He was sentenced to death after being convicted of two counts of first-degree murder in 2006. And just hours ago, he was executed by lethal injection, making him the seventh person executed this year by the state of Florida. On May 21st, 2026, the state of Florida strapped a 47-year-old man to a table at Florida State Prison in Stark and prepared to end his life by lethal injection.
His name was Richard Knight, and what he did on the night of June 28th, 2000, inside a quiet apartment was not something the state of Florida was willing to forget. He did not break in, he was already living there. He knew exactly where everything was. He knew exactly who was home. The jury that convicted him called it heinous, atrocious, and cruel. The judge agreed.
But here is what makes this case different from almost every other case on Florida’s death row. On the murder weapon, investigators found a fingerprint, a clear, usable fingerprint. It did not belong to Richard Knight. It did not belong to anyone connected to the case. And to this day, it has never been matched to a single person on Earth.
Knight went to his death maintaining he was not the only one responsible. A final appeal was still sitting before the United States Supreme Court. This is the full story. Welcome the Dark Verdict. If you are new here, hit that subscribe button right now. We cover the cases that demand to be told. Before we get into it, let’s talk about the victims.
Because to understand the full story, you need to know the lives of the victim. Odessia Stevens was 24 years old. She lived at Green Glades Apartments in Coral Springs, Florida, with her boyfriend Hans Peter Mullings and their 4-year-old daughter Hennesia. She was 6 weeks pregnant when she died. By every account, Odessia was a woman who held her family together.
She was protective. She was decisive. When she saw something threatening the safety of her home and her child, she acted. It was Odessia who made the call to ask Richard Knight to leave. She was not going to wait. Hans [snorts] Peter later stood in a courtroom and said of her, “She’s beautiful. I tell her she’s beautiful, >> [music] >> but I regret I didn’t tell her more, how much I love her.
” Their daughter, Hannesia, was 4 years old. She was the kind of child who turned ordinary moments into memories. Her father described how she would grab his hands, climb onto his shoes, and make him walk like a robot around the room. Hans Peter told the court, “We didn’t get to take her training wheels off her bicycle.
We didn’t take her floaties off.” Odessia’s mother, Eunice Baylan, said it simply, “Every day is like a new hurt.” One conversation, one ultimatum, that was all it took to set Richard Knight off. Richard Knight was born in Port Maria, Jamaica. No confirmed birth date, [music] no recorded name. As an infant, his biological mother left him outside a hospital and walked away.
He was taken into institutional care. Eventually, the Mullings-Knight family, also Jamaican, took him in. They raised him alongside Hans Peter Mullings. The two grew up calling each other cousins. To everyone around them, they were family. Prosecutor Tony Low said it plainly, “The Mullings were wonderful people and took him as if he was one of their own.
” Back in Jamaica, Knight was well regarded. Neighbors liked him. Local children looked up to him. Nothing about his early reputation suggested what was coming. Then the family moved to the United States. Knight came with them. In 2 and 1/2 years on American soil, he was convicted of indecent assault on a child under 16 and lewd and lascivious battery on a girl between 12 and 16.
At the time of the murders, he was in a relationship with a 14-year-old girl. Court records also note he was disruptive in the apartment. Loud music late at night, strangers coming and going while a 4-year-old was trying to sleep. Defense filings later described severe sexual abuse Knight suffered between the ages of 8 and 11, seizures, blackouts, head trauma, severe headaches so intense he would strike his own head against hard surfaces.
None of it was ever fully treated. None of it was ever fully placed before the jury. He had been given everything, a family, a home, a second chance. What he did with it is something that will stay with you long after this video ends. Richard Knight had been living in the Green Glades apartment for several months.
Hans Peter Mullings had brought him in, given him a roof, given him a place to land in a country that was not his own. But the arrangement was falling apart. Knight was disruptive. He brought people over late at night. He played loud music while a 4-year-old was trying to sleep. The home that Odessia and Hans Peter were trying to build for their family was being pulled in the wrong direction, and Odessia saw it clearly.
[music] Then came the relationship with the 14-year-old girl. That was the final line. Odessia and Hans Peter made their decision. Knight had to go. Prosecutor Tony Lowe later described it this way. He was being asked to move out because he was so disruptive. He was so disruptive, and they said we need you to move out.
And that date came, and the thanks he gave for being allowed to live in that apartment for several months was to murder Odessia and Hennessy. If you have made it this far, you already know this case is not straightforward. Drop a comment below. Do you think that fingerprint should have been tested before the execution? Let’s talk about it.
June 28th, 2000, Green Glades Apartments, Coral Springs, Florida. Hans Peter Mullings was at work. Odessia and Hennessy were home. Knight was there, too. That evening, Odessia and Knight argued about the move out. When it was over, Knight left. Odessia put Hennessy to bed. Then she went to bed herself. Knight came back.
According to court records, he went to the kitchen, he grabbed a set of knives, then he walked into the bedroom where Odessia and her 4-year-old daughter were sleeping. He started with Odessia. He stabbed her 21 times, mostly in the neck, also in the chin, the back, and the chest. Court records describe a bloody struggle.
She fought back. She had defensive wounds on her body and signs of strangulation around her neck. Hennessy was lying right beside her mother when it started. Odessia tried to crawl away. She made it from the bedroom into the living room. Knight followed her. He kept stabbing. Then he turned to Hennessy. The 4-year-old was stabbed and strangled.
She had wounds on her upper chest, her neck, and her hand. She had defensive wounds, the kind that show someone was trying to protect themselves. She tried to move. She never made it past the closet door. Multiple knives broke during the attack. Pieces of broken blades were found scattered around both bodies.
Just before midnight, the neighbor living directly above called 911. She had heard banging and crying coming from the apartment below. Coral Springs police officer Vincent Sachs arrived within minutes. He knocked. No one answered. He looked through a window and saw blood on the dining room carpet. He moved around the building to a sliding glass door leading into the main bedroom.
That is where he found Hennessy, curled in a fetal position near the closet door, surrounded by broken knife pieces. Officer Sachs later said, “I still see the child on the floor now, in the same way it was when I was there.” A second officer climbed through a window and found Odessia’s body in the living room. >> [music] >> In the time it took Sachs to circle the building, Knight had slipped out through a window.
The second officer spotted him near some bushes, roughly 100 yards from the building. He was wet. He was wearing dress clothes and shoes. He had scratches on his chest and shoulder and cuts on both hands. He told the officers he had been out for a jog. Officers brought Knight back to the apartment door and had him knock. Officer Sachs said, “He realized that there were too many of us already coming, so he turned around and walked back up like he could explain it all.
He knew she wasn’t going to come.” Sachs also said, “I still feel devastated because you weren’t there quick enough.” Knight was standing 100 yards from that apartment, soaking wet in dress clothes with cuts on his hands. And what he said to police that night, you won’t believe it. Knight did not get far.
He was taken in for questioning that same night. Prosecutor Tony Lowe later said, “He was a suspect from virtually right after the police discovered the homicide, but we wanted to make sure that we did a thorough investigation before we charged him.” The clothes Knight was wearing when officers found him had blood on them. More blood-stained clothing was found inside the apartment bathroom.
DNA testing would later confirm that the blood came from both Odessia and Hennessy. But Knight was not charged with the murders that night. He was already facing a separate charge, lewd and lascivious battery involving a minor girl. That charge was enough to hold him. He was taken to Broward County Jail and held there while investigators built the murder case around him.
He spent the next full year behind bars on that charge. Meanwhile, Hans Peter Mullings came home. The man Knight had called his cousin, the man whose family had taken Knight in, fed him, housed him, and treated him as one of their own, came home to find his partner and his 4-year-old daughter dead.
There was no insurance policy at the center of this case, no financial motive. Court records point to one thing only, rage. Knight had been told to leave, and he could not accept it. Odessia’s mother, Eunice Bellin, would later stand in a courtroom and say, “Every day is like a new hurt.” Investigators knew who they were looking at from the very first night, but knowing and proving are two different things.
The work began immediately. DNA testing of the blood on Knight’s clothing came back with a clear result. It belonged to both Odessia and Hennesia. The blood-stained clothes found in the apartment bathroom told the same story. Then came the detail that removed any remaining doubt about the struggle that had taken place.
Scrapings taken from underneath Odessia’s fingernails, collected because she had fought back, matched Richard Knight’s DNA. She had scratched him. His DNA was under her nails. Investigators also processed the fingerprint found on the broken knife blade. >> [music] >> It went through the Broward Sheriff’s Office fingerprint identification system. No match came back.
The print remained unidentified and was noted in the file. The blood mixture on the bathroom shower curtain, mostly Hennesia’s DNA with a secondary profile, was documented. No definitive explanation was ever established for the secondary profile. Knight, for his part, maintained that he was not the only person responsible, but he offered nothing investigators could verify.
No name. No account that held up. His behavior on the night of the murders, the wet clothes, the dress shoes, the story about jogging, the cuts on his hands, was all carefully documented. Every detail would later be placed before a jury. The investigation was thorough. It was also slow. A full year passed before Knight was formally charged with the murders.
In 2001, a Broward County Grand Jury indicted Richard Knight on two counts of first-degree murder. He had spent that entire year in custody on the sex offense charge. Investigators had DNA. They had blood. They had a witness who said Knight confessed, but what came out at trial about what happened inside that bedroom is something no one in that courtroom was prepared for.
The case had DNA. It had blood evidence. It had a man found 100 yards from the scene soaking wet with cuts on his hands telling officers he had been out for a jog. But prosecutors wanted more. They got it from inside Broward County Jail. While Knight was being held on the sex offense charge, he was placed in a cell with another inmate.
According to court records, Knight spoke. He told his cellmate what he had done. He confessed to the murders of Odessia Stevens and Hennessy Mullins. That cellmate came forward. He testified at trial. And just like that, Knight’s own words became one of the most damaging pieces of evidence against him. When prosecutors laid out their full case, it came together on multiple levels.
DNA scraped from underneath Odessia’s fingernails matched Knight. The blood on the clothes he wore that night came from both Odessia and Hennessy. The blood-stained clothing found in the apartment bathroom also tested positive for both victims. He was charged. He was held. And the case moved toward trial. But it would take five more years before Richard Knight sat in front of a jury.
Five years. And when that trial finally came, what happened inside that courtroom was something no one who was there would ever forget. The trial began in 2006, six years after the murders. Prosecutor Tony Lowe led the state’s case. He laid out the DNA evidence, the blood on Knight’s clothing, the implausible jog story, and the jailhouse confession.
The defense pushed back with the unidentified fingerprint arguing that at least one other person had been inside that apartment. The jury heard the argument. They rejected it. Then Hans Peter Mullins took the witness stand. Prosecutor Lowe asked him to describe the last morning he saw his daughter. What happened next stopped the trial.
Lowe later recalled, he He that Hennessy would say, “Robot Daddy, robot.” And she would climb on top of his shoes and hold his hands, and he would have to pretend to be a robot. And he was reenacting that for the jury. Hans Peter broke down completely. The trial was temporarily halted. On July 24th, 2006, the jury returned their recommendation. It was unanimous. Death.
The court described the murders as heinous, atrocious, and cruel. On March 28th, 2007, the judge made it official. Richard Knight was sentenced to death. At the sentencing hearing, Hans Peter stood before the court and spoke about the memories he would never get to make. Sneaking to the fridge with Hanacia in the middle of the night to eat cookie dough.
Her running to hug him the moment he walked through the door. All the questions she used to ask him. Questions he said made him feel like a king. He told the court, “We didn’t get to take her training wheels off her bicycle. We didn’t take her floaties off.” Odessia’s mother, Eunice Bayland, said, “Every day is like a new hurt.” Knight appealed.
He appealed in state court. He appealed in federal court. Every appeal was denied. His attorneys raised a significant legal argument. The 2016 United States Supreme Court ruling in Hurst versus Florida, which found that Florida’s capital sentencing scheme violated the Sixth Amendment. Under that scheme, judges, not juries, had the final say on death eligibility.
Florida courts responded by drawing a line at 2002. Anyone sentenced after that date received relief. Knight, sentenced in 2007, fell on the wrong side of that line, according to Florida courts. His attorneys argued the line was arbitrary and unconstitutional. Knight’s legal team also challenged Florida’s lethal injection protocol.
Specifically, a provision allowing an invasive surgical procedure called a venous cutdown to be performed without local anesthesia if the execution team could not establish intravenous access. Internal state records revealed a troubling pattern. Expired drugs used during executions, incorrect dosages prepared, poor record keeping, and repeated deviations from the state’s own written protocol.
On April 22nd, 2026, Governor Ron DeSantis signed Knight’s death warrant, his eighth of that year. The execution was scheduled for 6:00 in the evening on May 21st, 2026 at Florida State Prison in Starke. The Florida Supreme Court denied Knight’s final state appeals on the Friday before the scheduled execution.
A petition to the United States Supreme Court remained pending at the time of this recording. Richard Knight arrived on Florida’s death row in 2007. He stayed there for nearly 19 years. During those 19 years, he never stopped maintaining that he was not the only person responsible for what happened in Sibec Coral Springs apartment.
On the night of June 28th, 2000, his legal team never stopped fighting either. They filed motion after motion asking courts to run the unidentified fingerprint, the one found on the broken knife blade near Hennessy’s body, through modern national fingerprint databases. Databases that now hold millions more records than they did when the print was first processed in 2000.
Every request was denied. His attorneys put their argument on record. If there is a match, then the party should be made aware of it and investigate the matter further. If there is no match, then the unanswered doubts still linger about the true participants in these terrible murders while Mr. Knight’s sentence will be carried out. The courts did not move.
On April 22nd, 2026, Governor Ron DeSantis signed Richard Knight’s death warrant, his eighth of that year. Under Florida law, the governor holds sole authority to sign death warrants and grant clemency with no binding oversight from any independent body. Florida uses a three-drug protocol, a short-acting sedative, a paralytic agent, then a drug to stop the heart.
The execution was set for 6:00 in the evening on May 21st, 2026 at Florida State Prison near Starke. On the morning of the execution, Knight’s attorneys filed an emergency stay application. Hours earlier, the state of Tennessee had called off the execution of another death row inmate after prison personnel could not find a suitable vein for a required backup intravenous line.
Knight’s legal team pointed directly at that incident and warned that Florida’s own protocol authorized prison staff without medical training to perform an invasive surgical procedure on a prisoner’s veins without anesthesia if standard intravenous access could not be established. The courts declined to intervene.
Knight declined a final meal. He had no visitors. At 6:00 that evening, the curtain on the death chamber went up. Knight was already strapped to the table, arms extended, an intravenous line already in place. The warden asked if he had a final statement. Knight said, “I want to give thanks to Yahweh who is the most high.” The execution began immediately.
Knight closed his eyes. He barely moved as the drugs began flowing. After approximately 10 minutes, a medic was called in. At 6:13 in the evening on May 21st, 2026, Richard Knight was pronounced dead. He became Florida’s seventh execution of 2026, the 36th carried out under Governor DeSantis.
That same evening, the governor was not at the prison. He was not on a mandated open telephone line between his office and the execution chamber as required by law. He was in Washington, D.C. serving as the keynote speaker at a political event. Earlier that day, the United States Supreme Court had rejected Knight’s final appeal without comment.
Hans Peter Mullings witnessed the execution. Afterward, he spoke to reporters. He said, “The pain never leaves. We love them still and we can’t stop loving them. We miss them a lot.” Odessa’s sisters and mother did not attend. They released a statement. It read, “Words cannot express the profound sense of peace and finality we feel today.
While this does not fill the empty space in our hearts, the closing of this long painful chapter allows us to fully focus on honoring the beautiful lives of Odessa and Hennessy. They added one final line directed at Richard Knight, “May our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ grant you the mercy you failed to give our loved ones whom you so brutally took from us that night.
” Hans Peter Mullins lost everything in one night. He lost the woman he loved. He lost the daughter who used to climb onto his shoes and make him walk like a robot. He lost them both to a man he had called family. A man his own family had taken in from nothing. He stood outside that prison on May 21st, 2026 and said, “The pain never leaves.
” Odessa Stevens was 24 years old and 6 weeks pregnant when she died. Hennessy Mullins was 4 years old. She never got her training wheels taken off. She never got her floaties removed. The unidentified fingerprint on that knife blade went to the grave with Richard Knight, still unmatched, still unexplained. Florida’s courts refused at every stage to spend the time required to run a test that could have answered the question once and for all.
Whether that matters now, that is a question Florida has decided not to answer. Richard Knight was abandoned at birth, discarded so completely that he arrived in the world with no name and no known age. The Mullins family gave him both. They gave him a home. They gave him a place in their lives.
In the end, the only people he truly abandoned were them. What moment in this case hit you the hardest? Drop it in the comments below. I read every single one. If the story moved you, please share it. Odessa and Hannesia deserve to be remembered. And if you are not subscribed yet, hit that button. I will see you in the next one.
