Wade Steven Wilson, the Florida man nicknamed the “Deadpool Killer” because he shares a name with the Marvel antihero, remains on death row at Union Correctional Institution in Raiford. He is 32. He was sentenced to death twice in August 2024 for the murders of Kristine Melton, 35, and Diane Ruiz, 43, in Cape Coral on October 7, 2019.

Prosecutors said Wilson strangled Melton in her home after meeting her at a bar, stole her car, then lured Ruiz — a bartender and mother of two walking to work — into the vehicle. He strangled her, pushed her out and ran her over. He later told relatives he had killed “for the sake of killing.” A Lee County jury convicted him on June 12, 2024, and recommended death by votes of 9–3 and 10–2. Circuit Judge Nicholas Thompson imposed two death sentences, calling the crimes heinous, atrocious and cruel. Wilson showed little emotion in court. He is appealing. No execution date has been set.

What has kept the case in public view is the volume of mail that followed him. In the month after the guilty verdict alone, the Lee County Sheriff’s Office recorded 3,903 electronic messages, 65 paper letters and 754 photographs. Officials rejected 163 photos as inappropriate. Women wrote to the judge asking him to spare Wilson’s life. Some pledged devotion. Fundraisers in his name raised tens of thousands of dollars. A 2026 Paramount+ documentary, Handsome Devil: Charming Killer, showed video calls in which admirers spoke of marriage and children while he was on trial for killing two women.

Criminologists interviewed for that film described a familiar pattern: some correspondents are drawn to men who cannot leave prison, and some have histories of abuse. Prosecutors have called the attention grotesque. Families of Melton and Ruiz have said the years since the murders have been agony and that they do not want Wilson treated as a celebrity.

Wilson now spends most of each day in a small cell on Florida’s male death row. Mail is screened. Contact with the outside world is tightly limited. The letters have not stopped the legal process, and they have not changed the sentences. They have only underlined a split that still follows the case: two women dead, a condemned man isolated, and a stream of messages that treat him as something other than what a jury found him to be.

Sources
Wikipedia: Wade Wilson (criminal); New York Post; Newsweek; Fox News; USA TODAY; People; The Independent; Mamamia; Lee County Sheriff’s Office figures reported 2024.