ROCKVILLE, FL. – At 7:15 a.m. on Saturday, August 24, 2024, the Commonwealth of Florida carried out the death sentence of Anna Marie Wilhelm, 34, at Rockville State Penitentiary. She was pronounced dead after three jolts of 2,000 volts were administered through the state’s electric chair, a relic of a bygone era that the legislature has repeatedly refused to retire.
The execution, which took place in the early morning hours rather than the customary midnight slot, proceeded with a clinical, almost bureaucratic efficiency that mirrored the demeanor of the condemned woman herself. Witnesses described Wilhelm as “cold,” “emotionless,” and “staring straight ahead as if she were already absent” from the moment she entered the death chamber.
According to prison officials, Wilhelm’s final night was marked by an eerie calm. She met with a clergyman shortly after 10 p.m., participating in a brief prayer session that lasted no more than 20 minutes. By 1 a.m., she had fallen asleep on her cot and did not stir until correctional officers roused her at 5 a.m. for her last meal.
She requested steak, eggs, toast, milk, and coffee. Officials reported she ate approximately half of the steak and all of the eggs, drinking the milk but leaving the coffee untouched. “She asked if the eggs were fresh,” said Warden Harold Finn in a post-execution press conference. “When told they were, she said, ‘Good. I don’t like powdered.’ That was her only comment on the food.”
Following the meal, Wilhelm was permitted a shower—a standard pre-execution ritual intended to afford the condemned a measure of dignity. She dressed in a plain white collared shirt and jeans, and was fitted with an adult diaper, a routine precaution for the involuntary muscle spasms that accompany electrocution. Witnesses noted that she offered no resistance and showed no visible reaction during the procedure, complying with each instruction as though she were checking into a hotel.
At approximately 6:50 a.m., a team of six correctional officers escorted Wilhelm from her holding cell to the death chamber. The chamber, located in the penitentiary’s aging south wing, retains its original 1960s tilework and oak-paneled witness gallery. Wilhelm was strapped into the heavy oak electric chair—known informally among staff as “Old Sparky”—with leather restraints across her chest, wrists, and ankles. Her hands were placed on the armrests, palms down.
She was read her final rites by the prison chaplain, who offered a brief prayer for her soul. When asked if she wished to speak her final words, Wilhelm declined. She did not look toward the witness room, which contained six media representatives, two victim family members, and the state attorney general. Instead, she fixed her gaze on the far wall, her expression unchanged throughout the proceedings.
“She stared forward with the kind of blankness you see in a department store mannequin,” said Robert Naylor, brother of victim Patricia Naylor, who was present as a witness. “I wanted to see fear. I wanted to see remorse. There was nothing. Just glass eyes.”
The execution electrician, whose identity is protected by state law, then stepped forward to place the electrodes. A saline-soaked sponge was affixed to Wilhelm’s shaved scalp, and a metal cap-shaped electrode was secured over her head. A second electrode was strapped to her right calf. A black leather hood was pulled over her face, obscuring her features from view.
At precisely 7:00 a.m., the warden gave the signal. The electrician threw the switch, delivering the first jolt of 2,000 volts for approximately eight seconds. Wilhelm’s body stiffened against the restraints, her hands clenching into white-knuckled fists. A faint wisp of smoke rose from the head electrode. A two-second pause followed, then the second jolt was administered, and then a third. Throughout the cycle, she did not cry out or make any audible sound, though several witnesses later reported a low hum from the generator that vibrated through the floor.
At 7:08 a.m., the prison physician examined her for cardiac activity. Finding none, he pronounced the time of death at 7:15 a.m., after the mandatory observation period. The curtain separating the witness gallery from the chamber was drawn closed.
Outside the penitentiary, a crowd of roughly 150 had gathered since dawn. The early-morning execution hour—chosen to avoid the heat of an August afternoon—drew fewer protesters than anticipated. A small cluster of abolitionists held silent vigils with candles that guttered in the humid breeze, while a handful of counter-demonstrators held placards bearing the names of Gerald Marks and Patricia Naylor, the two convenience store clerks Wilhelm robbed and murdered in 2010.
Wilhelm’s defense team, led by public defender Regina Holloway, released a brief statement condemning the execution as “state-sanctioned brutality” and reiterating their client’s lifelong history of severe childhood neglect, which they argued had never been properly weighed during sentencing. However, Wilhelm herself had dismissed all remaining appeals in 2022, writing in a hand-scrawled letter to the court: “I am done with lawyers. Let the state do what it will. I will not help them, and I will not fight them.”
Her final hour reflected that ambivalence. She did not ask for a family member—none had visited her in over six years. She did not request a final phone call. She did not weep. She did not pray aloud. She simply sat, strapped to the chair, and stared ahead until the hood came down.
“In 30 years on this job, I have never seen a prisoner so thoroughly disengaged,” said Warden Finn, who has overseen 14 executions. “She was not brave. She was not defiant. She was not broken. She was just… absent. As if she had already left the building long before we flipped the switch.”
At the conclusion of the press conference, Finn was asked whether Wilhelm had offered any parting gesture or note. He shook his head.
“She left nothing,” he said. “No letter. No apology. No request. The last words she spoke to any staff member were at 6:55 a.m., when the chaplain asked if she wanted to say a final prayer. She looked at him and said, ‘I’ve said enough.’ Then she turned her face to the wall and didn’t speak again.”
With Wilhelm’s execution, the Commonwealth closes a chapter that has haunted the families for nearly 14 years. Whether that closure brings peace—or merely an end to the legal proceedings—remains an open question.
As one corrections officer, speaking on condition of anonymity, put it: “She walked to that chair like she was walking to the bus stop. No flinch. No tear. Just a woman who ran out of road. And when they pulled that hood over her face, the last thing any of us saw was those eyes—still open, still staring, still seeing nothing at all.”