Zagorski lured the two men into a wooded hunting ground under the pretense of selling them 100 lb (45 kg) of marijuana before shooting them and slitting their throats.

[6] Zagorski first met John Dale Dotson (1947/48–1983), a logger from Hickman County, Tennessee, on April 5, 1983, at a trout farm.

Zagorski introduced himself to Dotson and his wife Marsha under the guise of being a mercenary based in Central America named Jesse Lee Hardin.

[7] Before he left to meet Zagorski on April 23, Dotson was described by his wife Marsha as "at least somewhat hesitant" and allegedly asked her to call a friend if he failed to return that night.

[7] At around 5:30 pm, the owner of the trout farm where Zagorski and Dotson first met heard gunshots coming from the area where he knew the three men had arranged to meet.

The bodies had decomposed quickly, in part due to a burgeoning heat wave; however it was concluded that both men had been shot and their throats had been slit.

Despite there being a heat wave in the area, Zagorski was placed in solitary confinement in an unventilated 8 × 8-foot (2.44 × 2.44-m) cell even though a court order forbade it.

[11] On October 8, the TNSC also refused to stay Zagorski's execution on the grounds of a challenge to the state's lethal injection protocol.

[18] Finally, minutes before 7 pm that same day, the United States Supreme Court refused to grant Zagorski a stay of execution.

Zagorski was executed by electrocution on Thursday, November 1, 2018, at the Riverbend Maximum Security Institution in Nashville, being pronounced dead at 7:26 p.m. CDT (12:26 a.m.