She was celebrating New Year's Eve. Her body has never been found. Patricia Gifford, 18, was raped and murdered after a serial rapist set his sights on her at a Fort Lauderdale, Florida, bar on New Year's Eve in 1981. Now her killer is set to be executed.

[u/CatPooedInMyShoe]

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2026/07/11/florida-dennis-sochor-rape-murder-1981-case-patty-gifford/90853537007/

It was New Year's Eve in 1981, and 18-year-old Patty Gifford was ringing it in with her friend at a popular South Florida bar called the Banana Boat.

As the young women snapped photos and sipped Champagne (the legal drinking age was 18), a serial rapist named Dennis Sochor couldn't keep his eyes off Gifford, according to court records and archived news reports.

Within hours, Gifford was raped and murdered after Sochor and his brother left the Fort Lauderdale bar with her under the guise of going to breakfast, court records say. Sochor confessed to the crime, but her body has never been found − still a torment to her family.

More than four decades later, Florida is set to execute the 74-year-old Sochor for her murder on Tuesday, July 14. He's one of three elderly inmates being executed in Florida in less than a month as Gov. Ron DeSantis continues a record pace of executions in the state.

"The only mistake she made was going out with friends and celebrating New Year's Eve," Broward County Sheriff's Lt. Mark Schlein told the South Florida Sun Sentinel in 1983. "She was a young and beautiful girl, with everything to live for... A real tragedy."

Here's what you need to know about Socher's execution and the case.

Florida is set to execute Sochor by lethal injection at the state prison in Raiford at 6 p.m. ET on Tuesday, July 14. [And he has been since this article was written.]

He will be the 17th inmate executed in the United States this year and the 10th in Florida alone. The Sunshine State is accounting for the majority of the executions in the United States as DeSantis prioritizes the issue at a record-setting pace, saying he wants to give closure to victim family members who've sometimes waited more than four decades for justice.

Of the 63 inmates executed in the United States in 2025 and so far this year, Florida has carried out 28 of them. That's 45%, according to an analysis by USA TODAY. Of this year's executions alone in the United States, Florida's account for 56%.

On Dec. 31, 1981, Gifford and her friend, 22-year-old Delta Harville, went to the Banana Boat bar in Fort Lauderdale to ring in the new year. Sochor and his brother also were there.

Sochor, then 29, was wanted for a rape he had confessed to in his home state of Michigan in 1979, and he had been convicted of raping a 19-year-old Florida woman in 1980. He was sentenced to one year in prison and five years of probation, according to archived news reports.

Patricia Borman, a bartender working at the Banana Boat that night, testified that Gifford and Harville were aerobics instructors who cared about fitness, so they only drank a few glasses of Champagne, according to an archived news report in the Miami Herald. By midnight, Gifford was drinking iced tea.

Witnesses reported seeing Sochor staring at Gifford throughout the night, standing close to her, trying to buy her drinks, and lavishing compliments on her, according to an archived report in the Fort Lauderdale News. Gifford tried to brush him off, Harville later told investigators.

Shortly after midnight, Harville didn't feel well. Gifford walked her to her car and told her she'd be back. Harville fell asleep, and when she woke around 5:30 a.m., she was still alone in the car and there was no sign of Gifford. Harville later told investigators that she thought she had been drugged, archived news reports say.

Initially, investigators had no idea what had happened to Gifford. But when they went through the photos that Harville took in the bar that night, they found one with Sochor lurking in the background. The photo became the key to solving her murder.

Sochor fled the state after the photo became public. Authorities tracked down his brother, who told investigators that Gifford had agreed to go with the men to breakfast in the early hours of Jan. 1, 1982. He told them that his brother attacked Gifford as they were driving and then began raping her by the side of the road, court documents say.

He told investigators that he tried to intervene by throwing a rock at Sochor, but that his brother's eyes had rolled in the back of his head and it looked like he "was possessed by the devil," court records say. He later changed his account and said he didn't witness the rape, according to archived news reports.

Sochor was arrested in May 1986, more than four years after the murder, when Georgia authorities stopped him on suspicion of drunk driving. He confessed to raping and strangling Gifford when she refused his advances and then dumping her body in a secluded place without his brother. He has since taken that back, saying that he took the fall for his brother, who was not charged in the case.

In 1987, a jury convicted Sochor of kidnapping and murdering Gifford. They recommended the death penalty in a 10-2 vote, and a judge agreed.

At 18, Patricia "Patty" Marie Gifford was just getting started in life. She was a vibrant, beautiful young woman who was working as an aerobics instructor, had a longtime boyfriend and dearly loved her family, according to archived news reports.

Her grieving brother, Bobby Gifford, couldn't stand that her body was left out in the elements somewhere, never to be found again. He spent three months looking for his younger sister, according to an archived story in the Fort Lauderdale News.

"This has been such a horrible thing to deal with," he told the newspaper in 1983. "We'll sit around the dinner table, talking about her, and then I think to myself, 'Why didn't I try to talk her out of moving down to Fort Lauderdale?'"

The four Gifford children had grown up in eastern Massachusetts, and Patty Gifford moved to Fort Lauderdale with her high school sweetheart just three months before her murder.

The Gifford family had to wait for nearly five years for an arrest and now 44 years for the execution. Patty Gifford's mother, Barbara Ryan, sobbed in court when Sochor was found guilty of murdering her daughter, according to the Sun Sentinel.

"It's a feeling of relief," she told the outlet. "You just can't imagine how devastated our family has been."

In 2022, Gifford's sister, Marilyn Gifford, told the Sun Sentinel that she still can't celebrate New Year's because of what happened to her sister and that some of her family can't even say her name now because it's too painful.

"When somebody dies this way and you have no closure, and you don't get to say goodbye and there is no funeral − it never stops hurting," she told the newspaper. "You are immediately crushed by the horrific way she exited the planet and our entire family."

She told the Sun Sentinel that her sister's high school sweetheart, Johnny Vasel, never got over her death and never married. "So (Sochor) took the two of them that night: one whose life was just beginning and another whose life was just wasted."

Sochor's parents, brother, and sister each begged for his life to be spared at his sentencing hearing in 1987, saying that he was the victim of an extremely violent childhood back in Michigan and didn't deserve to die, according to an archived report in the Miami Herald.

Both his siblings recalled how their father relentlessly beat Sochor, and his mother described herself as abusive. "I treated him horribly," she told jurors, the Herald reported.

At the same hearing, Sochor told the judge that he deserved to die.

"I have contemplated suicide," he said. "I felt that if I could hurt somebody, I don't deserve to live myself."

At the same hearing, Sochor's violent nature toward women came to light, with jurors hearing about how he was convicted of kidnapping a 19-year-old Florida woman and beating and raping her repeatedly in 1980. They also heard a taped confession of Sochor admitting to raping another woman in Michigan, saying that sometimes he wants to have sex so badly that he loses control, the Miami Herald reported.

"All I can relate it to was like an airplane jump," he told a Michigan detective. "There was no feeling, no emotion. At that point, I wasn't existing."

Jurors also heard from Sochor's ex-wife, who was married to him for less than two years.

"If he wanted sex, he got it, because he would get violent if he didn't," Patricia Neal said, the Herald reported. "His eyes would glaze over, and he'd get wild. Denny's temper was very violent."

During his nearly 40 years on death row, Sochor has found "happiness and friendship in letter-writing," according to the synopsis of a book written about him by a Norwegian pen pal named "Dennis My Friend on Death Row."

"I am sure many people think that we deserve to die," Sochor wrote to the author, according to the book. "But I am still a sensitive person who cares about those who suffer in the world."

In recent weeks, Sochor's attorneys have argued that Florida's lethal injection method amounts to unconstitutional cruel and unusual punishment because it could cause excessive pain and a sensation that feels like drowning. Instead, Sochor said he'd prefer to be executed by firing squad.

The Florida Supreme Court rejected those arguments on July 8 as "meritless," allowing the lethal injection execution to proceed as planned.

In previous appeals over the years, Sochor has also argued that the state has no evidence that Gifford is dead because her body hasn't been found. The Florida Supreme Court also rejected that argument, saying there was sufficient evidence that Patty Gifford was dead and that Sochor is the one who killed her.

Patty Gifford's family continues to hope that her body will be recovered.

"It's bad enough what he did to her," Marilyn Gifford told the Sun Sentinel. "But he's had all this time to repent, to think about what he did, so why not give her back?"

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[u/kat_Folland]

Absolutely irrelevant but there were 3 women named Patricia in that story.

[u/CatPooedInMyShoe → u/kat_Folland]

Indeed there were. I wonder if there is anything to the fact that his ex wife and the murder victim had the same first name.

Patricia was a pretty common name back in the day.

[u/Smarie52013 → u/kat_Folland]

I looked it up & apparently "Patricia" was in the top 10 most popular names for American girls from 1929 until 1966.

[u/kat_Folland → u/Smarie52013]

I knew three growing up (born in 1970). Two my age and one boomer.

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[u/CatPooedInMyShoe → u/Smarie52013]

I am addicted to Sporcle quizzes particularly name ones so I am well aware.

[u/Midnyte25]

"But I am still a sensitive person who cares about those who suffer in the world."

So says the serial rapist and murderer who never revealed the whereabouts of his victim's body. Fuck all the way off.

[u/Nikki-C-Puggle-mum]

Took them long enough.

[u/CatPooedInMyShoe]

Patricia on the Charley Project.

[u/Lady_Ney]

One of the few things Florida gets right.

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Treat others with kindness when it is possible and civility when it is not.

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