John Eldon Smith (September 17, 1930 – December 15, 1983) was convicted of the murders of Ronald and Juanita Akins. He was executed by the state of Georgia via electric chair at the age of 53. He became the first person to be executed in Georgia since 1976 when the death penalty was reinstated. Background In 1956, shortly after graduating from high school, Rebecca Turpin married Joseph Ronald Akins, a technician and an engineer who worked for Southern Natural Gas. They had three daughters together by 1960. In 1973, Akins accused his wife of trying to murder him, leading to their divorce by the next year. Akins remarried to Juanita Knight, an elementary schoolteacher. Subsequent to the divorce, Rebecca relocated to North Miami Beach, Florida, with her daughters, where she met John Eldon Smith, an insurance salesman who was also a native of Miami. The two of them were soon married. Subsequently, Smith adopted the moniker 'Anthony Isalldo Machetti' (often shortened to Tony Machetti) because his wife thought the name had a 'mafia' ring to it. Rebecca changed her own name to Rebecca Akins Smith Machetti. Smith and his wife Rebecca had aspirations of living a life of luxury in North Miami Beach, with Smith adopting an identity as a hitman to fund the lifestyle. When Rebecca realized that her daughters were the beneficiaries to Ronald Akins's life insurance policy, she decided to murder him in order to cash in on it. Rebecca stood to gain $53,000 from Akins's murder. Murder and trial On the evening of August 31, 1974, Smith, alongside his wife Rebecca and one of Rebecca's former lovers, another former insurance salesman and a Fort Myers native named John Maree, lured 38-year-old Joseph Ronald Akins to a suburban subdivision under construction in Bibb County, Georgia, in Macon, under the guise of installing a television antenna. Juanita, who was 29 and had only been married to Akins for twenty days, accompanied him. Upon the victims' arrival, Smith and Maree ambushed them while wielding a shotgun and shot Ronald twice and Juanita once while the victims were still in the car, killing them. During the murders, Rebecca remained in Miami and did not accompany Smith and Maree to Macon. The bodies were discovered only hours later by a private pilot who happened to have been flying over the area. After committing the murders, Smith and Maree returned to North