JURY CONVICTS NURSE OF POISONING HUSBAND; JUDGE SENTENCES HER TO ELECTRIC CHAIR
By Michael Rourke, Staff Writer
ORLANDO – A former nurse who prosecutors called a "cold-hearted calculator" was sentenced to death by electric chair Friday after an Orange County jury took just six hours to convict her of poisoning her husband for $1.25 million in insurance payouts.
Stephanie Beier, 27, showed no emotion as Circuit Judge Harold P. Morrison imposed the death penalty, calling her crime "a premeditated betrayal of the most intimate trust" and noting that she used her medical training "not to heal, but to execute."
The sentence came moments after the same jury that found her guilty recommended death by a vote of 10-2, citing the "especially heinous, atrocious, and cruel" nature of the killing.
Beier’s husband, Kenneth Beier, 29, a commercial loan officer, died on July 22, 1998, after ingesting a lethal dose of thallium sulfate—a heavy-metal poison found in rodenticides. Prosecutors said Stephanie
Beier delayed emergency care for 45 minutes while her husband suffered seizures and respiratory failure, calmly telling a 911 dispatcher he had "a stomach bug."
"She watched him die in agony," Assistant State Attorney Linda Cortez told the jury in closing arguments. "Then she collected her check."
The defense had argued that Beier bought the poison for her own suicide, citing alleged marital abuse—claims the jury rejected after no corroborating evidence was produced. Prosecutors highlighted the timing of two insurance policies taken out just four months before the murder, along with deleted internet searches for "thallium fatal dose" and "autopsy detection."
Beier’s attorney, public defender Marcus Webb, called the death sentence "barbaric and disproportionate" and vowed an immediate appeal. "My client maintains her innocence. This is not justice—it’s vengeance," Webb said outside the courthouse.
Florida law allows execution by electric chair unless a prisoner chooses lethal injection, a choice that was not yet available at the time of Beier’s sentencing. She is now housed on death row at Lowell
Correctional Institution while her appeal is prepared.
Kenneth Beier’s mother, Dorothy Beier, wept as the sentence was read. "He trusted her," she told reporters. "And she killed him for a checkbook."
Execution dates are typically set after the appellate process is exhausted, a process that state officials say could take years.