Florida | DeSantis sets execution for man who killed Dundee woman with a hammer

Gov. Ron DeSantis has signed a death warrant for Curtis. W. Beasley, who was convicted and sentenced to death in 1998 for beating a Dundee woman to death with a hammer three years earlier.

Beasley's execution by lethal injection is scheduled for Sept. 29, according to the warrant signed by DeSantis on Aug. 26.

Since his conviction, Beasley, 77, of Haines City has maintained his innocence. The jury that recommended the judge impose a death sentence was not unanimous.

Beasley convicted of using a hammer to kill Dundee woman

He was convicted of first degree murder and sentenced to death for the 1995 killing of 62-year-old Carolyn Monfort of Dundee with a hammer.

The Ledger archives show during the penalty phase of his trial, a jury recommended with a 10-2 vote that Beasley, who was 49 at the time, "die in the state's electric chair," the standard method of execution at the time.

Circuit Judge Cecelia Moore imposed the death sentence on May 22, 1998.

"I did not kill Carolyn Monfort," Beasley told the judge during a 90-minute hearing. "I did not steal her car and I did not steal her money."

Beasley has been on Florida's death row since 1998.

Beasley's defense presented mental health experts

Beasley had known Monfort for 17 years, according to previous Ledger coverage. At the time of her death, he was staying at her home and working as a painter at some apartments she managed.

She was beaten savagely in her home, with 15 to 20 blows to the head, according to the medical examiner.

At the trial in February 1998, Assistant State Attorney Cass Castillo told the jury Beasley's motive was to take $800 Monfort had been given on the day of her death. There was no forced entry into her house, and Beasley was gone when the body was discovered.

He was arrested in Alabama five months later.

Beasley's attorneys, Robert Norgard of Bartow and Byron Hileman of Winter Haven, told the jury there were no eyewitnesses, no fingerprints, and no confession.

At a hearing prior to his sentencing, his defense presented experts who testified Beasley's history of drug abuse may have caused brain damage that affected his memory and impulse control.

Second Polk County-related execution in a year

Beasley would be the second execution involving a Polk County death penalty case in little over a year. In September 2025, Florida executed David Pittman, 63, for the 1990 murders of three family members in Mulberry.

In July, the state executed James Duckett, 68, who was put to death for the 1987 kidnapping, rape, and murder of 11-year-old Teresa Mae McAbee in Mascotte, a town in nearby Lake County. Duckett was for years the prime suspect in a similar murder of Jeanifer Shyan Weldon, later that same year. Weldon was abducted while walking to her North Lakeland home just months after the McAbee murder and found dead near a mining pit south of Fort Meade, where Duckett was working at the time.

Two days after Duckett's execution, Polk County Sheriff Grady Judd said the case is now considered cleared and has been sent to the State Attorney’s Office for a final review.

Two other infamous Polk County killers have died on death row in recent years. Nelson Serrano, 85, convicted of killing four people at a Bartow manufacturing facility in 1997, died at a Jacksonville hospital in 2024 of a terminal condition. And Paul Beasley Johnson, 74, died while receiving medical treatment in October 2023, after more than four decades on death row for the murders of three people, including sheriff's Deputy Theron Burnham, during a Lakeland rampage in January 1981.

So far this year, Florida has executed 13 people by lethal injection at the Florida State Prison near Starke.

Source: theledger.com, Paul Nutcher, August 26, 2026

"One is absolutely sickened, not by the crimes that the wicked have committed,
but by the punishments that the good have inflicted."
— Oscar Wilde

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