Zakrzewski family murders

The Zakrzewski family murders occurred in Mary Esther, Florida, on June 9, 1994, when U.S. Air Force Technical Sergeant Edward James Zakrzewski II (born January 31, 1965), then 29 years old, committed the murders of his wife, son and daughter. When Zakrzewski's South Korean wife, Sylvia, sought a divorce, Zakrzewski attacked and battered his wife with a crowbar and machete and strangled her to death. Zakrzewski also killed his two children, Anna and Edward III, by fatally beating and stabbing them with a machete, with both children having defensive wounds found post-mortem.

Zakrzewski fled to Hawaii and went on the run for four months before he surrendered himself on October 15, 1994, a day after his case was publicized by American crime documentary series Unsolved Mysteries. Zakrzewski was found guilty of three counts of first-degree murder, and sentenced to death on April 19, 1996 by Okaloosa County Circuit Court Judge G. Robert Barron. Zakrzewski remains on death row and he is currently scheduled to be executed on July 31, 2025. The Zakrzewski family murders remain as one of the most heinous crimes to happen in Northwest Florida.

Edward James Zakrzewski II, a Technical Sergeant of the U.S. Air Force who originally came from Kalamazoo, Michigan, first met his South Korean wife, Pun Im (Im Pun; Korean: 임분),^[1] in 1986 when he was stationed in Montana. After Im became pregnant, Zakrzewski married his wife, who adopted the American name Sylvia. The couple went on to have two children together: Edward III (also known as Kim) and Anna. Subsequently, Zakrzewski was stationed in South Korea for three years between 1989 and 1992, and later transferred to the Eglin Air Force Base in Florida, and his family relocated to Mary Esther in Florida's Okaloosa County.^[2]

According to court documents, Sylvia faced discrimination while in South Korea for being married to an American and having a mixed Korean and American child, and her relationship with her husband was also strained after she moved to the U.S. with him and their children.^[2][3]

On June 9, 1994, due to various marital issues surrounding their marriage, Sylvia planned to divorce her husband, and also wanted to take custody of her two children and bring them back to South Korea with her, a matter that she deliberated for some period of time. Kim informed his father through phone about this plan while Zakrzewski was in midst of his work. Purportedly, due to his wife's intention to divorce him, Zakrzewski was angered over the matter and during his lunch break, Zakrzewski purchased a machete from a local store and took it home. There, he also gathered a crowbar and rope, hiding the weapons in the bathroom.^[4][2]

During that evening, upon the arrival of his wife and children back home, Zakrzewski first attacked his wife. He struck Sylvia multiple times with the crowbar, then used the rope to strangle her. Afterwards, Zakrzewski targeted his children, and firstly, he called Kim into the bathroom to brush his teeth, before he struck the seven-year-old boy repeatedly with the machete. Next, he summoned his five-year-old daughter, Anna, to brush her teeth and killed her in similar fashion.^[4][5]

Autopsy results showed that both the children had wounds on their arms and hands, which were consistent with defensive wounds; Kim died from severe head, neck, and back injuries while Anna sustained fatal machete wounds as well. Zakrzewski later dragged Sylvia's body into the bathroom, where he further mutilated her with the machete to ensure she was dead. Sylvia also died from both sharp force and blunt force injuries.^[4][5] Furthermore, the medical examiner, Dr. Edward Harvard, found that when Sylvia was strangled with the rope, she was still alive despite sustaining a fractured skull and at least eight machete blows to her back.^[6]

After murdering his family, Zakrzewski drove to Orlando and flew to Hawaii, changed his name to Michael Green, and lived with the family of a minister who ran a religious commune; the minister allowed Zakrzewski to stay in a shack in return for performing maintenance work.^[5][7] Meanwhile, during his time on the run, the police discovered the murders, and had charged Zakrzewski in absentia with the murders of his children and wife, after they named him a suspect in the case (as a result of Zakrzewski being recorded for AWOL).^[8]

Four months later, the Zakrzewski family murders were publicized by American crime documentary series Unsolved Mysteries, and Zakrzewski was also featured on the show, with the authorities seeking information of his whereabouts from the public. Reportedly, the minister recognized Zakrzewski as the alleged killer wanted by the police, and commented to Zakrzewski that the killer resembled him. A day later, on October 15, 1994, Zakrzewski surrendered himself to the police.^[9][10][11]

On October 25, 1994, Zakrzewski was extradited from Hawaii to Florida to face charges for killing his family.^[12] While he was pending trial for murder, Zakrzewski and another inmate attempted to escape from the Okaloosa County Jail in August 1995, but their attempt ultimately failed after the guards caught them trying to get through the prison fence.^[13][14]

Conviction and submissions

On March 19, 1996, before he could officially claim trial, Zakrzewski pleaded guilty to all three counts of murdering his wife and two children in the first degree.^[15]

A sentencing trial was subsequently conducted before an Okaloosa County jury, and the prosecution sought the maximum sentence of death for all three counts of first-degree murder, citing that the murders were especially heinous, atrocious or cruel, while the defense sought life imprisonment on the basis that due to Zakrzewski's choice of weapons, the family died painlessly and quickly during the attack.^[16]

Sentencing verdict

On March 31, 1996, the jury returned with their verdict on sentence, recommending the death penalty twice for Zakrzewski on charges of killing his wife and son, while they settled on a life sentence for the murder of Zakrzewski's daughter.^[17][18] The vote for the death penalty was 7–5 in the deaths of both Kim and Sylvia, while it was 6–6 for Anna's death, which led to an automatic recommendation for life imprisonment.^[4]

In the final hearing before formal sentencing, Zakrzewski’s attorney, Elton Killam, urged the court to spare his client from the death penalty, arguing that Zakrzewski acted under extreme emotional and mental distress at the time of the killings. Killam claimed that Zakrzewski had endured long-term psychological abuse by his wife, Sylvia, who had been unfaithful, engaged in gambling, and threatened to leave him and take their children to her native Korea. According to the defense, Zakrzewski’s thinking was deeply distorted, and he believed he was acting out of a misguided sense of mercy. Killam stated that Zakrzewski’s motive was to prevent his children from suffering, as he feared they would grow up in Korea as "half-breeds" who would not be accepted by society. He emphasized that Zakrzewski intended the deaths to be instantaneous and without pain. Calling the case “bizarre,” Killam acknowledged the difficulty of understanding how a father could commit such a crime but asked the judge to impose a life sentence instead of death.^[19]

In contrast, Assistant State Attorney Bobby Elmore strongly advocated for the death penalty in all three murders, characterizing the killings as deliberate, brutal, and emotionally devastating. Elmore argued that the murder of five-year-old Anna was particularly heinous because she was the last to die, and he contended she may have witnessed the aftermath of her brother’s death. Elmore rejected the defense’s portrayal of the killings as merciful, emphasizing the calculated and violent nature of the acts. He maintained that Zakrzewski’s actions warranted the harshest punishment available under the law—capital punishment.^[19]

Formal sentencing

On April 19, 1996, Zakrzewski was formally sentenced to death by Circuit Judge G. Robert Barron. Although Zakrzewski received two death sentences from the judge as what the jury decided, he was also handed a third death sentence for the murder of his daughter, after the judge overrode the jury's recommendation of life in prison in favor of the death penalty.^[20]

In his sentencing remarks, Barron explained why he opted for a death sentence in Anna's murder, emphasizing that before her death, Zakrzewski forced his daughter to endure the unimaginable terror of knowing she was about to be killed by her own father and that her brother had already suffered the same fate. Summing up the gravity of the crime, Barron stated, "This court cannot imagine a more heinous or atrocious way of dying."^[21]

On June 12, 1998, the Florida Supreme Court dismissed Edward Zakrzewski's appeal and upheld all his three death sentences.^[22][4][23]

On January 25, 1999, Zakrzewski's appeal was denied by the U.S. Supreme Court.^[24]

On November 13, 2003, Zakrzewski's post-conviction appeal was rejected by the Florida Supreme Court.^[25]

The 11th Circuit Court of Appeals dismissed Zakrzewski's appeal on July 13, 2006.^[26]

A second appeal to the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals was rejected on July 9, 2009.^[27]

By January 2016, which was Zakrzewski's 20th year on death row, he was one of 141 condemned inmates in Florida who had exhausted all state and federal appeals against his conviction and sentence.^[28]

On May 25, 2017, the Florida Supreme Court rejected Zakrzewski's appeal for re-sentencing, which was filed after a legal reform decreed that death sentences could only be issued through unanimous jury verdicts in Florida. The majority opinion stated that the law change was not retroactive and given that the death sentences were finalized by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1999, Zakrzewski was not entitled to be re-sentenced under the newly-enacted death penalty law.^[29] Six years later, due to the public outrage towards school shooter Nikolas Cruz for avoiding the death penalty despite the murders of 17 teachers and students, the law requiring unanimity was abolished, and Florida Governor Ron DeSantis signing a new law to allow Florida's death sentences be imposed under the majority agreement of at least eight jurors.^[30]

On September 20, 2018, the Florida Supreme Court dismissed another appeal from Zakrzewski.^[31]

On July 1, 2025, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis signed a death warrant for Edward Zakrzewski, scheduling his execution to be carried out on July 31, 2025, at the Florida State Prison.^[32][33]

At the time, Zakrzewski was the ninth prisoner on Florida's death row to be issued an execution date, and his execution date was slated 16 days after that of Michael Bell who was sentenced to death for the murder of two people during a Jacksonville bar shooting in 1993 (Bell was also separately convicted of three other murders), and seven convicted killers were executed in the state of Florida between February and June 2025, marking the modern-era record for the number of executions approved by a Florida governor in one year (the highest number was eight under the governorships of Bob Graham and Rick Scott).^[34][35]

The Zakrzewski family murders are known to be one of the worst murders to occur in Okaloosa County and in Northwest Florida. Notably, just four years later in 1998, Gulf War veteran Jeffrey Hutchinson shot and killed his live-in girlfriend and her three children in the same county.^[36] Hutchinson was similarly sentenced to death and executed on May 1, 2025, for four counts of first-degree murder.^[37]

The murders occurred during the same period as the O. J. Simpson murders, where Nicole Brown Simpson (Simpson's ex-wife) and Ronald Goldman were allegedly killed by Simpson, who was ultimately acquitted after an eight-month murder trial. However, the public attention towards the Simpson murders caused the Zakrzewski family murders, as well as other unrelated homicides that took place around the same time, to be overlooked by the public and media.^[38][39]

In October 2018, the Zakrzewski family murders were listed as one of the most heinous crimes committed in Northwest Florida. The same report revealed that of all the perpetrators behind these cases, 17 of them, including Zakrzewski, were sentenced to death by the state of Florida.^[40]

• Capital punishment in Florida
• List of death row inmates in Florida
• List of people scheduled to be executed in the United States