A Florida death row inmate convicted of killing four people at a manufacturing facility in 1997 died Thursday before his execution was even set after being diagnosed with a terminal condition that resulted in him "soiling himself" as he was confined to a wheelchair.
Nelson Serrano was sentenced to death in 2007 for the 1997 murder of four people at a Bartow manufacturing facility. At the time the four people at Erie Manufacturing were slaughtered, it was dubbed the worst mass killing in Polk County, Florida, history.
Since then, only the September 2021 killing of four members of a North Lakeland family during a home invasion has matched it, the Lakeland Ledger reported. The four people killed at the plant — 69-year-old George Gonzalves, his former partner at the plant; Frank Dosso, 35; Diane Dosso Patisso, 27; and George Patisso, 26 — were reportedly shot execution-style.
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Serrano, who was originally from Ecuador, was just shy of his 86th birthday when he died. He had been diagnosed with a brain tumor and had blood clots in his lungs, people involved with his case told The Ledger. He was transferred to Jacksonville Memorial Hospital in late July, it was reported.
Serrano's son, Francisco, told The Ledger then that inmates inside Union Correctional Institution, located in Raiford, a small town about 46 miles southwest of Jacksonville, where Florida's death row inmates are housed, told him that his father "sat motionless for almost an entire period of two weeks in his wheelchair, soiling himself, with no attention and not eating, even after the prisoners begged the guards and the nurses day after day to attend" to him.
Francisco said he raised alarms through his family's attorneys and that his father was moved to the hospital on July 24. The Florida Department of Corrections' website hadn't been updated as of Thursday afternoon to reflect Serrano's death.
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Throughout his time on death row, Serrano maintained his innocence. In 2006, a jury voted 9-3 to sentence him to death. In June 2007, that sentence was handed to him. The Florida Supreme Court upheld the sentence after a direct appeal in 2011.
In 2016, however, the U.S. Supreme Court and Florida's Supreme Court both ruled that Florida's death penalty statute was unconstitutional, and a unanimous jury was required to impose a death sentence Serrano was then granted a new sentencing in 2017.
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But in 2020, the unanimous jury precedent was overturned by both courts. Then, in 2023, the Florida Legislature and Gov. Ron DeSantis, a Republican, changed the threshold by which a jury can sentence someone to death to just 8-4.
Throughout the entire ordeal, Serrano stayed on death row. In July this year, the Ecuadorian government asked for clemency for Serrano in a letter to DeSantis, citing Serrano's failing health and his family's desire to be with him during his last days.
What happened next isn't clear — it's not known whether or not his family was able to see him in the hospital during his time there before his death.
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