TAMPA BAY, FL – On Tuesday, July 28, former Carmel resident Dominick Occhicone II, who would have turned 81 in August, will become the oldest inmate put to death in Florida for the murders of his ex-fiancée’s parents.
Born in Carmel and the son of a sanitation worker, Occhione II has been on death row in Florida for 40 years, and during that time, his father, three older sisters, and all of the jurors who convicted him in Florida have passed away.
The convicted murderer’s father was a New York City sanitation worker raising a family in Carmel in the 1960s after immigrating from Italy.
Occhicone II, while living in Carmel, failed to report for military service for the Vietnam War and spent two years in military prison in Fort Dix, New Jersey.
In the 1970s, Occhione, after retiring from NYC Sanitation, moved to Florida with his wife, and their son, Occhione II, moved south with them. Occhione II married, and the couple had a son, Dominick Occhione III. Sharon Occhione died of cancer when Occhione III was two years old, according to Tampa Bay media.
Occhione II then became involved in a violent relationship with Anita Gerrety. When Gerrety finally ended the relationship, Occhione II became violent.
On June 10, 1986, Occhione II, then 40, went to Gerrety’s parents’ home in the middle of the night and began knocking on his ex-girlfriend’s window. She warned him to leave, and he did, only to return before dawn, armed with a gun, shooting and killing her father, Raymond Artzner. The ex-girlfriend and her 10-year-old daughter fled while Occhione II killed her mother, Martha Artzner.
The execution by lethal injection of an elderly man, scheduled for 6 p.m. Tuesday, has stirred emotions on both sides of the death penalty issue.
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