Rick Scott Signs Death Warrant for John Errol Ferguson

Governor Rick Scott signed a warrant Wednesday instructing Florida Prison Warden John Palmer to carrying out of the death sentence of John Errol Ferguson on Oct. 16 at 6 p.m.

Ferguson, 64, was convicted on eight counts of first degree murder and sentenced to death for his role in a 1977 Dade County home invasion in which six people were killed.

He also was sentenced to death in the separate murder of a teenage couple. The girl, 17, also had been raped.

In July 1977, Ferguson gained access to a home by posing as a Florida Power and Light employee, where he drew a gun and bound and blindfolded the woman who had let him in.

Ferguson late two others inside, Marvin Francois and Beauford White, who searched the home for drugs and money.

A short time later the owner of the home, Livingston Stocker, and six other men arrived. All were also bound and blindfolded.

When a mask Francois had been wearing came off, Francois started to shoot the men in the back of their heads. Ferguson placed a pillow over the womans head and then shot her. Not fatally wounded, she saw Ferguson run from the room.

Six of the men died. A seventh survived a shotgun blast to the head and testified regarding the execution of the other men in the living room.

Francois was executed on May 29, 1985.

White was executed on Aug. 28, 1987.

Adolphus Archie, who drove the car used to drop off and pick up the shooters, pled guilty to second-degree murder and was sentenced to twenty years imprisonment.

In January, 1978, Brian Glenfeld and Belinda Worley, both seventeen years old, were found shot to death in an apparent robbery.

Ferguson confessed to the shooting after a gun linked to the murders was found in his apartment while he was under indictment for the 1977 murders.

At the time of each of the murders, Ferguson was on probation, having already served an eighteen month prison sentence for a 1976 conviction for resisting a police officer with Violence.

His criminal record also includes a 1971 robbery conviction and a 1965 assault with intent to rape conviction, for which he was sentenced to ten years.