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Thread: John Eldon Smith - Georgia Execution - December 18, 1983

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    Administrator Heidi's Avatar
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    John Eldon Smith - Georgia Execution - December 18, 1983


    John Eldon Smith was born in Pennsylvania on September 17, 1930


    Facts of Crime: Murdered two newlyweds in 1974 in a murder-for-hire plot.

    Victims: Joseph Ronald Akins and Juanita Knight Akins

    Time of Death:

    Manner of execution: Electric chair

    Last Meal: None, but he had a breakfast of bacon, eggs and biscuits

    Final Statement: "Well, the Lord is going to get another one."

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    Senior Member Member Jeffects's Avatar
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    John Eldon Smith and his wife were charged in two counts with the murder of Joseph Ronald Akins and his wife Juanita Knight Akins.

    At separate trials both were convicted and sentenced to death on each count.

    Joseph Ronald Akins and his wife of twenty days, Juanita Knight Akins, were killed in a secluded area of a new housing development in Bibb County, Georgia, on August 31, 1974, by shotgun blasts fired at close range.

    According to the state's evidence, Joseph Akins' former wife, Rebecca Akins Smith Machetti, together with her husband, John Eldon Smith, (a/k/a Anthony Isalldo Machetti, a/k/a Tony Machetti), and John Maree plotted the death of Joseph Akins with the intent of redeeming the proceeds of Akins' insurance policies, and other benefits, the beneficiaries of which were Mrs. Machetti and her three daughters by her marriage to Akins. They were living in North Miami Beach, Florida at the time.

    According to the testimony of accomplice John Maree, he was to be paid $ 1,000 for his participation. He testified that he and Tony Machetti (Smith) drove to Macon, Georgia, where they contacted Ronald Akins and lured him into the area of the crime, ostensibly to install a television antenna, and that when he and his wife arrived at the appointed time Tony Machetti (Smith) killed both of them with a shotgun, after which he and Maree returned to North Miami Beach, Florida.

    http://murderpedia.org/male.S/s1/smith-john-eldon.htm

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    Administrator Moh's Avatar
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    July 3, 2010

    After 35 years in prison, one time death row inmate Rebecca Machetti released

    Rebecca Machetti, 71, has been released after 36 years in prison. Machetti was once the only woman on Georgia's death row.

    Machetti was sentenced to death for the 1975 killings of her ex-husband and his new wife, Ronald and Juanita Akins. The Akinses were found shot to death in a secluded area of Bibb County.

    Machetti was convicted, along with her husband, John Eldon Smith, and John Maree of Florida, of murder in the deaths of newlyweds.

    John Smith, also known as Anthony Machetti, was sentenced to death and was the first person to be executed when Georgia resumed executions in 1983.

    Rebecca Machetti was granted a new trial in 1982. Machetti's sentenced was changed and she was sentenced to two consecutive life sentences.

    Machetti must report to a parole officer monthly, and will have electronic monitoring. Machetti is not allowed to have any contact with her victims' family members.

    http://www.examiner.com/article/afte...hetti-released

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    Administrator Moh's Avatar
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    John Maree was given a life sentence and paroled in 1987.

    http://notinmyname.livejournal.com/7647.html

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    Senior Member Frequent Poster joe_con's Avatar
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    In a fair system Rebecca Machetti would have been executed too.

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    Administrator Helen's Avatar
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    Related:

    Rebecca Machetti, sentenced to death for 1974 Macon murder plot, dies of COVID-19

    By Joe Kovac Jr.
    Macon Telegraph

    A woman convicted and at one point sentenced to die in Georgia’s electric chair for conspiring with two Florida men to have her ex-husband murdered in Macon in 1974 died Monday.

    Rebecca Akins Machetti, raised in Athens before moving to Macon with husband Ronald Akins, died of complications caused by COVID-19, her daughter, Val Akins, confirmed to The Telegraph.

    Machetti, who was 81, was released on parole in 2010 after serving 36 years in prison after her death sentenced was commuted to life imprisonment for the murders of Ronald Akins and his newlywed wife, Juanita, in August 1974.

    ‘I FEEL RELIEF’

    Machetti had been living in Athens at what had been her late mother’s home before being admitted to a nursing home and later a hospital in the city of Lavonia near the South Carolina border.

    Val Akins, who is one of Machetti’s three daughters with Ronald Akins, has had little contact with her mother in the decades after the case went to trial.

    “I feel relief,” Val Akins said of her mother’s death, “but sadness at the fact that she ruined so many lives.”

    MURDER PLOT

    The shotgun slayings of Ronald and Juanita made headlines across the South.

    Machetti, along with one of her co-conspirators, her second husband, John Eldon Smith, changed their last names to Machetti because Rebecca Machetti thought it had a mafia ring to it.

    She was said to have aspired for John Smith to become a hit man, with her at his side, living the Miami highlife, frequenting horse tracks and nightclubs.

    The mafia lifestyle seemed to fascinate her after she and Ronald Akins divorced and she moved with her then-young children to the Miami area in the months before the murders.

    CONVICTED AND SENTENCED

    John Smith, who changed his name to Tony Machetti, was convicted of killing Ronald and Juanita Akins in a subdivision off Forsyth Road in northwest Bibb County. Smith and another man, John Maree, also convicted in the plot, were both sent to prison.

    Smith was sent to death row, where in December 1983, he became the first person to die in Georgia’s electric chair after the reinstatement of the death penalty.

    Maree has long since been paroled and was believed to be living in Lumberton, North Carolina.

    Rebecca Machetti, had in recent decades taken the last name Lorusso, that of her common-law husband, her daughter said.

    https://www.macon.com/news/local/cri...245721705.html
    "I realize this may sound harsh, but as a father and former lawman, I really don't care if it's by lethal injection, by the electric chair, firing squad, hanging, the guillotine or being fed to the lions."
    - Oklahoma Rep. Mike Christian

    "There are some people who just do not deserve to live,"
    - Rev. Richard Hawke

    “There are lots of extremely smug and self-satisfied people in what would be deemed lower down in society, who also deserve to be pulled up. In a proper free society, you should be allowed to make jokes about absolutely anything.”
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    Senior Member Frequent Poster joe_con's Avatar
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    nice!!!!

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