JUST IN: Florida Executes U.S. Air Force Vet Edward J. Zakrzewski II — “Thank You For Killing Me”.. A new record for the state of Florida. Governor DeSantis has signed the ninth death warrant this year, the most for any governor since the death penalty was reinstated in 1976. The latest execution set for former Egglund Air Force Base Airman Edward Zachuski. He’s convicted of killing his wife and two children. In 1996, Zach Ruski pleaded guilty to three counts of first-degree murder, receiving three death sentences. He raised his right hand and swore an oath to the United States of America to protect, to serve, to defend. Edward James Zakvski II earned the rank of technical sergeant in the United States Air Force. That rank does not come easy. It takes years of discipline, performance, and proven leadership. He was 29 years old on June 9th, 1994. By the end of that night, his wife and both of his children were gone. 31 years later on July 31st, 2025, the state of Florida strapped him to a gurnie. It was Florida’s ninth execution of that year alone, a modern state record not seen since 1976. Before we get to that chamber, we need to go back to the beginning. Welcome to the last sentence. This case is one that the American news cycle almost erased completely. Not because it was insignificant, not because the facts were unclear, but because of what else was happening that same week. An event so consuming that it pulled the attention of an entire nation away from a mother and her two children who deserve to be front page news. We are going to talk about that and when we get to it, you will understand exactly how something this serious got buried. There is something else you need to hold on to as we go through this case. This man did not accept his sentence quietly for 31 years. He fought it through every level of the state court system through the federal courts and finally all the way to the United States Supreme Court. They turned him down. Every single court without one dissenting voice at the highest level. If you want to follow cases like this one, cases that nearly disappeared from public record, subscribe to this channel right now. That is exactly [music] what we are here for. Every week we cover the people and the cases that did not get the attention they deserved. Now let us get into what actually happened. Edward James Zakvski 2 was born on January 31st, 1965 in Kalamazoo, Michigan of Polish descent. After a brief period in college, he enlisted in the United States Air Force. He was disciplined, focused, and capable. He worked his way up to the rank of technical sergeant, a supervisory non-commissioned officer position that requires consistent performance and demonstrated leadership over years of service. By 1994, he had returned to education, attending Knight College while maintaining his military career. He was one year away from completing his degree. On paper, he was a man with a career, an education, and a future in front of him. The woman who became his wife was born in South Korea. Her given name was Ponim. Before meeting Edward, she had been married to another American military man, a relationship her family back in South Korea openly disapproved of. That marriage ended with no children. She was working at the Air Force base exchange store in Montana, confirmed through defense attorney court testimony, when she met Edward Zakvski. They married after she became pregnant and she adopted the American name Sylvia. She was 34 years old at the time of her death. Together they had two children. Their son Edward Zakvski 3 was 7 years old and known within the family by his Korean middle name Kim. Their daughter Anna Zakvski was 5 years old. Between 1989 and 1992, the family was stationed in South Korea. For Sylvia, those years were the closest she had felt to peace since leaving her homeland. But court documents later revealed she faced discrimination there for being married to an American and for having mixed race children. The return she had longed for carried complications she had not anticipated. In 1992, new orders came. The family relocated to Mary Esther in Okaloosa County, Florida near Eglund Air Force Base. In April of 1994, they purchased their first home together on Shrewsbury Road, 40 mi east of Pensacola. From the outside, it looked like a family building something permanent. Behind that front door, the marriage was falling apart. Sylvia wanted to return to South Korea. She had told people around her that she intended to go back and planned to take the children with her when she did. Before June 9th, 1994, there was already a warning. A neighbor of the Zakvsky family heard Edward Zakvsky state on at least two separate occasions that he would end his family’s lives before he would accept a divorce. He said it directly. He said it more than once. That neighbor made the decision to stay silent. Not to Sylvia, not to anyone at Eglund Air Force Base, not to law enforcement. That information remained buried until investigators were already standing inside the house on Shrewsbury Road….read more 👇👇👇

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The money was already gone the night before. Circuit Judge G. Robert Baron, who presided over this case, addressed this directly. He described what Zakvsky carried out as the product of months and undeniably hours of cool, calm reflection and deliberate planning, not a reaction to a phone call, a decision that had already been made.

June 9th, 1994 began as a standard workday. Edward Zakvski reported to Eglund Air Force Base that morning on time in uniform with nothing in his conduct signaling anything unusual to those around him. Then his son called. 7-year-old Edward, known to the family as Kim, reached his father at the base that morning with a message. His mother wanted a divorce and planned to take the children back to South Korea.

Whether Sylvia directed her son to make that call has never been conclusively established. What the documented record shows is what Zakvsky did in the hours that followed. During his lunch break, he drove to an army surplus store and purchased a machete. He then went to the house on Shrewsbury Road before returning to the base. Inside the house, he sharpened the blade.

He positioned a crowbar in the bedroom. He cut a length of rope. Three items, each prepared and placed before his family set foot through that door. He then returned to Eglund Air Force Base and completed his shift. Every colleague who encountered him that afternoon reported nothing out of the ordinary. After leaving the base, he stopped at a local bar and met with a fellow military veteran.

During that conversation, Zakvsky raised a question. He asked what a person must feel when they take another person’s life. His friend registered it as a passing remark and thought nothing further of it. He would later repeat that exchange to investigators. Zakvsky returned home that evening. He sent the children to watch television and called for Sylvia to come to the bedroom.

She did not come. He went to the living room, located her, and struck her with the crowbar. No argument preceded it. No exchange of words. The case record documents the assault as immediate and without provocation. He moved Sylvia to the bedroom where the assault continued before he used the rope to strangle her.

Medical examiner Dr. Edward Harvard, who conducted the post-mortem examination and later testified in court, confirmed that despite sustaining a fractured skull and multiple wounds to her back, Sylvia was still alive at the point of strangulation. She was 34 years old. Zakvsky then called his 7-year-old son, Edward, into the bathroom and told him to brush his teeth.

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