Less than 24 hours before a convicted double-murderer was sentenced, a woman from Wade Wilson's jury sat down with NBC2. She remained anonymous because of concern for her family's safety. We'll call her by her juror number: Juror 87.
"I went in just expecting it to be kind of like mundane, maybe civil or whatever," 87 said Monday night. "When you find out what the trial's going to be about... you are like oh, this is very very serious."
She lived in Lee County at the time of the 2019 killings of Kristine Melton and Diane Ruiz in Cape Coral. However, she wasn't in tune with the news.
Before being picked to decide Wilson's fate, 87 recalls being asked about his facial tattoos.
"My first thought, honestly, was how big he was. I was like, oh, that's a big dude... When it came time to say, are you going to judge this person because of what they look like? No, it doesn't matter," she said. "As far as the tattoos and stuff went, it didn't really matter. It was just another tattooed big guy."
Juror 87 said the evidence was gruesome. The testimony was heartbreaking.
"Diane Ruiz's fiancé - when he spoke about giving her that last kiss goodbye," the juror recalled. "And she thought that he hadn't... it takes everything to hold back those tears. It's such a human experience of something you do every day with your partner or your spouse."
When it came to deciding Wilson's guilt or innocence, she said that part was easy.
"There was really no question if he was innocent or not," she said. "He did it."
When it came to going into the jury room for a second time, to make a recommendation for sentencing, 87 said that was a different story.
"We all got back in there, and it was just quiet. It was very, very quiet," she said.
Thinking back to the time in that room, the juror said some jurors didn't think the death penalty would be fair to the victim's families because of the appellate process. Others, she said, cited their faith. Ultimately, they came back with a vote 9-3 in favor of death for Kristine's murder and 10-2 for Diane's.
"They the prosecution was trying to say that [Wilson] went out with that intent purposely to find a victim that night and, and kill her. Some of the jurors did not feel that way. They felt that this just happened to be the person that he met. And it happened. He could have stopped, but he didn't and chose," she explained. "So it's first degree, but not with that forethought and, and malice in there. Whereas Diane, he went out and he found her. He chose her, and he picked her and he killed her. So that is how we ended up with the extra on her versus Christine."
With sentencing right around the corner, at the time of this interview, juror 87 wanted to remind people who to focus on: the victims.
"So I'll be very honest. I didn't want to give this interview. but when I was talking about it and thinking it through, a huge, huge disservice has been done to the women that are the victims in this. They are getting pushed aside like they're not as important. That's not fair that someone like Wade Wilson gets all of this attention and all of this fanfare and all of these people that, you know, go back and think that because he's good-looking, he couldn't have possibly done this or that," she stated. "Or that he deserves some sort of extra grace around this. I don't think that it's fair that the women that he took away don't have a voice and that he gets a platform like this when they're getting shoved aside. The only reason he's in this situation is because of those women. It's just not fair."
Tuesday, Judge Nicholas Thompson followed through with the jury's recommendation and sentenced Wade Wilson to death for both brutal murders.
Wilson will be back in court Sept. 16 to talk about his other pending cases, which have to be resolved before he goes to death row.