Execution date set for South Florida mass murderer

Gov. Rick Scott has signed a death warrant for a man convicted of eight murders in the late 1970s.

John Errol Ferguson is slated to die by lethal injection at Florida State Prison near Raiford at 6 p.m., Oct. 16.

Ferguson, now 64, was convicted of murdering six people execution-style in a drug-related crime in Carol City in July 1977 in one of the worst mass killings in Miami-Dade history. All six had their hands tied behind their back and were shot in the back of the head. However, a survivor of a shotgun blast to the head testified in the execution of the others.

Ferguson was also convicted in the murders of two Hialeah teenagers who had been on their way to a church meeting in January 1978.