'Unfathomable:' 2 men will be executed in the US within an hour of each other on Tuesday

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The stage is set for the fourth double execution in the United States this year on June 10.
As Florida inserts a needle to deliver a fatal drug into Anthony Wainwright's vein, Alabama will strap a mask onto the face of Gregory Hunt and pump him with nitrogen gas until he suffocates.
"It seems to me there's enough days in the year that executions shouldn't have to be stacked on top of each other," said the Rev. Jeff Hood, a death row spiritual adviser who has witnessed nine executions and has to make an "unfathomable" choice between whether to be in person to support Wainwright in Florida or Hunt in Alabama.
Wainwright's and Hunt's cases are unrelated but they were convicted of similar crimes: the rape and murder of innocent women whose families were left shattered.
Wainwright is being executed for the rape and murder of 23-year-old Carmen Gayheart, a married mother of two and nursing student who was kidnapped in broad daylight in a grocery store parking lot. Hunt is being executed for the rape and murder of a woman he had been dating for a month named Karen Lane.
The double executions come as the United States is on pace to put more inmates to death this year than any other in the past decade, though the nation is still far from its busiest execution year ever: 98 in 1999.
Here's what you need to know about the cases, how common double executions are in the United States, and most importantly, who the victims were.
Florida is set to execute Wainwright by lethal injection at Florida State Prison in Raiford at 6 p.m. ET on Tuesday, June 10.
At 6 p.m. CT, Alabama is scheduled to execute Hunt by the controversial nitrogen gas method at the William C. Holman Correctional Facility in Atmore. It will be the fifth nitrogen gas execution in the state since January 2024.
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Three days after escaping a prison in North Carolina, Wainwright and Richard Hamilton spotted a pretty brunette walking into a Winn-Dixie grocery store in Lake City, Florida, on April 27, 1994.
It was Carmen Gayheart, who had just finished up a class at nursing school and was stopping at the store on her way to pick up her 5-year-old daughter and 3-year-old son from daycare. Her arms were full of groceries when the men attacked her at gunpoint in the parking lot and shoved her into her blue Bronco in broad daylight. There were no apparent witnesses.
Carmen's disappearance set off a frantic search. When authorities found her body five days later, they said she had been raped and shot twice in the back of the head.
Wainwright and Hamilton were captured the next day following a shootout with police in Brookhaven, Mississippi. Wainwright initially told police that he raped Carmen and that Hamilton killed her. He now denies doing either, though he says he was there, according to his spiritual adviser, Rev. Hood.
Gayheart's sister, Marie David, told USA TODAY that she was "beautiful inside and out" and that at the time of her murder, she had just moved her family into the dream home they built themselves in the tiny northern Florida town of Fort White.
"She loved animals, she loved people, she loved her children, she loved her husband," David said. "She was building something beautiful."
David plans on being front and center at Wainwright's execution for "accountability" and because her heartbroken parents can't. Her father died in 2013, and her mother died in 2023.
"I look a lot like my sister," she said. "I'm hoping that he sees a glimpse of Carmen one more time before he goes to where he's going."
In his appeal filed with the U.S. Supreme Court, Wainwright's attorneys argued, among other points, that the Florida Supreme Court failed to consider new evidence that the 54-year-old suffered from "transgenerational exposure to Agent Orange through his father's combat service in the Vietnam War."
About Wainwright's state of mind approaching his death, Hood said that he's "very afraid of being executed," adding that he doesn't want to leave behind his fiancée and also fears the process.
"He is not prepared to die," Hood said. "He is frightened, he is struggling."
Who was Carmen Gayheart? Mom murdered after grocery store run was building a beautiful life
Hunt, 65, was convicted of the "savage" rape and murder of a woman he had been dating for a month on Aug. 2, 1988.
Hunt acknowledges killing Lane, 32, saying it was a crime of passion driven by jealousy, but denies raping her. Without the rape conviction along with murder, Hunt argues in a court filing that he would have been ineligible for a capital murder conviction, and therefore, the death penalty.
"I am not shying away from the fact that I'm guilty of killing my girlfriend," he told USA TODAY. "But I am adamant that there was no sex abuse involved and that the state case was in trouble, so they had to manufacture evidence."
A spokesperson from the Alabama Attorney General's office told the Alabama Reflector that the evidence showed Lane was raped.
"Semen was found in her mouth, a broomstick was used in the assault, and he wrote a letter admitting responsibility for her death," the spokesperson told the news outlet. "He's had three and a half decades to prove otherwise and hasn't. Karen can't speak for herself, but the brutality of what she endured speaks volumes. It's a shame that her voice, her life, and her trauma aren't at the center of this conversation."
USA TODAY reached out to the Alabama Attorney General's office for comment.
Just after Hunt was sentenced to death in 1990, Lane's father told The Birmingham News that he felt his family had gotten justice.
But "there's no way we can bring her back," her father, W.O. Sanders, told the newspaper. "We'll just live now from one day to the next."
Unlike Wainwright, Hood said that Hunt is "completely at peace" with his execution, though he has been arguing against it.
"He says he's going to heaven," Hood said. "He has tremendous remorse and there's no question that he's very sorry for what he did. But at the same time he also believes that he's been forgiven and has stepped into a new space of grace."
Tuesday's double execution is far from unprecedented. It happened three times already this year and twice in 2024.
May 20, 2025: Indiana executed Benjamin Ritchie for the 2000 fatal shooting of Officer Bill Tomey, who had just turned 32 the previous day and was a married father of two girls. Later that day, Texas executed Matthew Johnson for the murder of 76-year-old Nancy Judith Harris, a beloved grandmother he set on fire.
March 20, 2025: Oklahoma executed Wendell Grissom for the murder of 23-year-old Amber Matthews in front of her best friend's two young daughters in 2005. About nine hours later, Florida executed Edward Thomas James for the 1993 murders of 58-year-old Elizabeth "Betty" Dick and her 8-year-old granddaughter, Toni Neuner, who was raped.
Feb. 13, 2025: Florida executed James Dennis Ford for the savage murders of two young parents, Gregory and Kimberly Malnory, in front of their toddler daughter in 1997. An hour after Ford's death, Texas executed Death Row inmate Richard Lee Tabler for fatally shooting four people in what he described as a fit of rage in 2004.
Sept. 26, 2004: Oklahoma executed Emmanuel Littlejohn for the 1992 shooting death of beloved convenience store owner Kenneth Meers, despite a recommendation from a clemency board that his life should be spared. Later that day, Alabama executed Alan Eugene Miller for the 1999 shooting deaths of his three coworkers, whom he believed were spreading rumors about his sexuality.
Sept. 24, 2004: Missouri executed Marcellus Williams for the 1998 killing of a former newspaper reporter named Lisha Gayle despite his strong claims of innocence and over the objections of both a key prosecutor in the case, the victim's family, and three Supreme Court justices who said they would have granted him a stay. Less than an hour later, Texas executed Travis James Mullis for killing his 3-month-old son, Alijah, in 2008.
Experts say the scheduling of two executions on the same day appears to be purely coincidental, largely because most executions are held between Tuesdays and Thursdays.
Tuesday's executions will mark the nation's 20th and 21st in 2025. Wainwright's will be the sixth execution in Florida this year; Hunt's execution will be Alabama's third this year.
Two other executions are scheduled for this week: John Hanson on June 12 in Oklahoma by lethal injection for the 1999murder of Mary Agnes Bowles, and Stephen Stanko on June 13 in South Carolina by lethal injection for the 2005murder of his friend, Henry Turner. Stanko also was convicted of killing his girlfriend as he raped her 15-year-old daughter.
Contributing: James Powel, USA TODAY
Amanda Lee Myers is a senior crime reporter. Follow her on X at @amandaleeusat.
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: 2 men will be executed within an hour of each other Tuesday in the US