June 24, 2026
Florida Set To Execute Oldest Man In State’s History
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RSS Feed 74-year-old Dusty Ray Spencer is scheduled to die by lethal injection on Thursday, which will make him the oldest man ever executed in the state of Florida. Spencer’s attorneys have made a last ditch appeal to the Supreme Court, citing cruel and unusual punishment towards a 74-year-old man suffering from significant medical conditions. Spencer was convicted for the 1992 brutal stabbing and beating death of his wife Karen in front of her teenage son. Her murder led to significant changes in the way police and state courts address domestic violence. Spencer had warned Karen from jail he was going to finish what he started.
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00:00:02
Speaker 1: Hey, there're folks. It is Wednesday, June twenty fourth, and a question for you, can you actually be too old to die? That is the question in Florida right now for a planned execution tomorrow night, and that person would be the oldest person that state has ever executed. And with that, welcome to this episode of Amy and TJ. Robes once again. An execution whether the debate is not about guilt or innocence. It's about something else.
00:00:30
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's about whether or not it's cruel and unusual to execute an elderly man with underlying health conditions. We're talking about seventy four year old Dusty Ray Spencer. He is set to die tomorrow Thursday at six pm Eastern time, by lethal injection.
00:00:49
Speaker 1: And when you hear Robes, yes, seventy four year old man, he's sick. Why would they do this? You hear what he did, Robes, you have a hard time giving this guy mercy.
00:01:00
Speaker 3: That is very much true.
00:01:02
Speaker 2: And yet you hear from his attorneys saying that he should be spared because now he is a quote sick old man.
00:01:13
Speaker 3: Was that by it?
00:01:15
Speaker 2: Yeah?
00:01:15
Speaker 1: I bet he is. And that's the thing Rose. He killed a forty year old woman in a way in a manner that go back and tell me about the mercy she got, I know, a comparative thing. And Rose, I struggle with this in this story because we're supposed to be better, as people are saying, give this guy mercy. He's seventy four years old and he's sick, and we have to be better than he was when he beat the absolute hell out of this woman and killed her at some thirty whatever years ago. So Rose, that's a balance, and that's a difficult one at this point to try to balance. But aren't we supposed to be better than a killer? So aren't we supposed to give him mercy?
00:01:52
Speaker 2: That's part of the argument. And you mentioned he beat and stabbed her. He did it in front of her child. This is awful story, and he promised to do it. Not only did Dusty Ray Spencer let down his wife and his victim, but so did the criminal justice system. And we'll get into that as well, because there are many people who let down Karen Spencer and allow it for her death to take place when she was threatened with it multiple times, was told it was going to happen, and yet no one saved her.
00:02:21
Speaker 1: Crazy This is a case where he did exactly what he said he was going to do, and when he made the threat, he was already in jail.
00:02:27
Speaker 2: He did it crazy, Yeah, he did it on a cell phone in a jail, so it was recorded, so the court it's documented that he literally threatens his wife that he's going to finish the job. And then he's released on bail. And why was he in jail the first time, robs for beating his wife.
00:02:46
Speaker 1: This story is insanity. This story is insanity. Yeah, it did lead to some changes in Florida, and that's a positive out of all of it. But here we are Robes. Obviously, Desantas is not going to stop it. I think he still has a case in front of the Supreme Supreme Court.
00:02:59
Speaker 2: He does, yes, and so Spencer's attorneys on Monday of this week formally filed a request the Supreme Court of the United States to intervene in his execution. Their argument, I'll give it to you exactly how they worded it is that Florida's lethal injection process is cruel and unusual when applied to a seventy four year old man suffering from significant medical conditions, including cirrhosis, of the liver and portal hypertension.
00:03:27
Speaker 1: Okay, is all that? Do you get to a point where it is cruel and unusual to execute a sickly old man.
00:03:33
Speaker 2: That might be true, It might be true, but again I'm going to refer back even to our criminal justice system, where if he had actually been put to death, if he had actually been executed in a timely fashion, he wouldn't be seventy four years old.
00:03:49
Speaker 3: Some would argue he's lucky as hell to be as old as.
00:03:52
Speaker 2: He is, given the crime he committed and the conviction he received, with the sentence he got.
00:03:57
Speaker 1: He waited out our judicial system until he got a reason to make an argument for not killing him.
00:04:04
Speaker 2: That's kind of what's happening, was saying you should have done it earlier. And so now, yes, there are headlines that this is cruel, this is terrible to execute an elderly, sickly man.
00:04:14
Speaker 3: Spencer's spiritual advisor.
00:04:16
Speaker 2: Going and making the rounds as well, asking Governor DeSantis to stop the lethal injection. He's calling this a nursing home execution. So you can see people jumping on this theme that this is just not okay to execute an elderly person.
00:04:32
Speaker 1: Is it because of his age or that he's a sickly old person. We've seen seventy year olds run marathons, so is that the argument? More so, at least at the way you see it, it's not just age just that's it's both.
00:04:44
Speaker 2: Yes, And you make a good point. My dad ran the Berlin Marathon at the age of sixty nine.
00:04:48
Speaker 1: He would not have this argument that this guy had, that I'm a sickly old man. No.
00:04:52
Speaker 2: And by the way, just for a point of reference, the oldest person ever executed in modern times here and the United States actually didn't even happen that long ago. We're talking twenty eighteen in the state of Alabama. Alabama executed an eighty three year old man.
00:05:10
Speaker 3: His name was Walter Moody.
00:05:11
Speaker 2: So look, other states have had zero issue executing elderly folks.
00:05:17
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's I guess it's fairly rare robes that they get over the age of eighty to eighty three year old was the record, but I think that was an eighty year old or something in there as well. So this is rare. But so many of the executions we see, yeah, they are in their sixties and seventies plus because they've been on death row for thirty forty years.
00:05:34
Speaker 3: That's the deal.
00:05:35
Speaker 2: Yes, a lot of these crimes when you commit them in your thirties and then yeah, you're on death row for thirty forty years. Yeah, you are getting up there in age. And like I said, a lot of the arguments on the other side of it is they shouldn't have been allowed to get that old.
00:05:49
Speaker 3: That's the system.
00:05:52
Speaker 2: Are broken system the way it's set up right now, that it takes so long to execute somebody, we better get pretty comfortable executing older folks because that's who is on death row at this point.
00:06:03
Speaker 3: In large numbers.
00:06:04
Speaker 1: I don't see the number. I know we've reported on it before, but the average age of a death row inmate, the average age of somebody executed, it's obviously it's up there. These aren't young people on death row. In fact, sometimes roads we've had somewhere the guy's forty forty two, So what the hell. Yeah, they're in their early twenties sometimes when they commit the crimes, but it's just rare. So seventy four they talked about roles. He would need to physically be placed on the gurney, like he can't move around. He needs help to even get in place to be executed. What was the argument they have about his skin? His skin is now so loose that you would have to tighten it in some way just to get a vein. Yeah, that sounds horrific.
00:06:46
Speaker 2: It seems pretty dramatic. But yes, I hear all the arguments you even have. Look in the Catholic Church has always been outspoken against the death penalty and executing folks.
00:06:56
Speaker 3: But I thought this was interesting.
00:07:00
Speaker 2: The Florida Conference of Catholic Bishops wrote a letter to DeSantis. But they're they're throwing everything at this case to try and stop the execution, including the fact that they claim he was sexually abused as a child by his father, had a paranoid personality disorder. Look, a lot a lot of these death row inmates do have horrific stories that led them to a life of crime. And look, that argument has never worked before when it comes to leniency or sparing someone's life because they had a tough childhood.
00:07:29
Speaker 1: Should it I don't know. I'm sure yes, plenty of experts has gone up there and testify that it should factor in. Okay, well until it does. And again, Ropes, he's had The crime was a ninety two here ninety two, I was at thirty. Where are thirty four?
00:07:44
Speaker 3: Thirty four years ago? Thirty four years ago?
00:07:46
Speaker 1: Well, he had a lot of time to make that argument, and now here we are when we say at all the time robes at the end, they always want to live.
00:07:52
Speaker 2: Yeah, and guess what, he had a lot of time to make a different choice. Let's get into the crime itself. It did happen on January eighteenth, nineteen ninety two. Yes, he murdered his wife, Karen Spencer, but look, this had been years of domestic violence and domestic abuse and the first attack criminal attack. He attacked her two weeks before Christmas in nineteen ninety one. He covered her nose in her mouth with his one hand, choked her with the other, and he was sent to jail for there for that. Okay, he goes to prison, He makes a call to her, He says, and this is verifiable. When I get out, I'm going to finish when what I started. Okay, they hear it. The judge sets his bail at five thousand. He was released. He comes back a few days later, on January fourth, attacks his wife, smashes her face, in with an iron. Her seventeen year old son intervenes and they call police. He's out on bail for attacking her. He's never rearrested because the cops couldn't find him.
00:08:53
Speaker 1: Don't know where he is. The guy who has now verifiably beaten you t twice that we put in jail after the first one, the second one, Eh, we can't find them.
00:09:06
Speaker 2: And by the way, on record him saying I'm going to finish the job that I started and then he's released.
00:09:14
Speaker 1: Can you tell me from my clarity, I couldn't figure out if they knew at the time. Did they not find out about the transcript of the cell phone call until later or was that known before she actually ended up getting killed.
00:09:27
Speaker 3: I don't know the answer to that.
00:09:28
Speaker 1: But the direct threat that they need to act on.
00:09:30
Speaker 3: And here's the deal. I don't know if they knew it, but it was available.
00:09:34
Speaker 2: Look, did they go through it, did they document it, did they bring it up? Don't know, but it was there for them to be able to hear and document. Whether they did or not in a timely fashion, I don't know, but I thought it was just egregious. After he makes these threats comes back. It's only stopped because of her son, and the police are just like, look, we don't know where he is. And according to a lot of the report around this, she gave them specific places to where to find him and they just didn't follow up.
00:10:06
Speaker 1: Okay, at this point, Robes, after he got out of jail and after that second attack, she should have been I mean, she damned there should have been in police protective cut.
00:10:14
Speaker 3: Absolutely so.
00:10:16
Speaker 2: Sixteen days after that January fourth attack where police say.
00:10:20
Speaker 3: Can't find him, he comes back.
00:10:22
Speaker 2: And he starts brutally stabbing and beating her to death in front of her teenage son.
00:10:28
Speaker 3: He's sleeping.
00:10:29
Speaker 2: Her seventeen year old's on a sleeping He hears his mother screaming in the backyard and he finds his stepfather hitting his mom with a brick. He goes to get a shotgun and he's going to defend his mom, but unfortunately the shotgun jammed. He couldn't fire it, so we started to try and hit him over the head with it. Right, Spencer leaves and goes back and gets a knife, and he's slamming his mom's head into a concrete side of the house. When he gets the knife, the Sun runs away to go get help.
00:11:00
Speaker 1: Help.
00:11:00
Speaker 2: By the time he comes back, Spencer's gone and his mom has bled to death.
00:11:06
Speaker 1: Well, this kid was seventeen, eighteen, seventeen years old, seventeen, okay, so imagine that he hears his mom screaming he's sleep He goes out and see this is his stepdad. At this point, yep, it was serious enough. He immediately goes and gets a gun and tries to shoot the guy. Yes, it was that, but his immediate thought is I need to shoot this man based on what he was seeing road. What they describe in this attack is some of this is one of the more horrific crimes that I have seen and we've covered because of the brutality to where the police did even say was it the prosecutor that said he didn't go down to killer, He went there to make her feel this that enropes the kid. They said. It was almost conversation going on during the attack where the kid is trying to get the guy to stop, and he's yelling at the kid, she messed up my life, like he is enraged, slamming a woman's head against a brick house wall on the outside while the Sun is watching Okay, now go back and let's talk about the mercy this seventy four year old should be given.
00:12:04
Speaker 2: It's Robes right, We're supposed to feel sorry for the fact that he might suffer for those few minutes been a lethal injecttion or a cocktail of drugs is injected into him.
00:12:15
Speaker 3: It's very hard to feel.
00:12:17
Speaker 2: Sympathy for someone This wasn't a crime of passion. This wasn't someone who snapped. This isn't someone who regretted his decision felt sorry for it. It was just a bad moment. No, this was a brutal, vicious, planned out and repeated attack.
00:12:34
Speaker 3: I mean, he said he was going to finish the job, and he did.
00:12:37
Speaker 1: He followed through. He gave a heads up that he was going to kill somebody, and that information was there for authorities to see. This is an awful one. Look, I'm this is and like I said, Robes, we are supposed to be better than he was in that moment. We're not supposed to be vengeful. We're supposed to look and be better. And being better required us to give mercy to someone who did something monstrous. That's a that's a high bar for some people, but I get it, And I also get why somebody would say, are you effing kidding me? After what he did to her. I don't give a damn how old he is if you have to wheel him in there in a wheelchair. Justice needs to be certain exactly.
00:13:17
Speaker 2: So look, we're waiting to hear if the Supreme Court even acknowledges the case.
00:13:22
Speaker 3: They don't have to at all.
00:13:23
Speaker 2: But that's his last hope because I think it's very fair to say that Governor DeSantis will not be stepping in.
00:13:29
Speaker 3: He's aware of all of this.
00:13:31
Speaker 2: Yes, he signed a death warren I think May end of May, so he was aware of all of these extenuating circumstances. He was aware of his age, and he said, yeah, here's my John Hancock.
00:13:42
Speaker 3: I'm good with this.
00:13:43
Speaker 2: So he has no hope for that, that particular governor making any sort of effort in his direction.
00:13:50
Speaker 1: He's signing these things so often we need to change the term give me your John Hancock to give me your Ron DeSantis. Yes, exactly, his signature he's signing. Put it in front of them, put it in front of he will sign it. Every time we say that and we talk about Florida is like clearing the roles the death clearing out death row. You repeatedly make the point he is doing what the law says he's supposed to do, and he is giving justice to these families. What are we waiting for?
00:14:16
Speaker 3: He is enforcing the law.
00:14:17
Speaker 1: He is and in that regard, Robes, I change the law if you want to, but he's exactly.
00:14:23
Speaker 2: I think that's where we are. But speaking of changing the law, when we come back, we're going to tell you. So this obviously is a horrible dark story, but there was a silver lining because what happened to Karen Spencer, well it may have prevented that same scenario from happening to another woman. Will tell you the laws that changed because of her murder. Welcome back everyone to this episode of Amy and TJ. We are talking about the state of Florida said to execute the the oldest man on record for that state. They are set to execute Dusty Ray Spencer. He is seventy four years old. He will yes be the oldest man executed in Florida tomorrow evening, barring the Supreme Court of the United States stepping in, which at this point seems highly highly unlikely. But his murder victim, his own wife, forty year old Karen Spencer. She was brutally murdered and was told ahead of time that that was exactly going to be her fate. No one stepped in, no one did anything to protect her, even when he threatened her on a prison phone. So look after her murder, the arrests and prosecutions of domestic violent perpetrators in Orange County where this happened went up by eighty percent. How amazing is that police were given new directives and over the next few years the Florida legislator's strength and laws and pen So basically, if you even threatened domestic violence towards anyone, that is a crime, and that hadn't been the case before. Law enforcement now must detail why an arrest was not made.
00:16:14
Speaker 3: So the onus is on them now. Approve why they didn't.
00:16:17
Speaker 1: Arrest, justify inaction?
00:16:19
Speaker 2: Correct and because think about that, Because they didn't make that arrest after he came back and beat Karen Spencer with an iron because they didn't pursue him.
00:16:27
Speaker 3: She's dead.
00:16:29
Speaker 2: Had they done that, she would still be alive today.
00:16:32
Speaker 1: You know what they say. This reminds me of how police the policy when it comes to high speed chases. They make a determination, Am I putting the public in further harm by chasing somebody in a car who only stole a pack of twinkies from the store, Or do I have to pursue him because that person is a risk to the community. They didn't determine he was a risk worth going after that. I don't know if anybody ever it was held accountable robes, but it's the same policy. They didn't think he rose to the level of a threat to the community because the community happened to be one woman.
00:17:09
Speaker 3: I guess yeah, isn't that sad?
00:17:11
Speaker 2: And in action is just as harmful as bad action, and that is what they were trying to fit. So I love that the stat I got chills that arrest and prosecutions of domestic violence perpetrators went up by eighty percent after her murder. That is.
00:17:28
Speaker 3: A silver lining. Indeed.
00:17:30
Speaker 2: Now, the other thing that they changed in Florida was that there must be a person that is accused of domestic violence is a has to have a mandatory court appearance before their release. They don't just get to get like rubber stamped and shipped out.
00:17:45
Speaker 3: No, they have to.
00:17:46
Speaker 2: Formally see a judge and be arranged just for that formality to have the weight of what they did or what they're accused of doing land in a lot of ways. So I just thought those were really interesting reforms that have led to real changes in that state and specifically in that county, Hunk.
00:18:02
Speaker 1: Something came out of it great. And I'll say Karen Spence, Karen Spencer, I mean that name, remember it. Look her up if you get a chance. But a woman who went through all that positively saved lives later Forbes just it's not her intention to be a hero or a martyr in this case, and she should be alive. But man, how many lives possibly have been saved? How many relationships, abusive relationships have ended and people have gotten away from bad spots because of what she went through trying to hold on to that rose is a positive in this.
00:18:34
Speaker 3: One, yep, certainly indeed.
00:18:35
Speaker 2: But we will keep our eye on this situation in case anything changes, because as of right now, it appears that Dusty Ray Spencer has about twenty four hours left on his seventy four year life. And with that, everyone, we appreciate you listening to us. I'm Amy Roboch alongside TJ. Holmes, we'll talk to you soon.
Speaker 1: Hey, there're folks. It is Wednesday, June twenty fourth, and a question for you, can you actually be too old to die? That is the question in Florida right now for a planned execution tomorrow night, and that person would be the oldest person that state has ever executed. And with that, welcome to this episode of Amy and TJ. Robes once again. An execution whether the debate is not about guilt or innocence. It's about something else.
00:00:30
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's about whether or not it's cruel and unusual to execute an elderly man with underlying health conditions. We're talking about seventy four year old Dusty Ray Spencer. He is set to die tomorrow Thursday at six pm Eastern time, by lethal injection.
00:00:49
Speaker 1: And when you hear Robes, yes, seventy four year old man, he's sick. Why would they do this? You hear what he did, Robes, you have a hard time giving this guy mercy.
00:01:00
Speaker 3: That is very much true.
00:01:02
Speaker 2: And yet you hear from his attorneys saying that he should be spared because now he is a quote sick old man.
00:01:13
Speaker 3: Was that by it?
00:01:15
Speaker 2: Yeah?
00:01:15
Speaker 1: I bet he is. And that's the thing Rose. He killed a forty year old woman in a way in a manner that go back and tell me about the mercy she got, I know, a comparative thing. And Rose, I struggle with this in this story because we're supposed to be better, as people are saying, give this guy mercy. He's seventy four years old and he's sick, and we have to be better than he was when he beat the absolute hell out of this woman and killed her at some thirty whatever years ago. So Rose, that's a balance, and that's a difficult one at this point to try to balance. But aren't we supposed to be better than a killer? So aren't we supposed to give him mercy?
00:01:52
Speaker 2: That's part of the argument. And you mentioned he beat and stabbed her. He did it in front of her child. This is awful story, and he promised to do it. Not only did Dusty Ray Spencer let down his wife and his victim, but so did the criminal justice system. And we'll get into that as well, because there are many people who let down Karen Spencer and allow it for her death to take place when she was threatened with it multiple times, was told it was going to happen, and yet no one saved her.
00:02:21
Speaker 1: Crazy This is a case where he did exactly what he said he was going to do, and when he made the threat, he was already in jail.
00:02:27
Speaker 2: He did it crazy, Yeah, he did it on a cell phone in a jail, so it was recorded, so the court it's documented that he literally threatens his wife that he's going to finish the job. And then he's released on bail. And why was he in jail the first time, robs for beating his wife.
00:02:46
Speaker 1: This story is insanity. This story is insanity. Yeah, it did lead to some changes in Florida, and that's a positive out of all of it. But here we are Robes. Obviously, Desantas is not going to stop it. I think he still has a case in front of the Supreme Supreme Court.
00:02:59
Speaker 2: He does, yes, and so Spencer's attorneys on Monday of this week formally filed a request the Supreme Court of the United States to intervene in his execution. Their argument, I'll give it to you exactly how they worded it is that Florida's lethal injection process is cruel and unusual when applied to a seventy four year old man suffering from significant medical conditions, including cirrhosis, of the liver and portal hypertension.
00:03:27
Speaker 1: Okay, is all that? Do you get to a point where it is cruel and unusual to execute a sickly old man.
00:03:33
Speaker 2: That might be true, It might be true, but again I'm going to refer back even to our criminal justice system, where if he had actually been put to death, if he had actually been executed in a timely fashion, he wouldn't be seventy four years old.
00:03:49
Speaker 3: Some would argue he's lucky as hell to be as old as.
00:03:52
Speaker 2: He is, given the crime he committed and the conviction he received, with the sentence he got.
00:03:57
Speaker 1: He waited out our judicial system until he got a reason to make an argument for not killing him.
00:04:04
Speaker 2: That's kind of what's happening, was saying you should have done it earlier. And so now, yes, there are headlines that this is cruel, this is terrible to execute an elderly, sickly man.
00:04:14
Speaker 3: Spencer's spiritual advisor.
00:04:16
Speaker 2: Going and making the rounds as well, asking Governor DeSantis to stop the lethal injection. He's calling this a nursing home execution. So you can see people jumping on this theme that this is just not okay to execute an elderly person.
00:04:32
Speaker 1: Is it because of his age or that he's a sickly old person. We've seen seventy year olds run marathons, so is that the argument? More so, at least at the way you see it, it's not just age just that's it's both.
00:04:44
Speaker 2: Yes, And you make a good point. My dad ran the Berlin Marathon at the age of sixty nine.
00:04:48
Speaker 1: He would not have this argument that this guy had, that I'm a sickly old man. No.
00:04:52
Speaker 2: And by the way, just for a point of reference, the oldest person ever executed in modern times here and the United States actually didn't even happen that long ago. We're talking twenty eighteen in the state of Alabama. Alabama executed an eighty three year old man.
00:05:10
Speaker 3: His name was Walter Moody.
00:05:11
Speaker 2: So look, other states have had zero issue executing elderly folks.
00:05:17
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's I guess it's fairly rare robes that they get over the age of eighty to eighty three year old was the record, but I think that was an eighty year old or something in there as well. So this is rare. But so many of the executions we see, yeah, they are in their sixties and seventies plus because they've been on death row for thirty forty years.
00:05:34
Speaker 3: That's the deal.
00:05:35
Speaker 2: Yes, a lot of these crimes when you commit them in your thirties and then yeah, you're on death row for thirty forty years. Yeah, you are getting up there in age. And like I said, a lot of the arguments on the other side of it is they shouldn't have been allowed to get that old.
00:05:49
Speaker 3: That's the system.
00:05:52
Speaker 2: Are broken system the way it's set up right now, that it takes so long to execute somebody, we better get pretty comfortable executing older folks because that's who is on death row at this point.
00:06:03
Speaker 3: In large numbers.
00:06:04
Speaker 1: I don't see the number. I know we've reported on it before, but the average age of a death row inmate, the average age of somebody executed, it's obviously it's up there. These aren't young people on death row. In fact, sometimes roads we've had somewhere the guy's forty forty two, So what the hell. Yeah, they're in their early twenties sometimes when they commit the crimes, but it's just rare. So seventy four they talked about roles. He would need to physically be placed on the gurney, like he can't move around. He needs help to even get in place to be executed. What was the argument they have about his skin? His skin is now so loose that you would have to tighten it in some way just to get a vein. Yeah, that sounds horrific.
00:06:46
Speaker 2: It seems pretty dramatic. But yes, I hear all the arguments you even have. Look in the Catholic Church has always been outspoken against the death penalty and executing folks.
00:06:56
Speaker 3: But I thought this was interesting.
00:07:00
Speaker 2: The Florida Conference of Catholic Bishops wrote a letter to DeSantis. But they're they're throwing everything at this case to try and stop the execution, including the fact that they claim he was sexually abused as a child by his father, had a paranoid personality disorder. Look, a lot a lot of these death row inmates do have horrific stories that led them to a life of crime. And look, that argument has never worked before when it comes to leniency or sparing someone's life because they had a tough childhood.
00:07:29
Speaker 1: Should it I don't know. I'm sure yes, plenty of experts has gone up there and testify that it should factor in. Okay, well until it does. And again, Ropes, he's had The crime was a ninety two here ninety two, I was at thirty. Where are thirty four?
00:07:44
Speaker 3: Thirty four years ago? Thirty four years ago?
00:07:46
Speaker 1: Well, he had a lot of time to make that argument, and now here we are when we say at all the time robes at the end, they always want to live.
00:07:52
Speaker 2: Yeah, and guess what, he had a lot of time to make a different choice. Let's get into the crime itself. It did happen on January eighteenth, nineteen ninety two. Yes, he murdered his wife, Karen Spencer, but look, this had been years of domestic violence and domestic abuse and the first attack criminal attack. He attacked her two weeks before Christmas in nineteen ninety one. He covered her nose in her mouth with his one hand, choked her with the other, and he was sent to jail for there for that. Okay, he goes to prison, He makes a call to her, He says, and this is verifiable. When I get out, I'm going to finish when what I started. Okay, they hear it. The judge sets his bail at five thousand. He was released. He comes back a few days later, on January fourth, attacks his wife, smashes her face, in with an iron. Her seventeen year old son intervenes and they call police. He's out on bail for attacking her. He's never rearrested because the cops couldn't find him.
00:08:53
Speaker 1: Don't know where he is. The guy who has now verifiably beaten you t twice that we put in jail after the first one, the second one, Eh, we can't find them.
00:09:06
Speaker 2: And by the way, on record him saying I'm going to finish the job that I started and then he's released.
00:09:14
Speaker 1: Can you tell me from my clarity, I couldn't figure out if they knew at the time. Did they not find out about the transcript of the cell phone call until later or was that known before she actually ended up getting killed.
00:09:27
Speaker 3: I don't know the answer to that.
00:09:28
Speaker 1: But the direct threat that they need to act on.
00:09:30
Speaker 3: And here's the deal. I don't know if they knew it, but it was available.
00:09:34
Speaker 2: Look, did they go through it, did they document it, did they bring it up? Don't know, but it was there for them to be able to hear and document. Whether they did or not in a timely fashion, I don't know, but I thought it was just egregious. After he makes these threats comes back. It's only stopped because of her son, and the police are just like, look, we don't know where he is. And according to a lot of the report around this, she gave them specific places to where to find him and they just didn't follow up.
00:10:06
Speaker 1: Okay, at this point, Robes, after he got out of jail and after that second attack, she should have been I mean, she damned there should have been in police protective cut.
00:10:14
Speaker 3: Absolutely so.
00:10:16
Speaker 2: Sixteen days after that January fourth attack where police say.
00:10:20
Speaker 3: Can't find him, he comes back.
00:10:22
Speaker 2: And he starts brutally stabbing and beating her to death in front of her teenage son.
00:10:28
Speaker 3: He's sleeping.
00:10:29
Speaker 2: Her seventeen year old's on a sleeping He hears his mother screaming in the backyard and he finds his stepfather hitting his mom with a brick. He goes to get a shotgun and he's going to defend his mom, but unfortunately the shotgun jammed. He couldn't fire it, so we started to try and hit him over the head with it. Right, Spencer leaves and goes back and gets a knife, and he's slamming his mom's head into a concrete side of the house. When he gets the knife, the Sun runs away to go get help.
00:11:00
Speaker 1: Help.
00:11:00
Speaker 2: By the time he comes back, Spencer's gone and his mom has bled to death.
00:11:06
Speaker 1: Well, this kid was seventeen, eighteen, seventeen years old, seventeen, okay, so imagine that he hears his mom screaming he's sleep He goes out and see this is his stepdad. At this point, yep, it was serious enough. He immediately goes and gets a gun and tries to shoot the guy. Yes, it was that, but his immediate thought is I need to shoot this man based on what he was seeing road. What they describe in this attack is some of this is one of the more horrific crimes that I have seen and we've covered because of the brutality to where the police did even say was it the prosecutor that said he didn't go down to killer, He went there to make her feel this that enropes the kid. They said. It was almost conversation going on during the attack where the kid is trying to get the guy to stop, and he's yelling at the kid, she messed up my life, like he is enraged, slamming a woman's head against a brick house wall on the outside while the Sun is watching Okay, now go back and let's talk about the mercy this seventy four year old should be given.
00:12:04
Speaker 2: It's Robes right, We're supposed to feel sorry for the fact that he might suffer for those few minutes been a lethal injecttion or a cocktail of drugs is injected into him.
00:12:15
Speaker 3: It's very hard to feel.
00:12:17
Speaker 2: Sympathy for someone This wasn't a crime of passion. This wasn't someone who snapped. This isn't someone who regretted his decision felt sorry for it. It was just a bad moment. No, this was a brutal, vicious, planned out and repeated attack.
00:12:34
Speaker 3: I mean, he said he was going to finish the job, and he did.
00:12:37
Speaker 1: He followed through. He gave a heads up that he was going to kill somebody, and that information was there for authorities to see. This is an awful one. Look, I'm this is and like I said, Robes, we are supposed to be better than he was in that moment. We're not supposed to be vengeful. We're supposed to look and be better. And being better required us to give mercy to someone who did something monstrous. That's a that's a high bar for some people, but I get it, And I also get why somebody would say, are you effing kidding me? After what he did to her. I don't give a damn how old he is if you have to wheel him in there in a wheelchair. Justice needs to be certain exactly.
00:13:17
Speaker 2: So look, we're waiting to hear if the Supreme Court even acknowledges the case.
00:13:22
Speaker 3: They don't have to at all.
00:13:23
Speaker 2: But that's his last hope because I think it's very fair to say that Governor DeSantis will not be stepping in.
00:13:29
Speaker 3: He's aware of all of this.
00:13:31
Speaker 2: Yes, he signed a death warren I think May end of May, so he was aware of all of these extenuating circumstances. He was aware of his age, and he said, yeah, here's my John Hancock.
00:13:42
Speaker 3: I'm good with this.
00:13:43
Speaker 2: So he has no hope for that, that particular governor making any sort of effort in his direction.
00:13:50
Speaker 1: He's signing these things so often we need to change the term give me your John Hancock to give me your Ron DeSantis. Yes, exactly, his signature he's signing. Put it in front of them, put it in front of he will sign it. Every time we say that and we talk about Florida is like clearing the roles the death clearing out death row. You repeatedly make the point he is doing what the law says he's supposed to do, and he is giving justice to these families. What are we waiting for?
00:14:16
Speaker 3: He is enforcing the law.
00:14:17
Speaker 1: He is and in that regard, Robes, I change the law if you want to, but he's exactly.
00:14:23
Speaker 2: I think that's where we are. But speaking of changing the law, when we come back, we're going to tell you. So this obviously is a horrible dark story, but there was a silver lining because what happened to Karen Spencer, well it may have prevented that same scenario from happening to another woman. Will tell you the laws that changed because of her murder. Welcome back everyone to this episode of Amy and TJ. We are talking about the state of Florida said to execute the the oldest man on record for that state. They are set to execute Dusty Ray Spencer. He is seventy four years old. He will yes be the oldest man executed in Florida tomorrow evening, barring the Supreme Court of the United States stepping in, which at this point seems highly highly unlikely. But his murder victim, his own wife, forty year old Karen Spencer. She was brutally murdered and was told ahead of time that that was exactly going to be her fate. No one stepped in, no one did anything to protect her, even when he threatened her on a prison phone. So look after her murder, the arrests and prosecutions of domestic violent perpetrators in Orange County where this happened went up by eighty percent. How amazing is that police were given new directives and over the next few years the Florida legislator's strength and laws and pen So basically, if you even threatened domestic violence towards anyone, that is a crime, and that hadn't been the case before. Law enforcement now must detail why an arrest was not made.
00:16:14
Speaker 3: So the onus is on them now. Approve why they didn't.
00:16:17
Speaker 1: Arrest, justify inaction?
00:16:19
Speaker 2: Correct and because think about that, Because they didn't make that arrest after he came back and beat Karen Spencer with an iron because they didn't pursue him.
00:16:27
Speaker 3: She's dead.
00:16:29
Speaker 2: Had they done that, she would still be alive today.
00:16:32
Speaker 1: You know what they say. This reminds me of how police the policy when it comes to high speed chases. They make a determination, Am I putting the public in further harm by chasing somebody in a car who only stole a pack of twinkies from the store, Or do I have to pursue him because that person is a risk to the community. They didn't determine he was a risk worth going after that. I don't know if anybody ever it was held accountable robes, but it's the same policy. They didn't think he rose to the level of a threat to the community because the community happened to be one woman.
00:17:09
Speaker 3: I guess yeah, isn't that sad?
00:17:11
Speaker 2: And in action is just as harmful as bad action, and that is what they were trying to fit. So I love that the stat I got chills that arrest and prosecutions of domestic violence perpetrators went up by eighty percent after her murder. That is.
00:17:28
Speaker 3: A silver lining. Indeed.
00:17:30
Speaker 2: Now, the other thing that they changed in Florida was that there must be a person that is accused of domestic violence is a has to have a mandatory court appearance before their release. They don't just get to get like rubber stamped and shipped out.
00:17:45
Speaker 3: No, they have to.
00:17:46
Speaker 2: Formally see a judge and be arranged just for that formality to have the weight of what they did or what they're accused of doing land in a lot of ways. So I just thought those were really interesting reforms that have led to real changes in that state and specifically in that county, Hunk.
00:18:02
Speaker 1: Something came out of it great. And I'll say Karen Spence, Karen Spencer, I mean that name, remember it. Look her up if you get a chance. But a woman who went through all that positively saved lives later Forbes just it's not her intention to be a hero or a martyr in this case, and she should be alive. But man, how many lives possibly have been saved? How many relationships, abusive relationships have ended and people have gotten away from bad spots because of what she went through trying to hold on to that rose is a positive in this.
00:18:34
Speaker 3: One, yep, certainly indeed.
00:18:35
Speaker 2: But we will keep our eye on this situation in case anything changes, because as of right now, it appears that Dusty Ray Spencer has about twenty four hours left on his seventy four year life. And with that, everyone, we appreciate you listening to us. I'm Amy Roboch alongside TJ. Holmes, we'll talk to you soon.