14 DAY TRIAL // Larry Eugene Mann was 27-year-old when he tried to abuse 10-year-old Elisa Nelson, took her life and dumped her body. On Wednesday, April 10, 32 years later, Mann was executed for the crime in Florida.
Mann was administered the lethal injection in Florida State Prison at 7:19 p.m., Tampa Bay reports.
The decade-long delay of the execution has been described by the victim's brother, Jeff Nelson as a sign that there is “something fundamentally flawed with a justice system.”
“Several juries of Mann's peers decided that his crime was so heinous that he should die for it. For the last 12,000 days, there have been arguments about pieces of paper that have no bearing on the facts of this case.
“But there is never any deliberation about what he did to Elisa in that orange grove on that November morning,” Nelson says.
On November 4, 1980, Mann abducted Nelson while she was riding her bike in Palm Harbor, on her way to class.
She was reported missing when she didn't show up home and a team of searchers recovered her remains in a nearby orange grove. She had been hit in the head with a concrete brick and she had her throat slit.
The defendant confessed to the killing after evidence of the girl being in his car was found by his wife. He had also raped at least two other people, one of whom was a 7-year-old girl.
“Uh, no, sir,” he answered when he was prompted for his last words.
“I don't know what the overall picture is, but if there is a Hell, that's where he belongs. [...] At the execution, I would be really glad just to see him sweat. I know what he did to my niece,” the victim's aunt stated to 10 News before the execution.