Gulf Coast Confidential: The Cost of Killing
Hi, I’m Mollye Barrows and I’ve been reporting on stories from Northwest Florida for many years. Welcome to my investigative series, Gulf Coast Confidential, where I dive into some of the saltier stories that have surfaced here and all along the Gulf of Mexico.
This story is one of the first I covered when I first started reporting for Pensacola’s local ABC affiliate in 1998. I worked weekends and was assigned to talk to the broken-hearted husband of a poor woman who had been brutally murdered at work. They were newlyweds and for him and her family life would never be the same. They soon learned holding her killer accountable came with an enormous emotional toll. Here’s the Cost of Killing…
Cynthia "Cindy" Harrison had overcome her share of challenges. A petite young woman, she was handicapped and never grew taller than four-feet-seven-inches. She was also partially deaf and legally blind, but her family says she embraced life regardless and didn't let her disabilities hold her back. In 1998, the newly married 28-year-old was excited about starting a new life in Pensacola, Florida. She and her husband had recently moved from their home state of Louisiana, because Harrison was transferring to a Pensacola area Popeye's fast-food restaurant where she was promoted to a manager position. The couple loved Northwest Florida, with its emerald, green waters, sugar white beaches and laid-back lifestyle. They especially enjoyed camping and fishing in their free time.
On the morning of Saturday, May 2, 1998, Cynthia left their home to report for work at the Popeye's on 9-Mile Road. That was the last time her husband would see her alive. A delivery man would later discover her small body in a freezer. She had been gagged, bound with electrical tape, and brutally stabbed with a box cutter. The medical examiner found she had been sliced more than sixty times, so many times the coroner quit counting.
Cindy Harrison's family and friends were devastated by her death, a trauma compounded by the extremely violent way she was killed. Harrison’s co-worker, 19-year-old Timothy Hurst, was charged with her murder. The two were the only ones scheduled to be in the restaurant that morning at 8: 00 a.m., until another co-worker arrived at 9:00 a.m. Investigators said the restaurant employee had bound and gagged Harrison before stabbing her to death with the box cutter and leaving her body in the freezer. They say he walked out with nearly $2,000.
Hurst never confessed to the crime, but a friend of his testified Hurst told him prior to the crime that he planned to rob the restaurant that morning and after the gruesome assault, Hurst showed up at the friend’s house with the stolen money, Harrison’s wallet, and wearing bloody socks, shoes, and pants. Hurst’s friend said he told him he had killed “the manager.” At the time of his arrest Harrison’s parents, Norman and Constance Fuselier, prayed Hurst would pay for the crime with his life, but by the time the case was finally resolved they were simply praying for peace and an end to the criminal proceedings that forced them to relive the pain of losing their daughter over and over again.
They traveled from their New Orleans area home when Hurst was first tried and convicted of her murder in 2000. They were satisfied when the jury recommended the death penalty, but the sentence was overturned on appeal in 2011 after the Florida Supreme Court ruled that Hurst's attorney should have introduced evidence about his client's low IQ. In 2012, the penalty phase again ended with jurors recommending death with a vote of 7-5 and Judge Linda Nobles agreed. She ordered Hurst put to death, calling Harrison’s murder "conscienceless, pitiless and unnecessarily torturous," but again the case was far from over.
Hurst again appealed his sentence and this time it went all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court where in 2016, justices ruled that Florida’s death penalty process was unconstitutional. They found that it’s the jury, not the judge, who must impose capital punishment. The ruling forced Florida policymakers to adjust the state’s capital punishment system to give jurors more responsibility. Not only did the high court’s decision strike down Florida’s death penalty law but it also set the stage for Hurst’s third penalty phase which was held in 2020.
Once again, Harrison’s parents made the familiar trek from Louisiana to Florida. This time, the Fuseliers simply prayed for peace and a resolution to the case that had broken their hearts and torn their family apart. Hurst’s defense team argued several extenuating factors contributed to his actions, including his intellectual disability possibly brought on by fetal alcohol syndrome. When it came to decide his punishment the jury found that while a death sentence was appropriate, they did not unanimously recommend imposing it. Hurst was removed from Florida’s death row and given life in prison without the possibility of parole, a sentence the now 43-year-old man is currently serving at Marion C.I.
According to the website, Death Penalty Information Center, the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision forced Florida to amend its capital sentencing statute twice, first requiring that jurors unanimously determine any aggravating circumstances necessary to impose death and and that at least ten jurors agree to recommend death before judge could consider imposing a death sentence. Then the legislature changed it again to require a unanimous jury recommendation for death before a judge could consider imposing a death sentence. The U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in the Hurst case also resulted in the state of Delaware declaring its death sentencing procedure unconstitutional and clearing the state’s death row.
The Florida Supreme Court’s application of the Hurst decision continues to create controversy in the Sunshine State, including how it should be retroactively applied and what aggravating circumstances make a defendant eligible for the death penalty. While the legal ramifications of Harrison’s murder still ripple through the state’s criminal justice system, for Cindy’s family there is some sense of closure, even if the process to get there was emotionally brutal and forced them to reevaluate what getting justice for their daughter's death meant.
Connie Fusilier told reporters for Nola.com at the time: "The Bible says an eye for an eye and that was definitely what we wanted at the trial, but at this point in our lives, if it's life and he can't get out, I think we would be OK. I just want to get it all over with and never have to hear his name again.”
Thank you for joining me for the Cost of Killing, on Gulf Coast Confidential. You can follow this story and others in the series on Spotify and YouTube.