Governor Signs Execution Warrant for Man Who Killed Cop

A Bedminster man is set to be executed for the murder of a Bucks County police officer.

Gov. Tom Corbett signed a warrant of execution for 47-year-old Robert Anthony Flor on Monday. The execution for Flor is set for December 4, according to the Bucks County District Attorney’s Office.

Flor shot Newtown Borough police officer Brian S. Gregg dead in 2005 while at St. Mary Medical Center in Middletown. Flor took the gun from Newtown patrolman James Warunek. Gregg, Warunek and hospital employee Joseph Epp were all shot. A large manhunt ensued after and Flor was found hiding in a car on the hospital grounds. Flor was transported to the hospital following his arrest for DUI and punching his girlfriend.

Flor, a Falls Township native, pleaded guilty to first-degree murder in October 2006 and also entered pleas of nolo contendere to attempted murder in the shootings Warunek and Epp, as well as to robbery and all other remaining counts.

This is not the first time Corbett has signed an execution warrant for Flor. Press reports show Corbett signed an execution warrant for the Falls man in 2011, but the order was stayed because Flor had not yet exhausted all his appeals.

The 47 -year- old has been in Bucks County court numerous times since his 2006 guilty plea to try to fight his death sentence. Flor’s attorneys have sought to have his death sentence overturned because they say he is intellectually disabled. A Supreme Court ruling found that intellectually disabled people could not be executed.

When the fatal shooting happened, Flor was revealed to have had several run-ins with Falls and Middletown police.

Flor reportedly shouted “Die, pig, die!” during the shooting.

Gregg, who was born in Bristol Borough and raised in Levittown, was just days shy of his two-year anniversary on the small Newtown police force. Prior to becoming a police officer, he was employed as a carpenter.

Prior to Flor’s 2006 trail, Bucks County prosecutors filed the required notice of intent to seek the death penalty as a result of the following aggravating circumstances:

• -the victim was a police officer killed in the performance of his duties
• -the defendant committed the killing during the perpetration of a felony
• -the defendant knowingly created a grave risk of death to another person in addition to the victim of the offense
• -the defendant had a significant history of felony convictions involving the use or threat of violence to the person.

Flor is one of five people on death row for crimes committed in Bucks County. The others are: Frank Chester (1989), Robert Diamond (2009), Richard Laird (1989), and Alfonso Sanchez  (2008).

Capital punishment was reinstated in Pennsylvania in 1978 and in November of 1990 Governor Robert P. Casey signed a measure changing the method the state used on death row inmates from electrocution to lethal injection, according to state records.

Since 2007, eight people in Pennsylvania have been sentenced to death, state documents say.

Three people have been executed since 1978 in the commonwealth with the last being in 1999, state records show. Philadelphia torture killer Gary Heidnik abandoned his appeals and asked  for death. The last person put to death against his will in Pennsylvania was in 1962. Elmo Smith of Montgomery County was electrocuted just 18 months after he was convicted of murdering and raping a schoolgirl.

According to the Pennsylvania Department of Corrections, there are currently 184 death row inmates throughout the state prison system.

Bucks County prosecutors are currently seeking the death penalty against Bristol Township resident Marcel Johnson, who is accused of killing Ebony Talley and her 4-year-old daughter in 2013.

Flor is currently awaiting a hearing pursuant to the Post Conviction Relief Act, according to the Bucks County District Attorney’s Office.
LevittownNow.com Publisher/Editor Jeff Bohen contributed to this report.