Homecoming queen who looked out for homeless killed on streets where she spread kindness

USA Today

14 hours ago

In a crime that rocked Orlando, Michelle McGrath's battered body was found nude in an alley on May 24, 1995. She had been attacked while walking to her car after a fun night out with a friend.
On one of her last days alive, Michelle McGrath was walking with her mom to get lunch in downtown Orlando when they passed by a homeless man on the sidewalk.
"Hi, Michelle," he told the 27-year-old former homecoming queen, who was known to hand out blankets to those in need and let them bend her ear. She'd even invite some to dinner and share her phone number with others, three of McGrath's siblings and her sister-in-law recalled in an interview with USA TODAY.
"It was a firsthand experience for our mother to see how much she touched other people," younger sister Kerry McGrath said. Another younger sister, Patty Milam, added: "She never met a stranger."
On those same streets where McGrath spread kindness, her life came to a terrible end. On May 24, 1994, Thomas Lee Gudinas attacked her as she walked to her car after a fun night on the town. He raped her, killed her and left her nude body in a darkened alley.
Now more than 30 years later, Gudinas is set to be executed by lethal injection on Tuesday, June 24. That would make him the 24th inmate executed in the U.S. this year and the seventh in Florida.
Gudinas' attorneys are arguing that he is too mentally ill to be executed under the U.S. Constitution, pointing to a sample of the death row inmate's writings, including a letter he wrote to President Donald Trump, as examples of his condition.
McGrath's family isn't buying that argument and are ready for the legal fights to be over.
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Here's what you need to know about the execution.
What was Thomas Gudinas convicted of?
Michelle McGrath was walking alone to her car around 2:45 a.m. on May 24, 1994, after having a fun night out with a friend at a downtown Orlando club called Barbarella.
Thomas Lee Gudinas, who had just moved to the area and was working as a busboy, had been partying at the same club and was lying in wait in the parking lot. He attacked McGrath, dragged her into a nearby alley and then raped and beat her in an attack described by a trial judge as "savage and inhuman," according to court records.
A woman found McGrath's battered body about five hours after the attack soon after opening the gate of a nearby school for girls, court records say.
The crime shocked the people of Orlando and got so much publicity that Gudinas' trial was moved about 200 miles south to Naples.
Gudinas was described as showing little to no emotion during the trial except when he burst into tears after being found guilty and again at his sentencing, when Orange Circuit Judge Belvin Perry affirmed the jury's 10-2 vote for the death penalty.
Gudinas had asked for a life sentence in a letter he wrote to Judge Perry, saying he could prove his innocence from prison, according to reporting at the time from the Naples Daily News, part of the USA TODAY Network.
"All I know inside my heart, I didn't kill anybody," Gudinas wrote, the Daily News reported.
Perry rejected his request and cited the viciousness of McGrath's murder, saying to Gudinas: "There is no question that she was alive and conscious during significant portions of this attack."
Who was Michelle McGrath?
McGrath was a former homecoming queen who was attending school to become a customs broker while working as a clerk at an aerospace firm called Martin Marietta Corp. (now Lockheed Martin) at the time of her murder, her family said.
She was living in her own apartment and had just served as maid of honor for her sister Patty, who was pregnant with McGrath's first niece. At the time, McGrath only had one nephew but she would have been an aunt to 13 had she lived, her family said.
"I think that's what provoked most of my anger," her sister-in-law, Cheryl McGrath, told USA TODAY. "He took something special away. I mean, we're all special, but Michelle was a different kind of special."
McGrath's family remembered her kindness, her great sense of humor, how her nails were always elaborately done and her love of Mexican food. She was a good cook who was especially known for her homemade guacamole, and one of her favorite holidays was Cinco de Mayo.
Every year for Cinco de Mayo, McGrath's loved ones gathered to swap photos and memories of her.
"She lit up the room," her older brother, Joey McGrath, said. "When she came in the room, she changed the dynamic. It was more happy, more fun."
McGrath's heartbroken parents and most of her siblings were a constant presence in court during Gudinas' trial.
Her father, Douglas McGrath, showed pictures of the blue-eyed, brunette ahead of the sentencing, telling the judge that one image showed her fun-loving side and another showed her serious side, the Naples Daily News reported.
A third photo showed her grave. McGrath told the judge: "This marker from the cemetery is what the defendant has left me."
After the jury's guilty verdict came in, Douglas McGrath told the Associated Press that "it seems like a tragic waste of his life and my daughter's life."
He added: "We are deprived of my daughter . . . forever."
What are Thomas Lee Gudinas' attorneys arguing?
Gudinas' attorneys are arguing that he's too mentally ill to execute, sharing his rambling writings with the Florida Supreme Court, including a letter addressed to President Donald Trump.
"God pointed me in this direction to reveal what I've uncovered recently, a secret system running under the nose of the government and the reason why I was put on death row," Gudinas wrote to Trump in February, asking to be pardoned. "I believe it is a worldwide system with secret passages . . . This system could be the reason why someone tried to shoot you and you should know everything about this system. It's not right at all, Mr. President, that decent people can get railroaded by this secret system."
Gudinas' attorneys said in a recent filing in Florida Supreme Court that "evolving standards of decency have rendered the execution of Gudinas constitutionally impermissible."
"Executing the mentally disturbed Gudinas would serve no purpose beyond base vengeance," they wrote. "People suffering from the level of mental illness Gudinas did at the time of offense are incapable of being deterred by the death penalty."
Gudinas' aunt, Judith Gudinas Theriault, told the Orlando Sentinel in 1994 that she believed in her nephew's innocence, said he had found God in prison and that he carried a newspaper picture of McGrath in his Bible.
McGrath's loved ones dismissed Gudinas' latest arguments as nothing but legal wrangling. Most of them have chosen not to witness his execution, calling it "trauma on top of trauma." But they're eager to stop getting calls and letters from the state about developments involving Gudinas every year.
"I don't think there is a way to get closure," Kerry McGrath said. "I think it'll just be over."
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