Execution date set for killer who strangled couple inside their Florida Keys home

A Death Row inmate from the Florida Keys who tied up and strangled a pregnant third-grade teacher and her husband after breaking into their home more than three decades ago may soon be executed.

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Gov. Ron DeSantis on Wednesday signed a death warrant for Thomas Mitchell Overton, 70, who was convicted and condemned to die for the Aug. 22, 1991, murders of Susan “Missy” MacIvor, 29, and Michael MacIvor, 30. The MacIvors were expecting their first child, planning to name him Kyle Patrick.

Overton’s execution is scheduled for Nov. 19 at Florida State Prison in Raiford. It’s scheduled to be the 20th execution in the state so far this year, and the first involving a case out of Monroe County. Last year, Michael Tanzi, 48, was executed for murdering a Miami Herald employee he carjacked and sexually assaulted in the Keys in 2000.

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If Overton is executed, the only Monroe County inmate remaining on Florida’s Death Row would be Steven Wolf, who was convicted of raping, torturing and killing a woman in his van on the eve of the 2018 Thanksgiving holiday weekend.

In 1999, a jury convicted Overton and recommended that he be put to death. The 1991 slayings horrified the Upper Keys. On Wednesday, Monroe County Sheriff Rick Ramsay told the Miami Herald the family is getting “long-awaited justice” in a case where the death penalty is “definitely warranted.

“This was one of the most heinous crimes you’ve ever heard of. Killing a mother and her family,” Ramsay said. “At some point, the family wants some closure and the nightmare to be over so they can move on with their lives.”

Monroe State Attorney Dennis Ward expressed similar sentiments.

“This was a young family starting life together. Their beautiful lives were ended, along with the life of their unborn 8-month-baby by a depraved criminal,” Ward said. “Justice was long incoming and finally a date for that justice has been set.”

The bodies were found after Missy MacIvor failed to show up to work at Key Largo Elementary School. The school called neighbors, who entered their two-story home by TavernAero Airport, a private airstrip in a neighborhood where residents park planes and boats by their homes, and made the grisly discovery.

The MacIvors were strangled with ties, and Michael was also clubbed on the head, according to the Herald’s archives. Their eyes and mouths were covered, and their phone lines were cut with wire clippers.

Missy MacIvor was hogtied with belts from her dresser drawers. She was sexually assaulted before she was killed.

Monroe County Sheriff’s Office detectives searched for clues for several years. But it wasn’t until 1996 that they caught a break in the case, arresting Overton, a career burglar who lived in Tavernier, just miles from the crime scene. A month before his arrest, investigators linked DNA from semen found on the MacIvors’ comforter to Overton after he attempted to kill himself with a razor blade while in jail on an unrelated burglary charge.

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A year before, detectives began to zero in on Overton, who was known to seek unusual items during burglaries, like an antique slot machine and a stuffed fish, because of his strange behavior in other cases. Through their investigation, they uncovered that he and Missy had crossed paths.

Missy MacIvor had told her sister that a man working at the local Amoco gas station gave her the creeps. Three weeks before the murders, she pumped gas there and paid $7.35 with a check that had her address on it. Overton was working there at the time.

A chilling confession

During the trial, James Zientek, who was locked up with Overton, said Overton recounted the slayings in detail as part of an elaborate ruse: to have Zientek pin the murders on another inmate and cut a deal for his testimony, according to the Herald’s stories at the time.

Instead, Zientek went to the jail’s chaplain and cooperated with police. Overton told Zientek he met Missy MacIvor at the Amoco station, got her address off a receipt and went to her house intending to rape her.

After staking out the house, Overton said he climbed onto the second floor of the house using a ladder. He cut the phone lines and a clothesline he later used to tie up the MacIvors.

Overton used a pipe to knock out Michael MacIvor., who was returning from getting a late-night snack, Zientek testified. Missy MacIvor came out of the bedroom screaming, saying “I know who you are. Why are you doing this to me?”

Overton said he restrained her and covering Michael’s eyes with socks and his face with masking tape. He then strangled Michael and turned back to Missy MacIvor, raping her and later strangling her with a tie.

Before he left the home, Overton ripped a page out of the MacIvors’ address book in the hopes of misleading investigators, Zientek testified. He took a trophy home with him, believed to be photos of Missy MacIvor.

Another inmate testified at the trial, saying Overton had confessed to “wasting,” or killing a couple in the Keys as part of a burglary done as a “hit” for someone else. Overton, however, claimed that both informants were lying — and that the semen found on the comforter was planted on the scene by a spurned ex-lover with connections to the police department.

The jury voted 9-3 in favor of the death penalty for Missy MacIvors’s killing and 8-4 for her husband’s. In 2001, Overton was convicted and sentenced to life for the 1996 burglary that led to him being charged for the MacIvors’ murders. Prosecutors said they were securing the burglary conviction to ensure Overton would remain behind bars if his conviction for the murders were overturned.

After the trial, Michael MacIvor’s mother, Celeste MacIvor, peered at the man convicted of strangling her son: “All I can look at are his hands and think, ‘Those hands killed my son, my grandson and my daughter-in-law.’”

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This story was originally published October 22, 2026 at 5:06 PM.