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Andrew Richard Lukehart was the 133rd person executed by Florida since 1976. He murdered his girlfriend's five month old daughter in Jacksonville in 1996. Lukehart was a Jacksonville native born there on April 10, 1973. The details around his childhood are slightly unclear, but he was said to have an abusive, alcoholic father and was molested as a child and experienced suicidal thoughts. At the time of the murder, Lukehart was on probation for a prior assault on a baby.
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That incident happened April 14, 1994, a few days past Lukehart's 21st birthday. He grabbed Jillian French, his then-girlfriend's eight month old daughter, and shook her so hard that she suffered a concussion resulting in seizures and eyesight difficulties. Lukehart initially told police that he accidentally dropped Jillian in the bathtub. He plead guilty to felony child abuse and served ten months in jail. This short sentence was because he did not have a prior criminal history, Florida was suffering from prison overcrowding, and not all of Jillian's injuries could be blamed on him--her mother was also charged with child neglect. Jillian's grandmother was not happy with that and believed he would eventually harm someone else's child.
On February 25, 1996, Lukehart was living with his new girlfriend Misty Rhue in Jacksonville, five month old Gabrielle, Rhue's 2 year old daughter Ashley, and Rhue's father and uncle. That day, he and Misty went out to do some errands with the two girls. They returned to their home on Epson Lane and as Ashley was not feeling well, her mother took her to her bedroom to put her to bed, while Lukehart tended to Gabrielle in another room. At one point he brought a clean diaper into the room. At 5:00 PM, Rhue heard the sound of a car engine starting. She looked outside the window and saw Lukehart pulling out of the driveway in her '81 Cutlass Supreme. At this point, Rhue realized that Gabrielle was nowhere to be found inside the house.
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Around 5:30, Lukehart called the house from a convenience store pay phone and reported that someone in a blue Chevy Blazer had kidnapped Gabrielle and to call police. Rhue did so and Jacksonville detectives Tim Reddish and Phil Kearney responded to the call. A short time later, a shirtless and shoeless Lukehart was spotted in the front yard of a Florida Highway Patrol officer's home in rural Clay County. Rhue's Oldsmobile was off-road about a block away, its engine still running. The FHP officer, Richard Davis, was off-duty and inside the house watching TV. When he heard a helicopter flying overhead, he called a police dispatcher on the phone and learned that they were looking for a white male suspected in the abduction of a baby.
Davis walked outside and saw Lukehart standing in his front yard. The latter remarked upon seeing him "I'm the one they're looking for." Davis went back into the house and got his gun and handcuffs. Lukehart now had his hands in the air and repeated "I'm the one they're looking for." Davis handcuffed him--he later said it was a precautionary measure since he didn't know for sure if this man was actually the suspect wanted in the reported infant abduction, but he was going to take him on his word. He asked Lukehart "Where's the baby at?" The latter replied "I don't know what the hell you're talking about. Read me my Miranda rights." Davis said nothing further to him. He went back inside and got on the phone to report that he had the baby kidnapper in custody.
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Clay County deputy Jeff Gardner arrived a few minutes later and took possession of Lukehart. Gardner had originally been sent to the area on a report of a car accident. He found the white Oldsmobile 50 or so feet off the road, situated between a telephone pole and cable. The keys were still in the ignition, the dash lights were on, and the transmission was in drive. Inside was a baby seat and some baby clothes. Gardner radioed the license plate number and was informed that the car wasn't reported stolen. The dispatcher found Misty Rhue's phone number and called it. He informed Gardner that Jacksonville officers were at the house. Gardner called the phone number and the call was answered by someone from the Jacksonville Sheriff's Office. This person replied that that the car was involved in an apparent abduction and belonged to someone named Lukehart (the Oldsmobile was registered to him, however Misty Rhue claimed it as her car). He also told Gardner that he'd been told that someone snatched a baby out of the house, took off in a blue Blazer, and Lukehart chased after him.
Five minutes later, Gardner was told by his dispatcher that Lukehart was at Trooper Davis's house, a short distance from where Gardner was waiting with the vehicle. He drove on up to Davis's house and found the two outside. Gardner asked Lukehart what was happening here. The latter said he wasn't going to talk without a lawyer present. Lukehart added that he'd tried to hang himself from a tree using his shirt--his neck had a mild abrasion on it. Gardner asked him to come with him to the Oldsmobile. Lukehart was not at this time under arrest, nor did Gardner have any probable cause to arrest him. He agreed to do so. As they walked, Lukehart gestured to the tree where he'd made his botched suicide attempt.
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Once they reached the car, Gardner decided to handcuff him just in case, since he had shown suicidal tendencies. They waited for Gardner's supervisor to arrive. He did not ask Lukehart any questions while they were waiting. Gardner offered him cigarettes, which he accepted. Lukehart puffed on one and remarked "I wish she hadn't shit in her diaper. It's not gonna look good on me now. I was arrested for child abuse before, but I didn't do it." He repeatedly asked to speak with detectives. Detective Lavelle Goff of the Jacksonville Sheriff's Office and Lt. Thomas Waugh of the Clay County Sheriff's Office arrived and Gardner turned over custody of Lukehart to them. Officer Richard Davis of the Jacksonville Sheriff's Office was with Lukehart's car and assumed he was being held under Florida's Mental Health Act.
Detective Reddish asked Lukehart where the baby was. He said someone in a blue Blazer took her and fled. Misty Rhue and her father were also taken downtown for separate interviews. Lukehart agreed to retrace the route he claimed to have followed when he chased after the Blazer. He and Reddish got breakfast from a Burger King. They next went to a Wal-Mart to obtain Lukehart some new clothes since the ones he got at the police building didn't fit him. At this point, Reddish still assumed Lukehart was merely a witness to an abduction. He later turned custody of him over to Lt. Jim Redmond of the CLay County Sheriff's Office. Lukehart said he followed the Blazer but lost contact with it in Clay County. At one point, somebody gave Redmond a photograph of Gabrielle Rhue. He showed Lukehart the photo and the latter asked him not to do that. When Redmond asked why, he said "I just don't want to see it." He agreed that Gabrielle was the individual in the photo. Redmond then told Lukehart he believed he was lying, there had never been any kidnapper in a Blazer, and that if he said anything more, he would probably be arrested for murder.
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Redmond added that they needed to find Gabrielle's body before decomposition and scavenging wildlife had gotten to it. About 15 minutes later, Lukehart admitted that he'd made up the whole story about the Blazer. He said he would like to confess if they drove to some other spot. Redmond accepted and drove his patrol car to a quiet cul-de-sac. Lukehart said that he changed Gabrielle's diaper, she was squirming, and he dropped her on her head. He yanked her up, knowing that would hurt her. He shook her around and she died. Gabrielle's body was not in Clay County, but he'd disposed of it in a pond off Normandy Boulevard in Jacksonville. Police later found it floating in there.
Lukehart was charged with first degree murder and child abuse. His trial in February 1997 lasted only two days. The county medical examiner testified for the prosecution and said that autopsy of Gabrielle found bruises on her head and arm and that she had been struck on the head five times, two of the blows resulting in skull fractures. Lukehart took the stand in his own defense over the trial judge's warnings that he was not obliged to do so and that he would be subject to cross-examination. He said that while changing Gabrielle's diaper, she repeatedly pushed up on her elbows. This annoyed Lukehart, so he aggressively shoved her head and onto the floor until she stopped moving. He was an imposing man, over six feet in height and weighing 225 pounds. Lukehart admitted to using considerable force to push Gabrielle down.
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When she stopped moving, he tried mouth-to-mouth resuscitation to no effect, so he became alarmed, grabbed her, and drove to a rural area. Lukehart then said he accidentally smacked Gabrielle's head on the car door in the process of removing her from it. He threw her into the pond where she was found. Lukehart admitted that his earlier claims to police had been false and that he didn't mean to kill her. Nonetheless, the jury found him guilty of first degree murder--his claim of "it was all an accident" might have been convincing had he not accumulated a prior conviction for brutalizing an infant.
The appeals process dragged on for the next three decades and Lukehart finally came to the end of the road. His attorneys argued that he had kidney problems and executing him would be cruel and unusual punishment. The state and US Supreme Court denied his last attempts at appeals and he was executed by lethal injection on June 2, 2026.
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>>18517313
>>18517309
first off, tf was the mom thinking dating a guy who had already been in jail for beating an infant?
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>>18517313
>>18517316
>81 Cutlass
that was already a museum piece by 96
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>>18517313
>>18517309
I hate Florida, I really do.
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>>18517313
they say every murderer has a particular type they target, usually based on some unresolved childhood trauma. i wonder exactly what made this guy want to kill infants? it's quite an interesting psychiatric question.
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>>18517309
>>18517313
at least he didn't rape them or anything. thank god he still had some limits.