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Florida Executes Man Near 20 Years After He Shot His Estranged Wife
August 21, 2026
Nearly 20 years after he fatally shot his estranged wife at her mother’s Casselberry-area home, William Frances Silvia was executed by lethal injection this week at Florida State Prison.
Silvia, 61, was pronounced dead at 6:11 p.m., according to the Department of Corrections. The execution was carried out hours after the U.S. Supreme Court denied his latest motion for a stay.
In 2008, Silvia was convicted of first-degree murder of Patricia Silvia two years earlier and given a life sentence for the attempted first-degree murder of her mother, Betty Woodard.
Silvia is the 13th execution conducted this year in Florida after a modern-era record 19 last year. Two more are already scheduled in the next three weeks.
The pace of executions is desensitizing people to them, said Rev. Jeff Hood, Founder of the Execution Intervention Project and Silvia’s spiritual advisor.
“So many killings are happening that it becomes a sort of afterthought, that people are being killed,” Hood said.
“What we have consistently seen, again, is that with the next execution date and the next execution date and the execution date, people begin to be forgotten,” he added.
After the Florida Supreme Court last Wednesday denied the motion for a stay by Silvia’s counsel, the Florida Conference of Catholic Bishops asked Gov. Ron DeSantis to commute the death warrant he signed July 17.
The conference has made similar requests before other executions.
DeSantis earlier this year defended his pace of death warrants, saying capital punishment is needed to “bring justice,” as “some of the victims’ families have been waiting a long time.”
“We do owe it to them to do it,” DeSantis said during a July 28 appearance at the Florida Sheriffs Association Summer Conference at Trump National Doral.
“And it doesn’t take away what happened,” he continued. “I don’t know if closure is the right word, because you’ll probably never get full closure. But at least knowing justice was served is something that was very important to a lot of people.”
DeSantis also questioned the length of the appeals process.
According to court records, on Sept. 22, 2006, Silvia went to Woodard’s home where the family was having a cookout. After attempting to reconcile with Patricia Silvia, he retrieved a Mossberg Persuader 12-gauge shotgun from his truck and shot Woodard in the face and Patricia Silvia in the head.
Patricia Silvia died. Woodard, who was standing in front of her daughter, lost her left eye and the top portion of her nose.
Silvia purchased the shotgun about five hours before the shooting. Video of the gun purchase showed him exhibiting “no bizarre, agitated, frenzied or panicked behavior,” according to the sentencing order.
Silvia purchased four boxes of shells from another store.
He was arrested the next day.
Silvia reportedly told an officer driving him to jail that “my wife spent all my money. I placed the checking account in her name. She started re-dating her ex-husband. That is the reason I shot her.”
The jury voted 11-1 to recommend the death penalty.
The state is scheduled to execute Harold Gene Lucas, 74, on Sept. 1 for the death of his 16-year-old former girlfriend in Bonita Springs in 1976 and Daniel Owen Conahan Jr., 72, on Sept. 10 for the 1996 murder of a man in Charlotte County.
by Jim Turner, The News Service of Florida
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