Edward Covington: The Mother’s Day Massacre Case

Edward Allen Covington is a Florida death row inmate convicted of the Mother’s Day Massacre, the May 11, 2008 killings of his girlfriend Lisa Freiberg and her two young children, Zachary and Heather Savannah, inside their mobile home in Lutz, Florida. He pleaded guilty in October 2014, was sentenced to death by a Hillsborough County judge in May 2015, and has since lost both his direct appeal and his state postconviction challenge.

What Happened on Mother’s Day 2008

On Sunday, May 11, 2008, Covington killed 26-year-old Lisa Freiberg, her seven-year-old son Zachary, her two-year-old daughter Heather Savannah, and the family dog, Duke, inside the home the four shared in Lutz, an unincorporated community in Hillsborough County. He used two hammers and five knives.¹

Lisa Freiberg died from a neck wound that severed her trachea, esophagus, and carotid artery; she had been beaten first and had defensive wounds on her hands. Zachary died from five stab wounds to the neck and back after suffering skull fractures. Heather Savannah died from a cut to her neck after enduring fractured femurs, a deep facial laceration, scalping, and blunt force head trauma. After the killings, Covington dismembered and decapitated Heather Savannah and mutilated Zachary’s body.¹

Covington stayed in the home overnight. On Monday, May 12, Lisa’s mother came by to check on her daughter and called 911. Deputies found Covington hiding in a bedroom closet. He had swallowed Depakote and Seroquel and was taken to a hospital before being booked. The Florida Supreme Court later described the scene as a “charnel house of blood and body parts.”² Two days after the killings, Covington confessed to Hillsborough County detectives, telling them he had been “waiting to explode.”¹

He was charged with three counts of first-degree murder, three counts of abuse of a dead human body, and one count of cruelty to an animal.³

Who Edward Covington Was

Covington had met Lisa Freiberg on an online dating site in August 2007 and moved into her home about a month before the murders, in April 2008. During that short period he took on a parent-like role in the household: cooking, helping potty-train Heather Savannah, teaching Zachary, and disciplining the children while Lisa worked.¹

He also had a long history of violence. Expert testimony at sentencing described his breaking his sister’s nose and holding a gun to her head, knocking out his ex-wife’s teeth and breaking her wrist, assaulting another inmate during a prior incarceration, and killing and dismembering his ex-wife’s cats after she left him. That animal-cruelty incident had been reported to police fewer than three years before the murders, but the Hillsborough State Attorney’s Office did not pursue charges at the time.²¹ He was on felony probation when he killed the Freibergs.

At the time of the murders, Covington was smoking an estimated $200 to $300 worth of crack cocaine a day and admitted to smoking it in the hours before the killings.²

The Guilty Plea

The case took more than six years to reach trial. On October 23, 2014, the first day of testimony, Covington moved to change his plea to guilty and waive a jury for sentencing. After a competency evaluation, the trial court accepted his guilty pleas to all seven counts the next day. By pleading, he gave up an insanity defense and any right to a jury at the penalty phase.¹⁴

Hillsborough County Circuit Judge William Fuente became the sole decision-maker on whether Covington would live or die.⁵

Why He Was Sentenced to Death

The penalty phase, which began November 3, 2014, turned largely on Covington’s mental state. Defense experts diagnosed some combination of Bipolar Disorder I or II, intermittent explosive disorder, and alcohol and cocaine use disorders. Prosecution rebuttal experts rejected the bipolar diagnosis, one arguing it could not be reliably made while Covington had cocaine in his system, and instead diagnosed antisocial personality disorder, borderline personality disorder, psychopathy, sadistic traits, and substance use disorders. One state expert called him a “very, very bright man” who manipulated clinicians into false diagnoses.¹

The prosecution also introduced evidence that Covington had a track record of lying to mental-health providers. He told one evaluator, “You have to abuse and work the system,” to obtain medications, and he routinely stopped his prescriptions in favor of alcohol and crack.¹

On May 29, 2015, Judge Fuente imposed three death sentences, one for each murder, plus concurrent 15-year terms for each count of abuse of a dead body and five years for cruelty to an animal.²

The aggravators varied by victim. For Lisa’s murder, the court found the killing especially heinous, atrocious, or cruel, a prior violent felony conviction, and commission while on felony probation. For Zachary, the court cited the prior violent felony, the child’s age (under 12), probation status, and the child’s particular vulnerability because Covington had custodial authority in the home. Heather Savannah’s murder carried all of Zachary’s factors plus the heinous, atrocious, or cruel finding.¹

The judge gave “great weight” to bipolar disorder, intermittent explosive disorder, and substance abuse as mitigation, and “moderate weight” to the guilty plea and expressions of remorse, but concluded the aggravators outweighed the mitigation on all three counts.¹

The Appeals

On direct appeal, the Florida Supreme Court affirmed Covington’s convictions and sentences in Covington v. State, 228 So. 3d 49 (Fla. 2017), decided August 31, 2017.⁶ Covington argued the trial court wrongly found the children “particularly vulnerable” and wrongly applied the heinous, atrocious, or cruel aggravator to Heather Savannah’s killing because there was no proof the toddler stayed conscious during the attack. The court rejected both claims, citing his parent-like role in the household and the severity of the pre-death injuries along with his own admission that Heather Savannah was screaming during the attack.¹

Covington then filed a postconviction motion under Florida Rule of Criminal Procedure 3.851, arguing his lead penalty-phase attorney, Theda James of the Public Defender’s Office, had been constitutionally ineffective. He claimed she should have presented insanity testimony, obtained a PET scan to show brain impairment, and redacted disturbing material from his confession video.⁷

At the evidentiary hearing, James testified she had consulted 17 doctors and that only one, Dr. Valerie McClain, was prepared to opine that Covington was legally insane. Putting McClain on the stand would have let four prosecution experts testify he was sane, which she believed would have gutted the broader mental-health mitigation. Other experts told her a PET scan was unlikely to add anything to neuropsychological testing, and Covington’s weight of 350 to 375 pounds and the need to wean him off medications created medical risks. As for the confession video, the defense had deliberately introduced it unredacted to reframe details like the past animal mutilations as symptoms of mental illness.⁸

On August 25, 2022, the Florida Supreme Court affirmed the denial of postconviction relief, holding that James’s decisions were reasonable trial strategy and that Covington had not shown a reasonable probability of a different outcome. It also denied a separate habeas petition he had filed.⁷

The Freiberg Family

At sentencing, Lisa’s mother, Barbara Freiberg, said Covington “is going to get what he gave my children.” Lisa’s father, Keith Freiberg, spoke about the seven-year wait for a sentence. Her brother, Shawn Freiberg, said the family would remember Lisa, Zachary, and Savannah “in our hearts and in our heads.”⁴ The family, joined by advocate Julie Weintraub, called for laws that would let the public see a person’s history of violent behavior, arguing that if Lisa had known Covington had killed and dismembered animals, she would not have dated him.²

Where the Case Stands

Covington remains on Florida’s death row. His direct appeal and state postconviction proceedings are both over, with the convictions and death sentences affirmed. Available records do not confirm whether he has filed a federal habeas corpus petition, which would be the usual next stage after state remedies are exhausted. No death warrant has been reported for him as of mid-2026, a period during which Florida has been carrying out executions at an accelerated pace under Governor Ron DeSantis.⁹

1
Findlaw. Covington v. State
2
Orlando Sentinel. Florida Killer Gets Death Sentence for Gruesome Triple Murders on Mothers Day
3
The Ledger. Live-In Boyfriend Charged in Deaths of Lutz Woman, Children
4
WFLA. Edward Covington Sentenced to Death for Mothers Day Massacre
5
Spectrum Bay News 9. Penalty Phase Starts
6
vLex. Covington v. State, No. SC15-1252
7
Florida Supreme Court. Covington v. State, Nos. SC21-295, SC21-1077
8
Findlaw. Covington v. State, Nos. SC21-295, SC21-1077
9
Florida Today. Florida Executions List