On February 18, 1994, a brother-sister pair were attacked by two men at a camping site in Ocala National Forest, Florida, United States.

During the same month, the two killers, William Christopher Paul and Loran Kenstley Cole, were arrested and charged with kidnapping, robbery, rape and murder.

John had driven from Tallahassee while Pam arrived from St. Petersburg at their meet-up point, and they both headed to Ocala National Forest.

Both men sat with the Edwards siblings around the campfire until 10.45pm, when the four decided to leave and take a walk to the pond to photograph alligators.

The next day, Pam was raped a second time before she was gagged and tied to a tree by both Kevin and his brother, before they took off in one of the sibling's cars.

[7] At the time of his death, Edwards was a chemical engineering major in his first year of college and his parents, who were in the military, were based in Okinawa, Japan.

Edwards's friends and fraternity brothers from Phi Gamma Delta were shocked to hear about his murder as they remembered him as a good-looking, fun person who loved athletics and aspired to be a chemical engineer.

If found guilty of the most serious charge of first-degree murder, both Cole and Paul would either be sentenced to death or life imprisonment under Florida law.

The two men allegedly tried to escape from judicial custody in May 1994, and were seen digging at mortar around the cinder blocks in their cells, but they denied doing so.

With his plea of guilt and correspondence between the prosecution and defence, the death penalty was taken off the table in Paul's case and he was given five concurrent life sentences for all the charges he was convicted of.

The family of Edwards accepted this plea deal, since it prevented his sister from having to testify in two separate trials about how she was raped.

[17][18] During his sentencing, it was decreed that Paul would not be eligible for parole until he completed a minimum period of 25 years behind bars, based on the plea bargain.

[22] In 1984, when Cole was 17, he went to live at the Arthur G. Dozier School for Boys, where he reportedly underwent severe physical and sexual abuse by the staff during his six-month stay.

[23] Prior to the murder of John Edwards in 1994, Cole had a criminal record of offences from 1985 to 1991 and arrested for a total of 13 times.

[32] During the trial, which was presided by a 12-member jury, the prosecution argued that both Cole and his accomplice William Paul had deliberately approached the Edwards siblings, planning to rob them under the pretext of befriending the siblings, before Cole used a wood and brass folding knife to slit the throat of John Edwards and later raped his sister.

She testified that she tried to leave by taking a different path before Cole grabbed her from behind and slammed her down the ground, and her brother was also down moments later after he hit Paul.

His counsel also argued that it was unsafe to uphold either the death sentence or murder conviction, as the evidence implicating Cole in the murder was circumstantial and there was undue reliance on the testimony of Edwards's sister, who was the sole survivor in this case, to determine the guilt of Cole, as there were risks of doing so given the rate of clarity and accuracy of her recollection and memories in this case.

[56][57] After the execution date was set, the Florida Supreme Court has issued an order to expedite all proceedings in the case.

They raised the fact that since his stay at the age of 17, Cole was a victim of abuse at the Arthur G. Dozier School for Boys, a reform school for troubled youths, and Cole's traumatic experiences were not being raised during his trial as factors that would have spared him the death sentence and also enable the jury to duly consider before deciding on his sentence at an earlier stage.

[61] Cole's lawyers argued before the Supreme Court that their client was diagnosed with Parkinson's disease and his symptoms of involuntary movements would affect the placement of intravenous lines necessary in carrying out his death sentence, and it would lead to a "substantial risk of illness by injury and needless suffering".

However, this argument was already raised in their previous appeal before Justice Hodges in the lower courts of Marion County, as the judge rejected this evidence as "untimely" and without merit because Cole chose to reveal it right after the signing of his death warrant despite having a long window of opportunity to raise it much earlier before this present stage, and it was mere speculation that he might suffer because of his involuntary body movements, in addition to his failure of showing "that medical personnel have previously had problems finding a vein in his arm or that he has previously suffered pain during the placement of an intravenous line".

[65][66] Also, a group of death penalty opponents banded together to appeal to the governor to grant clemency to Cole based on the fact that he was a victim of abuse at the Dozier School and it shaped him into who he was today, and urged for mercy to take priority in this case.

Many of them stated that the news of Cole's scheduled execution was a signal that the painful chapter of losing Edwards was coming to an end and the beginning of closure.