Who is Thomas Gudinas? Rapist, Murderer Set to be DeSantis's Seventh Execution of the Year

In the early morning hours of May 24, 1994, Rachelle Smith walked out of Orlando's Barbarella nightclub and headed toward her car, parked in a nearby lot.

20-year-old Thomas Lee Gudinas was watching. Waiting. Hiding.

The Massachusetts native was crouched behind another car as Smith passed him around 1 a.m., causing the young woman—whose fiancé was still inside—to quicken her pace, get in her car, and immediately lock the doors.

But when she glanced at her rearview mirror, she saw that Gudinas had closed the distance and was now shaking on her passenger door handle, trying to get in. Switching to the driver's side window, he tried to break the glass while yelling, "I want to f—k you!"

Smith laid on her horn and Gudinas left. She would make it home soon after.

27-year-old Michelle McGrath wouldn't be so lucky.

Gudinas to be Florida's Seventh Execution of 2025

31-years to the day of McGrath's brutal rape and murder, Gov. Ron DeSantis signed the death warrant for Gudinas, now 51. He's set to be executed on June 24 by lethal injection.

Gudinas, who's disputing the execution on the grounds that executing a mentally ill person violates the Eighth Amendment, will be the seventh execution in 2025.

If carried out, this would be the latest in DeSantis's rapid ramping up of executions. Gudinas would break DeSantis's personal record of six executions in a single year and nears Florida's all-time record of eight executions in one year, set by Gov. Bob Graham in 1984 and tied by Gov. Rick Scott in 2014.

Gudinas's scheduled death date comes just two weeks after Anthony Wainwright, who raped and murdered a Lake City woman in the 1990s, was executed on Tuesday.

What Happened?

Gudinas went to Barbarella with his three roommates the night of May 23. They lost sight of him around 1 a.m., and by 5 a.m., Michelle McGrath was dead in an alleyway.

McGrath, last seen at Barbarella around 2:45, had parked her car near where Smith had seen Gudinas lying in wait. At some point between 3 and 4 a.m., Gudinas stomped McGrath in the head in an alley by a school. The injury was fatal, though it took between 30 minutes and an hour for her to die.

He then brutally raped her, and when her body was found at 7:30 a.m., she was completely naked except for a bra pushed over her breasts. Sticks were shoved into her vagina and rectum.

Between 4 and 5 a.m., a man found McGrath's clothes and her keys next to her car. Gudinas came by soon after, told the man those were his keys, before heading toward the neighboring Pace School. An employee found him sitting on the school's steps around 7 a.m., and told him to leave.

He hopped the school fence and went into a nearby alley. 10 minutes later, the employee heard a loud crash in that alley, approached it, and saw McGrath's body. She screamed and hailed a bicycle cop, who saw Gudinas driving McGrath's car away from the scene.

It was recovered 12 hours later near his apartment, where he'd told his roommates that he "f—ed her while she was dead."

Gudinas was sentenced to death for first-degree murder, 30 years for attempted burglary with an assault, 30 years for attempted sexual battery, and life imprisonment for each count of sexual battery.

Gudinas's lawyers are now seeking a stay on the execution, citing the murderer's mental illnesses. They pointed to the behavioral issues he had as a child, which led his mother to seek help from the Massachusetts Division of Youth Services. He had 105 different placements throughout that agency, and didn't complete school past the fourth grade.

As a child, he drank alcohol and abused cocaine, marijuana, and LSD. After his arrest, he was evaluated to have an IQ of 85 and found to have been "seriously emotionally disturbed" at the time of the murder, with "strong underlying emotional deficiencies."

The state has disputed his attempts to stay the execution, and it's very unlikely that Gudinas will be successful. He will likely die on June 24.