According to court documents, quoted by CBS News, Hitchcock was unemployed at the time of the crime. As a twenty-year-old, he moved into his brother’s house in the suburbs of Orlando a few weeks before the murder.
He admitted to the investigators that one day in July 1976 he spent several hours drinking beer and smoking marijuana with his friends. He then returned home, entered the room of step-niece Cynthia Driggersová and raped her.
When the girl told Hitchcock that she was hurt and that she would tell her mother everything, the perpetrator tried to prevent her from leaving the room. He first strangled her, then dragged her out of the house, where he beat her and strangled her again until she stopped moving.
He then threw the child’s corpse into the bushes, after which he returned to the house, took a shower and went to bed. Later, however, he changed his statement and tried to blame the murder on his brother.
Hitchcock began to claim that he had sex with the girl, but that it was voluntary on her part. After that, the brother allegedly entered the room, took the stepdaughter outside and strangled her in a fit of rage. When Hitchcock, as he himself recently claimed, pulled the brother away from the girl, she was already dead.
In 1977, Hitchcock heard the death verdict in court, which was followed by a long series of appeals. But the courts always – in 1988, 1993 and 1996 – again sentenced him to the death penalty.
Last week Thursday, according to The Miami Herald, he was executed by lethal injection at the Florida State Penitentiary after the Florida Supreme Court rejected a request by Hitchcock’s lawyers to postpone the execution of the sentence.
“Life is precious, time is precious”
The family of the murdered girl accepted Hitchcock’s execution with satisfaction. After the perpetrator’s death was announced, the relatives invited journalists and issued their statements.
“I thank God for giving me strength and courage all these years and shaping me, despite this tragedy, into the person I am today,” said the younger sister of the murdered Lynn Cobb.
“We are now closing the door on this chapter of our lives. We will continue to remember Cindy and keep her alive in our memory knowing that life is precious and time is precious,” she added.
Hitchcock’s execution was the sixth in Florida this year, signed by Republican Governor Ron DeSantis based on court verdicts. Last year, the judiciary of this American state carried out 19 death sentences. In total, 47 people were executed in the USA in 2025.
