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Thread: Rebecca Akins Smith Machetti - Georgia

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    Rebecca Akins Smith Machetti - Georgia





    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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    John Maree was given a life sentence and paroled in 1987.

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

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    Administrator Helen's Avatar
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    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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