Nelson Serrano, on death row for 1997 Bartow quadruple murder, dies at hospital

Death row inmate Nelson Serrano, convicted of killing four people at a Bartow manufacturing facility in 1997, died Thursday at a Jacksonville hospital, according to a blog post at Tracking Florida's Death Penalty.

Serrano, 85, had been on death row since 2007, but was transferred to Jacksonville Memorial in late July with a terminal condition. He had developed a brain tumor and blood clots in his lungs, according to people involved in his case.

Serrano's son, Francisco Serrano, told The Ledger in July, “According to the inmates inside of the Union Correctional on death row, my father sat motionless for almost an entire period of two week in his wheelchair soiling himself with no attention and not eating, even after the prisoners begged the guards and the nurses day after day to attend to my father." He said he raised alarms through the family's attorneys, and his father was moved to the hospital on July 24.

The blog post cited attorney Robert Dunham, who had posted a memo to the X social media site from the Florida Department of Corrections on Thursday morning. The attorney is a former executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center who served there for eight years until January 2023.

Serrano, a Bartow businessman, was originally from Ecuador and was just shy of his 86th birthday.

The quadruple murder at Erie Manufacturing in Bartow in 1997 was, at the time, the worst mass killing in Polk County history. Since then, it's matched only by the September 2021 killing of four members of a North Lakeland family in a predawn home invasion.

Records on the Florida DOC website had not been updated as of Thursday afternoon, and Serrano's current location — which had been Union Correctional Institution in Raiford — was listed as “Unknown,” according to the post by the death penalty Substack writer Melanie Kalmanson. He is also still listed on the Death Row Roster.

Serrano was awaiting a new penalty phase that was granted in 2017. He had maintained his innocence throughout his time on death row.

In 2006, a jury voted 9-3 to recommend that he be sentenced to death. He had been found guilty of the execution-style killings of George Gonzalves, 69, his former partner in Erie Manufacturing, and Frank Dosso, 35, Diane Dosso Patisso, 27, and George Patisso, 26 — the son, daughter and son-in-law of a second business partner, Phil Dosso.

Serrano was sentenced to death on June 26, 2007, according to Department of Corrections and previous Ledger reports. The Florida Supreme Court upheld his sentence on direct appeal in 2011.

In 2016, the U.S. Supreme Court, and subsequently the Florida Supreme Court, ruled that Florida's death-penalty statute was unconstitutional and a unanimous jury was required to impose a death sentence. Based on this precedent, Serrano was granted a new sentencing in 2017.

In 2020, the precedent requiring a unanimous jury was overturned at both the U.S. and Florida supreme courts. And in 2023, the Florida Legislature and Gov. Ron DeSantis changed the threshold by which a jury can recommend death to 8-4. It's uncertain how this might have affected Serrano's resentencing.

In July, the country of Ecuador had asked for clemency in a letter to DeSantis. The letter, obtained by The Ledger from a Serrano family member, came at the request of the family and Serrano's attorney, Gregory W. Eisenmenger. It cited Serrano's failing health and the desire of his family to visit him in his last days.

It is unclear whether the family was able to visit him in hospital before he died.

The DOC memo signed by A Covey CLO said there are 281 inmates on Florida's death row.