A 48-year-old man will be executed for a horrific East Tampa crime in 1989. Prosecutors have awaited this day - and so has the prisoner himself.
By CHRISTOPHER GOFFARD
Published May 15, 2003
TAMPA - Everybody wanted a look at the monster.
Newton Slawson's crime was as vicious as it was inexplicable: the gunshot murders of an entire East Tampa family of five, including an 8-month-old fetus.
At the Morgan Street jail, Assistant Public Defender Brian Donerly was surprised to find "this mild-looking little dude with this Fu Manchu mustache. It's a long ways from your Central Casting monster."
But the carnage Slawson left in a Tampa garage apartment on April 11, 1989, was among the ghastliest in Hillsborough history.
For no apparent reason, the Plant City laborer put a bullet in the back of Gerald Wood, a 23-year-old forklift driver who had worked with him at a compost company. He shot Wood's 21-year-old wife, Peggy, and carved her unborn child out of her womb. He shot their children, 4-year-old Jennifer, and 3-year-old Glendon.
When the state of Florida wheels him into the execution chamber today, as will happen barring an unlikely late-hour stay, it will represent a hard-won legal victory not just for prosecutors but for Slawson himself.
The 48-year-old death row inmate has been fighting his way into that room for years. Five years ago, when he asked to drop his appeals, it triggered rounds of litigation on the question of whether he was competent to do so.
Many psychological evaluations later, the Florida Supreme Court decided in July 2001 that he was. Just last month, Slawson refused a Hillsborough circuit judge's recommendation that he get a lawyer. The judge ordered still another evaluation; Slawson still was competent.
"I think that at this point it's a suicide, it's not an execution," said Craig Alldredge, one of the assistant public defenders who represented Slawson in 1990. "He is mentally ill, and he thinks all the people who are trying to help him are, in fact, out to get him."
Alldredge described Slawson as the victim of repeated childhood torture by his mother, as "a little bewildered man who couldn't understand why he did (the crimes)." There was no prior evidence of ill will between Slawson and his victims.
"Other than this one horrible afternoon, he was a kind and productive man," Alldredge said. Slawson's lawyers contended that Gerald Wood slipped cocaine into Slawson's beer, triggering his murderous frenzy. Slawson claimed he cut out Peggy Wood's fetus in an attempt to save it.
After the murders, police found a bloody .357-caliber Magnum and 6-inch pocket knife in Slawson's 1972 Nova, along with a Penthouse magazine scrawled with ghoulish doodlings of mutilated women.
John Skye, who prosecuted Slawson, showed the doodlings to the jury and cited a psychiatrist who said Slawson had fantasized about cutting up women since childhood. Skye, now an assistant public defender, described the murders as "a hugely traumatic experience" for the community. Though his arguments helped land Slawson on death row, Skye now calls the death penalty "way, way, way more trouble than it's worth," citing tougher sentencing laws that require life without parole for first-degree murder.
Like everyone else associated with the case, Skye was at a loss to explain what went through Slawson's mind when he murdered the Wood family.
"I can't point to any routine or typical motive," Skye said. "Was it money? Apparently not. Was it jealousy? Apparently not. Was it him living out some bizarre fantasy? I guess it's possible."
Sharon Vollrath, the Hillsborough prosecutor who represented the state in Slawson's appeals, said Slawson's demeanor showed a well-spoken man who understood what he was doing in firing his lawyers and asking for death.
"If anyone sat in the courtroom and listened to him talk, they would know he was competent and rational to make this decision, which he obviously feels is in his best interest," Vollrath said.
"This man eliminated an entire family," Vollrath said. "Two entire generations were lost. His act was atrocious. For any surviving relatives, at least this will be an end to this chapter."
Slawson's execution is scheduled for 6 p.m. at the state prison in Raiford.
- Times researcher John Martin contributed to this report. Christopher Goffard can be reached at 226-3337 or goffard@sptimes.com
