With his execution set for today, convicted murderer Oba Chandler makes last meal request

STARKE, Fla. - Oba Chandler, the 65-year-old man who was convicted of killing an Ohio woman and her two teen daughters in the Tampa Bay area, is scheduled to die by lethal injection Tuesday at the Florida State Prison.

Chandler has been on death row for 17 years. For his last meal, he requested two salami and mustard sandwiches on white bread, one peanut butter and jelly sandwich on white bread and coffee, authorities said.

He was convicted in 1994 of killing 36-year-old Joan Rogers and her daughters, Christe and Michelle, who were 14 and 17 when they died. The three were on vacation in Florida -- their first ever -- and were on their way home to their small farming community of Wilshire, Ohio, when they met Chandler.

Authorities concluded that the women met Chandler when they stopped and asked him for directions to their Tampa-area motel. Chandler, who had ties to Ohio, sweet-talked the women into going on his boat on June 1, police said.

Once on the boat, detectives said Chandler bound the womens' arms and legs, tied concrete blocks to ropes around their necks, then threw them overboard. The three were found floating in Tampa Bay a few days later, naked from the waist down.

Detectives didn't crack the case for three years. Two things helped make the arrest: a tourist brochure with Chandler's handwriting that was found in Rogers' car, and the fact that Chandler looked similar to a composite sketch of a suspect wanted in an unsolved assault of a Canadian woman aboard a boat in Tampa Bay.

Authorities took the unusual step of publicizing the handwriting on the tourist brochure, putting it on a billboard to see if anyone recognized it.

One of Chandler's neighbors recognized the writing and called authorities.

Gov. Rick Scott signed Chandler's death warrant on Oct. 11. The Florida Supreme Court has affirmed a lower court decision to go ahead with the lethal injection.