Teenage serial killer who committed Florida's 'Tuesday murders' is executed

A death row inmate who as a teenager killed five people and terrorized a community has been executed.

Frank Athen Walls, 58, was executed by lethal injection on Thursday, Dec. 18, for the 1987 murder of Ann Louise Peterson in Fort Walton Beach along Florida's Panhandle. Walls, who was pronounced dead at 6:11 p.m. ET, was either convicted of or confessed to four other killings between 1985 and 1987 as part of a case that police called "the Tuesday murders."

"I am sorry for all the pain and suffering I caused over the years," Walls said in his last words, reported Tom McLaughlin, who witnessed the execution for the Pensacola News Journal, part of the USA TODAY Network.

Walls' other victims include a 19-year-old junior college student who was sunbathing when she was attacked, a new grandmother and Peterson's 22-year-old boyfriend, an Air Force Airman who died trying to protect her,

Though many family members of the victims have died waiting for justice, those who are living hope that Walls' death eases some of their pain.

"I don't think it's ever going to be healed," said 40-year-old Jessica Gygi Hickingbottom, who was 2 when Walls murdered her 47-year-old grandmother, Audrey Gygi. "But I'll feel relief knowing that all the other families will sleep better, knowing it's done and over with and there's no way for him to fight it anymore."

Walls is the 19th inmate to be executed in Florida this year, obliterating the state's previous annual high of eight executions. He's also the 47th inmate executed in the nation, a number not seen since 2009. Death penalty experts attribute the uptick in executions to the political climate under a pro-death penalty President Donald Trump and a more conservative U.S. Supreme Court.

Here's what you need to know about the execution.

What was Frank Athen Walls' last meal?

Walls chose his last meal, which included chicken, steak, vegetables, a baked potato, cheesecake and juice.

Who were Frank Athen Walls' victims?

The following crimes in Florida's panhandle have been attributed by police to Frank Athen Walls:

• March 26, 1985: A man walking his dog finds the body of 19-year-old Tommie Lou Whiddon on Okaloosa Island. Her throat had been slit in the middle of the day as she sunbathed. Walls had been on the beach doing court-ordered community service after committing cruelty to animals and peeping into windows. Walls later told police he raped Whiddon, the Associated Press reported.
• Sept. 16, 1986: The body of 24-year-old Cynthia Sue Condra, a mother of three, is found along a Fort Walton Beach road. She had been stabbed 21 times. Walls later told police that he attacked her after they had sex and got into a fight, saying, "everything just snapped, just went wild crazy," the Associated Press reported.
• May 20, 1987: A concerned co-worker discovers the body of 47-year-old Audrey Gygi, a mother of four who had two granddaughters at the time. Gygi was stabbed to death in her Fort Walton Beach home.
• July 22, 1987: Edward Alger, a 22-year-old Airman who worked at Eglin Air Force Base, and his 20-year-old girlfriend Ann Louise Peterson are ambushed around 2 a.m. as they slept in their Fort Walton Beach home just one block away from Gygi's home. Alger's throat was slashed and he was shot three times, and Peterson was shot twice. Both were found naked. Walls took money he stole from Alger and spent it on drinks and dancers at a strip bar an hour after the crime, court records say.

"This town was terrorized," Don Vinson, a former Okaloosa County Sheriff's Office chief investigator, said in 2018.

It was Walls' own roommate who finally helped stop the killing spree, telling investigators about his suspicions and that Walls was "always talking about raping and killing people."

Police initially arrested Walls only in the murders of Alger and Peterson. After Walls was convicted and sentenced to death, he confessed to the other murders. Investigators told the Northwest Florida Daily News − part of the USA TODAY Network − that all the attacks were in some way sexually motivated.

Walls wrote an apology letter to Gygi's family, which was given to them in court in 1994 as he pleaded no contest to her killing.

"Throughout my whole life I've had totally unexplained episodes of uncontrollable rages in which I lose contact with reality," he wrote to them, according to an archived Associated Press story. "However, I do want you to know with all honesty that I'm truly sorry for your loss of a very loved one."

Granddaughter shares more about family matriarch

Audrey Gygi was a loving mother who enjoyed throwing huge family get-togethers. The Christmas gatherings and pool parties she hosted with her Air Force husband were legendary, said Gygi's granddaughter, Jessica Gygi Hickingbottom.

"From what they tell me she was the life of the party," Hickingbottom told USA TODAY this week. "She was the most amazing outgoing woman you could meet and I just wish I had memories of her."

Jessica was 2 years old, and her sister Erin 4 months old, when Audrey was murdered. Not only did Audrey miss out on Jessica's and Erin's lives but she would have been a grandmother to two more girls and 15 great-grandchildren had she lived, Hickingbottom said.

As Walls sat on death row, two of Audrey's children died, as did her husband, Hickingbottom said.

"They didn’t get to see justice," she said. "It's frustrating how long he was on death row and knowing whenever I got paid and taxes got taken out it went to feed him and his medical bills. I was just paying for him to live in prison. Everybody was."

She said she's thought of her grandmother's murder for decades but that the execution has brought up a lot of emotions and long-unanswered questions.

"Why her?" she said. "Why did he target her? What happened? Unfortunately we will never know that."

Hickingbottom said she decided not to witness the execution and instead honored her grandmother's memory by cracking open Audrey's favorite beer, a Busch, and dedicating it to her.

Attorneys say Walls is too intellectually disabled for execution

Walls' attorneys have been arguing for years that he's too intellectually disabled to be executed under the U.S. Constitution.

In their most recent attempt at stopping the execution, they said in a Dec. 15 filing with the U.S. Supreme Court that "Florida runs the imminent risk of executing an intellectually disabled person."

The Florida Attorney General's Office has dismissed that argument, saying that Walls never was intellectually disabled and isn't now.

"The people of Florida, as well as surviving victims and their families, deserve better than the excessive delays that now typically occur in capital cases," the state said, adding that courts need to carefully police last-minute claims that amount to delay tactics.

At his sentencing for Alger's and Peterson's murders, the judge in the case said he found the couple's killing particularly heinous and cruel, describing how Walls taunted Peterson about killing her boyfriend before he took her life.

"We will never know the full extent of the taunting, cruel teasing, and mental suffering inflicted upon and suffered by Ann Peterson," Okaloosa County Circuit Court Judge G. Robert Barron said. "The knowledge of her own certain impending death, at the hands of this wicked intruder into the night, knowing that he had already taken the life of Edward Alger, must have brought a level of terror, panic, and utter hopelessness beyond comprehension."

Contributing: Tom McLaughlin, Pensacola Daily News

Amanda Lee Myers is a senior crime reporter who covers cold case investigations and the death penalty for USA TODAY. Follow her on X at @amandaleeusat.