Florida death row inmate uses last words to maintain innocence before execution

Chadwick Scott Vilasi, convicted of first-degree murder for setting his elderly neighbor on fire after he allegedly caught him burglarizing his home, maintained his innocence before being executed by the state of Florida on Tuesday.

“To the victim’s family, I hope this brings you peace. If it does, that’s great,” Vilasi said, according to the Associated Press. “But it’s not right.”

The state pronounced the 58-year-old dead at 6:15 p.m. after a three-drug lethal injection at Florida State Prison.

Vilasi was convicted in 1991 of murdering 56-year-old Marlis Sather, according to court documents.

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On September 5, 1990, Sather returned from work to find her next-door neighbor, Vilasi, ransacked her Palm Bay home. Willacy then smashed her head, bound her hands and feet with wire and duct tape, and “strangled her with the cord so violently that part of her skull was fractured,” according to court documents.

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He then took her ATM card and car to withdraw money from her bank account. When she returned, he disabled her smoke detectors, doused her in gasoline and lit her on fire with a match, placing a fan at her feet to provide more oxygen for the fire, according to court documents.

An autopsy report determined Sathe’s cause of death to be smoke inhalation, suggesting she was still alive when the fire started.

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“We have waited 36.5 years for justice for our mother,” Sather’s family wrote, according to the Independent Florida Alligator. “The pain every day without him has been unbearable.”

The family also indicated that her death came just weeks after losing her husband to cancer.

Willacy maintained his innocence, saying he would never kill his friend, the AP reported.

However, he expressed remorse to his family and told his “brothers in the ranks” to stay strong, according to the AP. He was injected with a three-drug mixture of anesthetic, a paralytic and potassium acetate, which stops the heart. The combination is standard in Florida lethal injection.

During the investigation of Sathe’s murder, law enforcement officials found Willsey’s fingerprints on a fan at Sathe’s feet and on gas from his garage. Witnesses also reported seeing a man matching Willacy’s description near Sather’s home and driving his car on the day of the murder.

Vilasi’s girlfriend told police she found a woman’s check register in Vilasi’s trash. When the police identified the check register as Sather’s, they arrested Vilasi. At Vilasi’s house, police found some of Sather’s possessions, clothes with blood matching Sather’s blood group.

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Vilasi was convicted of first-degree murder, burglary, robbery and arson and sentenced to death in 1991 after a 9-3 jury vote against the death penalty.

In 1994, the Florida Supreme Court ordered a new sentencing, citing the trial judge’s failure to give a potential juror a chance to rehabilitate a potential juror, according to the AP.

In 1995, Vilasi was again sentenced to death after a new jury recommended the death penalty by an 11-1 vote.

“Our mother, Marlice Mae Sather, will be remembered as a beautiful and loving daughter, wife, mother of 3, grandmother of 5, great-aunt of 5, aunt, uncle and friend,” the Sather family said in a statement.

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“She was a new widow trying to take it one day at a time,” it said. “We miss him so much every day.”

Vilasi’s execution was the fifth in Florida this year, following a record-breaking 2025 in which the state executed 19 death row inmates. It was the ninth execution in the US this year.

Original article source: Florida death row inmate uses last words to maintain innocence before execution