An Air Force Sergeant Faced Divorce—He Chose to Murder His Family Instead

On the morning of June 9, 1994, Edward J. Zakrzewski II got a phone call from his son, informing him that his wife wanted a divorce. Zakrzewski went about the rest of his day as normal—except, over his lunch break, he went out and bought a machete.

When Zakrzewski got home that night, he used the machete, along with a crowbar and a rope, to murder his wife and their two young children. Afterward, he fled to Hawaii, changed his name and lived undetected for several months, until someone recognized him from a true-crime television show.

After turning himself in, Zakrzewski pleaded guilty and received three death sentences. More than two decades later, on July 31, 2025, the state of Florida executed Zakrzewski by lethal injection. He was one of 19 people executed in Florida that year, shattering the state's record for single-year executions in the modern era.

At the time of the murders, Zakrzewski was a 29-year-old technical sergeant in the U.S. Air Force. He lived with his wife, 34-year-old Sylvia, and his two children, 7-year-old Edward, known as “Kim,” and 5-year-old Anna, in Mary Esther, a small town along the Gulf Coast in Florida’s Panhandle. He worked at nearby Eglin Air Force Base as a non-commissioned officer, overseeing logistics and facilities.

A family friend told the Associated Press in 1994 that the couple’s relationship had been rocky since they purchased their home, which needed extensive renovations. According to court documents, Zakrzewski told a neighbor he would rather kill his family than go through a divorce.

Zakrzewski was at work when Kim called to say Sylvia was planning to file for divorce that day. When he arrived home that evening, he hid his newly purchased machete in the bathroom, then waited for his family to return. 

According to court documents, Sylvia was sitting by herself in the living room when Zakrzewski hit her on the head with a crowbar at least twice. He dragged her into the bedroom, then hit her again and strangled her with a rope.

One at a time, Zakrzewski called Edward and Anna into the bathroom, where he killed them with the machete. He pulled Sylvia into the bathroom and struck her with the machete, too.

When Zakrzewski failed to show up for work on June 13, 1994, his boss asked police to perform a welfare check. When they visited the home, police found the bodies stacked in the bathtub.

“I’ve been with the Sheriff’s Department going on 20 years and I’ve never seen a crime scene so bad,” Okaloosa County Sheriff’s Office Sgt. Joe Nelson told the Associated Press in 1996.  

Zakrzewski, meanwhile, was nowhere to be found. He had made the six-hour drive to Orlando, where he boarded a flight to Hawaii. Once there, he changed his name to Michael Green and moved in with the family of a minister on the island of Molokai. Four months later, the family was watching Unsolved Mysteries when they noticed that one of the perpetrators looked like their house guest. Zakrzewski surrendered to local police the next day.

In March 1995, Zakrzewski pleaded guilty to three counts of first-degree murder. Jurors voted 7-5 for the death penalty for the killings of Sylvia and Edward, but split 6-6 on the death of Anna, which resulted in an automatic recommendation of life in prison.

Zakrzewski’s defense attorney pleaded for mercy, arguing that Zakrzewski had been under extreme emotional and mental distress caused by his wife’s infidelity, gambling and threats to take the children to her native South Korea. A judge, however, ultimately overrode the jury’s deadlock and sentenced Zakrzewski to death for all three killings.

Experts describe these types of crime as “familicides,” or family annihilations. They often end with the perpetrator dying by suicide, and they are usually carried out by men with guns. 

Warning signs for familicide can include a history of domestic violence, coercive control, threats, stalking, financial stress, separation, custody fears, humiliation, jealousy or the perpetrator feeling like they are losing control of the family, Nina Batista, a licensed clinical social worker in Boca Raton, Fla., tells A&E Crime + Investigation. 

“The most dangerous time in an abusive relationship is often when the victim tries to leave,” she says, adding that perpetrators often act when they feel they are losing control. 

In the years after sentencing, Zakrzewski’s lawyers filed numerous unsuccessful appeals. In July 2025, more than 20 years after Zakrzewski killed his family, the U.S. Supreme Court denied Zakrzewski’s final request for a stay of execution, paving the way for him to be put to death.

“It usually takes decades for death penalty cases to move through the legal system because courts apply a very high level of scrutiny to capital punishment cases,” Alex King, the founding attorney of First Coast Criminal Defense in Jacksonville, Fla., tells A&E Crime + Investigation. “The lengthy timeline reflects the cautious approach the justice system takes when imposing the most severe and irreversible punishment available under the law.”

On the evening of July 31, 2025, Zakrzewski ate his last meal, which consisted of fried pork chops, fried onions, potatoes, bacon, toast, root beer, ice cream, pie and coffee. Around 6:04 p.m., an anonymous executioner injected 60-year-old Zakrzewski with etomidate, rocuronium bro­mide and potassium acetate, which rendered him unconscious, paralyzed his body and, finally, stopped his heart.

“I want to thank the good people of the Sunshine State for killing me in the most cold and calculated, clean, humane and efficient way possible,” Zakrzewski said. “I have no complaints whatsoever.”

Zakrzewski was pronounced dead at 6:12 p.m. in front of 13 witnesses. One of them was Nelson, the lead investigator on the case for the Okaloosa County Sheriff's Office. He had been retired for 17 years, but drove four hours to watch Zakrzewski’s execution, the first he had ever attended.

“It has given me closure I've wanted for a long time,” Nelson told the Pensacola News Journal. “I felt like it needed to come to an end and it's over now. There was a time I didn't know if he was going to die in my lifetime. It's been a long time coming.”

Zakrzewski was the ninth person to be executed in Florida in 2025, which was already a new modern-day record for the state. After Zakrzewski, Florida executed another 10 people, bringing the annual total to 19 people. Florida’s record-high executions made up 40% of the 47 total executions carried out across the nation in 2025, according to the nonprofit Death Penalty Information Center. 

Florida Governor Ron DeSantis told reporters he considers the death penalty “an appropriate punishment for the worst offenders.”

“We have lengthy reviews and appeals that I think should be shorter,” he said. “I still have a responsibility to look at these cases and to be sure that the person's guilty. And if I honestly thought somebody wasn't, I would not pull the trigger on it.”