and smoking marijuana at home and on the way, according to a summary of the case . When his friends left at 3 a.m., Gudinas was nowhere to be found. One of his roommates testified he hadn't seen Gudinas since 1 a.m.

A woman named Rachelle Smith was at the bar with her fiancé and left around 2 a.m., the summary said. She went to the wrong parking lot by mistake and spotted a man later identified as Gudinas watching her while he was crouched behind a car. He tried to open her passenger door, she said, then wrapped a cloth around his hand and tried to smash the window while yelling that he wanted to sexually assault her before he finally ran off.

McGrath's car was in the same parking lot.

At 7 a.m., an employee of the nearby Pace School saw a man sitting on the steps of the courtyard, according to her testimony. She confronted him and he jumped a wall into an alley. When she went to look in the alley half an hour later, the found McGrath's body.

Dr. Thomas Hegert, then a medical examiner for Orange and Osceola counties, testified that McGrath had been "savagely raped and severely beaten," the court said, with multiple brutal violations, injuries and bite marks to her person and blunt trauma to the head where she had apparently been stomped, according to documents attached to the death warrant . She was alive and conscious during significant portions of the attack, Hegert said.

Other witnesses testified as having seen Gudinas in the area that morning, and later driving McGrath's car. One of Gudinas' roommates found boxer shorts stained with blood, belonging to Gudinas. When asked, he said he was robbed by two Black men. He also had lacerations on the knuckles of one hand.

"The agony, the pain, the horror, and the fear she must have felt as she was beaten and raped in this alleyway is beyond comprehension," the court said in documents attached to the death warrant. "During this time she must have experienced the anxiety, the emotional strain and fear of knowing of her impending doom."

The defense argued that Gudinas was incapacitated at the time of the homicide, had an IQ of 85, suffered from personality disorders, was developmentally impaired and was abused and diagnosed as "sexually disturbed" as a child. Gudinas had previously been convicted in Massachusetts of assault with intent to commit rape and indecent assault and battery, court documents showed.

Gudinas was found guilty of first-degree murder and two counts of sexual battery for Grath, and attempted sexual battery and attempted burglary with assault for the other woman.

Gudinas' sentence has been twice upheld by the Supreme Court of Florida and petitions for writ of habeas corpus have been denied by the United States District Court for the Middle District of Florida and the United States Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit.

When is Thomas Lee Gudinas scheduled to be executed?

If the execution happens as scheduled, Gudinas's death is scheduled for 6 p.m. ET on Tuesday, June 24, 2025, at Florida State Prison in Raiford.

How many death row inmates has Florida executed?

From 1924 until May 1964, the state of Florida executed 196 people . There were no executions from May 1964 until May 1976.

In 1972, the United States Supreme Court struck down the death penalty, but it was reinstated in 1976. Florida has carried out 110 executions since then.

When is the next execution in Florida?

If the execution goes on as planned, Anthony F. Wainwright will be executed at 6 p.m., June 10.

Wainwright, now 54, had been serving 10 years for burglary in North Carolina when he and Richard Hamilton escaped a minimum-custody prison in Carteret County, North Carolina, according to court records. The men stole weapons, drove to Florida, and spotted Fort White resident Carmen Tortora Gayheart in a Winn-Dixie parking lot in Lake City.

According to facts of the case from the Florida Supreme Court , the two men raped, strangled and executed Gayheart by shooting her twice in the back of the head. They were arrested the next day in Mississippi following a shootout with a state trooper.

Hamilton died on Florida's death row in January 2023.