ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. – The Florida Supreme Court on Thursday rejected arguments aimed at sparing the life of a man convicted of a 1989 double slaying of a Flagler County couple for which he was dubbed the “ninja killer.”
Gov. Ron DeSantis signed a death warrant last month for Louis Gaskin, who is scheduled to be put to death by lethal injection at 6 p.m. Wednesday at Florida State Prison.
Gaskin, now 56, has filed numerous appeals over the years but by 2020 both the Florida Supreme Court and U.S. Supreme Court had cleared the way for his death warrant to be signed, Attorney General Ashley Moody said in court documents.
Gaskin’s attorneys last week filed a motion for a stay of the execution and raised challenges to his death sentence. In part, they argued that a jury was not given evidence of Gaskin’s mental illness before recommending that he be sentenced to death.
But the Supreme Court, in a 21-page opinion, said the mental-illness argument was “procedurally barred” because it had been rejected in earlier court proceedings after Gaskin’s conviction.
Gaskin was convicted of first-degree murder for killing Robert Sturmfels, 56, and Georgette Sturmfels, 55, on Dec. 20, 1989, in their Flagler County home. He was also convicted of armed robbery, burglary and the attempted murder of another couple that same night nearby.
He was dubbed the “ninja killer” because he wore all-black ninja clothing during the crimes. Gaskin shot his victims with a .22-caliber rifle, investigators say.
A summary of the case included in Thursday’s opinion said Gaskin parked his car in a wooded area and shot Robert Sturmfels twice through a window of the home. He shot Georgette Sturmfels, who was trying to leave the room, and then shot Robert Sturmfels again, according to the summary. He shot Georgette Sturmfels again after seeing her through a door and then entered the home and shot both of them in the head, the filing said.
Property that he stole from the Sturmfels’ home — a clock, two lamps and a videocassette recorder — was found at his residence. He planned to give them to his girlfriend as Christmas gifts, investigators said. He had also taken cash and jewelry.
He then went to the home of Joseph and Mary Rector, according to the summary. After Joseph Rector got out of bed to investigate a noise, he was shot, but the Rectors were able to get to a car and drive to a hospital.
Local media reported at the time that Gaskin quickly confessed to the crimes and told a psychologist before his trial that he knew what he was doing.
“The guilt was always there,” Gaskin told him. “The devil had more of a hold than God did. I knew that I was wrong. I wasn’t insane.”
Jurors voted 8-4 in 1990 to recommend the death sentence, which the judge accepted. Florida law now requires a unanimous jury vote for capital punishment, although that could be changed this year by the state Legislature.
It would mark the second execution in Florida in less than two months after a long pause dating back to 2019. The state on Feb. 23 put to death Donald David Dillbeck, who murdered a woman in 1990 during a carjacking in a Tallahassee mall parking lot.
Gaskin’s execution would be only the fourth under DeSantis, a far slower pace than recent Florida governors — and ahead of his widely expected presidential campaign.
DeSantis this week also signed a death warrant for Darryl Barwick, who was convicted of murdering a Bay County woman in 1986. Barwick is scheduled to be executed May 3.