Once Crow learnt of the victim’s identity, he brought Stano back to the interrogation room and began questioning him. Stano initially denied killing the young woman, but with each hour that passed he began to crumble. In the end, he confessed and signed a written confession to the murder of Toni Van Haddocks. Crow began to wonder how many more women Stano might have murdered and started to search through all the unsolved cases dating back to 1975. The list soon began to grow.
Sixteen-year-old Linda Hamilton was found dead on 22 July 1975, near an old Native American burial ground. She had last been seen walking down Atlantic Avenue. In January 1976, the body of 24-year-old Nancy Heard was found near Bulow Creek Road, just north of Ormond Beach. Her body was posed and covered with tree branches. She had last been seen hitchhiking, also on Atlantic Avenue. Ramona Neal was another possible victim. She was an 18-year-old girl from Georgia, who was found in Tomoka State Park in May 1976. Her body had also been concealed with branches.
It is a known fact that some serial killers will roam hundreds of miles to find a victim and Crow began to wonder just how many counties Stano might have travelled through in search of his prey. After going through all of the local files, he started to look into nearby counties. In Bradford, 100 miles west of Daytona, the body of a young woman was discovered in a swampy area. She had last been seen in Daytona Beach, near Atlantic Avenue. The crime scene was similar to the others, including the now all-too-familiar branches used to conceal the body. In the small town of Titusville, 50 miles south of Brevard County, another young woman was discovered. She had last been seen hitchhiking along Atlantic Avenue, in Daytona Beach. She was found posed and covered in brush.
While looking through Stano’s past, Crow learnt that Stano had lived in various parts of Florida since the early 1970s and briefly in New Jersey. Crow contacted the police department in Stuart, Florida, and learnt that they had several unsolved murders of young women in that area during the mid-1970s. Crow then contacted officials in New Jersey and learnt of at least two similar murders that took place in the early 1970s. All of the victims were young women, posed and covered with tree branches. Detective Crow knew it was not going to be easy getting Stano to admit to another murder, though, let alone a dozen or so more.
Finally, with the weight of evidence amassing against him, Stano decided that he would have to arrange a plea-bargain in order to save his own life. Prosecutors had the confessions, but they did not want to risk a long court battle and agreed that if Stano pleaded guilty to the murders of Mary Carol Maher, Toni Van Haddocks and Nancy Heard, and that his confessions in the other cases would be read into the court record, he would receive three consecutive life sentences, each carrying a mandatory minimum of 25 years behind bars. Stano agreed and, on 2 September 1981, the court accepted the plea-bargain and imposed the three life sentences.
While serving his sentence, Stano enjoyed bragging about his crimes and revelled in all the publicity he received while in the county jail. However, when he was moved to a state prison, no one seemed to care about him. Stano decided to contact Crow and admit to further murders, even if it meant he could face the death penalty.
During the interviews with Crow that followed, Stano confessed to the murders of 17-year-old Cathy Lee Scharf, of Port Orange, Florida, whose decomposed remains were discovered on 19 January 1974, in a ditch near Titusville, Florida; 24-year-old Susan Bickrest, of Daytona Beach, Florida, whose body was found floating in Spruce Spring Creek in December 1975; and 23-year-old Mary Muldoon, of Ormond Beach, Florida, whose body was discovered in a ditch in November 1977. As Stano recalled each murder, Crow was awestruck at the sheer magnitude of the crimes. How could such a young man have committed so many murders in such a short period of time?
Stano went on to confess to the murders of 19-year-old Janine Ligotino and 17-year-old Ann Arceneaux, whose bodies were discovered in 1973 near Gainesville, Florida; 17-year-old Barbara Ann Baur, whose body was found in 1974 near Starke, Florida, and an as-yet-unidentified woman, who was found in Altamonte Springs, Florida, in 1974. In addition there were 34-year-old Bonnie Hughes, 18-year-old Diana Valleck, 21-yearold Emily Branch, 17-year-old Christina Goodson, 23-year-old Phoebe Winston, 18-year-old Joan Foster and 12-year-old Susan Basile.
As their meeting was about to end, Stano remembered two others: 35-year-old Sandra DuBose, whose body was discovered on a deserted road near Daytona Beach in 1978, and 17-year-old Dorothy Williams, whose body was discovered in a drainage ditch near Atlantic Avenue in 1979. Stano assured Crow that he had now confessed to every murder he had ever committed.
On 8 June 1983, Stano entered guilty pleas in the murders of Susan Bickrest and Mary Muldoon. He waived his right to a hearing and Judge Foxman sentenced him to death. Stano showed no emotion as the sentence was read and was quickly escorted back to Florida State Prison. In September 1983, Stano was convicted of Cathy Lee Scharf’s murder. The state allowed Stano’s taped confession as evidence, in which he admitted to picking up Scharf while she was hitchhiking and then murdering her. The jury convicted Stano of first-degree murder and recommended death. The trial court found four aggravating factors: he had a previous conviction for a violent felony; the murder was committed during a kidnapping; the murder was heinous, atrocious, or cruel; and the murder was cold, calculated and premeditated. The trial court sentenced Stano to death, and two years later his conviction and sentence were affirmed on appeal.
During the next three years, Stano went on to confess to more murders. It is unknown how many he actually committed and some began to wonder if he was confessing to some he had only heard about through the grapevine. Police continued to collect names, but no further charges were ever brought.
On 22 May 1986, the governor of Florida signed Stano’s first death warrant. After many stays of execution and appeals, Stano was finally executed in the electric chair on 23 March 1998. Gerald Stano said nothing to the guards as they escorted him down the path to the death chamber. As the guards strapped him into the chair, Raymond Neal waited anxiously behind the witness-viewing window, approximately 3ft away from the man who had murdered his sister. Neal later told reporters. ‘The power slammed into him and he jerked as much as he could and that was it. I saw the life going out of his hands. I felt like a ton of bricks had been lifted off my back. Afterward, me and my brothers smoked cigars to celebrate. I can’t express the feeling. I felt so much better. I’m so glad Florida has the guts to keep the electric chair. At least there was a split-second of pain. With lethal injection, you just go to sleep.’ In the end, Gerald Stano had confessed to the murders of 41 women. Several of the victims have yet to be identified. Most police officials now consider the cases closed.
WILLIAM SUFF, AKA THE RIVERSIDE PROSTITUTE KILLER
Very little is known about William Suff’s early life. According to classmates at school, Suff (b. 1950) was a friendly person. However, the image of the friendly personality was brought crashing down in 1974 when Suff, then 24, and his former wife were arrested and later convicted of beating their two-year-old daughter to death. Suff was sentenced to 70 years in prison, but earnt his parole in March 1984, after serving only 10 years. His wife served a mere 20 months before having her conviction overturned.
When paroled, Suff appeared to revert to his old self. Friends described him as a mild-mannered man, who kept to himself and spent his free time writing stories and cookery books. On at least one occasion, his chilli recipes won him first prize at a local cooking competition. However, this mild-mannered man had a dark secret, which was soon to surface.
On 30 October 1986, a local man was wending his way through the streets of an industrial estate a short distance from Riverside, California, near Agua Mansa Road and Market Street, when he noticed the body of a young woman wedged in a drainage ditch. The woman was lying on her back, her blouse and shorts ripped to shreds. She was covered in blood and it looked as though her genital area had been mutilated. The young woman was later identified as 23-year-old Michelle Yv
ette Gutierrez, a former resident of Corpus Christi, Texas. A post-mortem revealed she had suffered severe trauma to the anal and vaginal areas and multiple stab wounds were discovered on her face, chest and buttocks. Ligature marks on her neck suggested that she had been strangled as the gruesome mutilations took place. Police had a brutal murder on their hands and few clues to follow.
On 11 December, police were called to the scene of another murder. The victim was 24-year-old Charlotte Jean Palmer, a transient from Anna, Illinois. Her body was discovered near Highway 74 in Romoland, approximately 25 miles away from the Gutierrez murder site, and it was not immediately apparent whether the two deaths were related. To make matters worse, Palmer’s body was so badly decomposed the coroner was unable to determine the cause of death.
In January 1987, the naked and mutilated body of 37-year-old Linda Ann Ortega was found along a dirt road in Lake Elsinore. She had been dead for at least three days and high levels of alcohol and cocaine were found in her blood. Ortega, a part-time fast-food worker, had convictions for drugs and prostitution.
Police now had three similar murders and were beginning to wonder if they had a serial killer on their hands. Their worst fears were confirmed on 2 May 1987, when the body of 27-year-old Martha Bess Young was discovered in a ravine not far from the Ortega murder site. She was discovered naked and in a spread eagled position. As with Ortega, she had convictions for prostitution and high levels of drugs were found in her body. The County Coroner later determined that she had been dead for approximately three weeks and had died from a combination of being strangled coupled with a lethal dose of amphetamines that had been administered to her.
It was almost two years before the killer’s evil deeds surfaced again. This might have been due to the fact that the killer had found a new location or locations for disposing of the bodies or perhaps another reason forced him to stop temporarily.
Regardless, by 1989, two years since his last known murder, the killer had struck again. On 27 January 1989, the body of 37-year-old Linda Mae Ruiz, a known prostitute, was discovered on the beach of Lake Elsinore. The victim’s head was buried in the sand and the post-mortem revealed large quantities of alcohol in the blood. Sand was found in the victim’s throat and the cause of death was listed as acute asphyxiation. Five months later, on 28 June 1989, the body of 28-year-old Kimberly Lyttle was discovered in Cottonwood Canyon. Again, she was a known prostitute and drug user. Her bruised and battered body was taken to the County Coroner’s office, where a post-mortem revealed the presence of alcohol and drugs. The official cause of death was listed as asphyxiation. A forensic examination revealed several pubic hairs and fibres, unrelated to the victim herself, on her body. This evidence alone told them very little about the killer, but if a suspect were to emerge, the samples could play a major role in identifying him. On 11 November 1989, the bludgeoned and mutilated body of 36-year-old Judy Lynn Angel was found near Temescal Canyon Road, just northwest of Lake Elsinore. She had arrests for prostitution and possession of drugs. During the post-mortem, the coroner discovered several deep gashes on the victim’s hands. The injuries appeared to be defence wounds, which meant she had tried to fend off her attacker. The victim had also suffered several blows to the face, which ultimately crushed her skull.
On 13 December 1989, a month after the discovery of Judy Lynn Angel’s remains, the body of 23-year-old Christina Leal was found in Quail Valley. Unlike previous victims, she was fully clothed and did not appear to have suffered serious abuse or mutilation prior to death. Like the other victims, though, she had previous arrests for drugs and prostitution. A crime scene examination revealed tyre tracks and the police made several impressions that could later be used to compare with a suspect’s vehicle. The victim’s hands were encased in paper bags to preserve anything that might be under the nails.
Later that day, during the victim’s autopsy, the County Coroner discovered that the victim had been stabbed directly in the heart. Due to the victim’s clothing, the wound was not immediately noticeable, which suggested the killer had dressed her after the murder. The knife wound, while potentially fatal, was not the immediate cause of death. The victim had died as a result of asphyxiation by strangulation. Several pubic hairs and fibres were also removed from the body, which would later be matched to the ones discovered on Kimberly Lyttle. Then, as the coroner inspected the victim’s genital area, he made a startling discovery. The killer had pushed a light bulb up into the victim’s womb, something no investigator had ever seen done before. The killer’s crimes were escalating. The murders were becoming more perverse and the time between the killings was getting shorter. There was no doubt that he would strike again, but without a single suspect to pursue it was impossible to know where to focus the investigation.
On the morning of 18 January 1990, in Lake Elsinore, a jogger had stumbled upon the half-naked body of a female, whom police soon identified as a 24-year-old prostitute named Darla Jane Ferguson. She had died as a result of strangulation, which was so severe that she had nearly bitten off her own tongue. As with the previous crime scene, police found tyre tracks and made several impressions. These were later matched to those taken from other crime scenes.
Less than a month later, on 8 February 1990, farmers working at an orchard in High Grove discovered the naked body of 35-year-old Carol Lynn Miller. Another known prostitute and drug addict, Carol had gone missing one month earlier. The cause of death was listed as multiple stab wounds to the chest and asphyxiation. The coroner also made note of a wound near Carol’s right nipple. Pubic hairs were discovered on the victim, which were later matched to the ones on file from the previous murders.
On the afternoon of 6 November 1990, a man working at an industrial plant on Palmyrita Avenue in northeast Riverside, not far from the location where Miller was found, discovered the naked and mutilated corpse of a female hidden under some tree branches. This was by far the killer’s most brutal crime yet. The victim, 33-year-old Cheryl Coker, a prostitute and drug user, had suffered severe mutilations to her body and, most shocking of all, the killer had removed her right breast and placed it next to her. Police found shoe prints at the scene and took several photographs and impressions before transporting the body to the mortuary. It was later determined that the victim had died as a result of strangulation.
On 21 December 1990, a handyman was emptying dustbins at a factory complex on Iowa Avenue when he discovered the naked and carefully posed body of a young woman. Police identified the victim as 27-year-old Susan Tenfold, a local prostitute and drug addict. There was no evidence of mutilation and the County Coroner later determined that she died of strangulation.
Forty-two-year-old Kathleen Leslie Milne was discovered on 19 January 1991. A passing motorist spotted her body alongside the road northwest of Lake Elsinore. According to the post-mortem report, she had been rendered unconscious by several blows to the head and then strangled. She had been dead less than 24 hours. As the killer’s body count continued to rise, so did the demands for justice. There was public outrage about the faceless killer. People were claiming that the police were not putting much effort into the investigation due to the victims being prostitutes. In an effort to find the killer, all available law enforcement personnel began combing the area. At one point, the manhunt grew to include more than 20 law-enforcement agencies. Regardless of the spotlight on him, the killer was undaunted and continued to elude identification and capture.
On the morning of 27 April 1991, a tramp stumbled on the body of 24-year-old Cherie Michelle Payseur, a part-time maid and prostitute. Her lifeless body had been left in a flowerbed in a bowling alley car park. She had been raped and strangled and was found with a toilet plunger protruding from her vagina. On 4 July 1991, picnickers near Railroad Canyon Road discovered the remains of 37-year-old Sherry Ann Latham, a known prostitute and drug user. Her hand was wrapped around some nearby branches, suggesting that she was still alive when the killer left. She had made one last feeble attempt to craw
l away before succumbing to her injuries. The post-mortem revealed that she had been strangled. Feline hairs were discovered on her corpse. According to her friends, she did not own a cat, leading police to wonder if her killer did.
Just when it seemed the police were never going to get a break, they had some luck. On 15 August 1991, a man driving a grey van picked up a prostitute near the University of California. The woman later told police that everything was going fine at first, but then the man suddenly became angry and began assaulting her for no reason. Luckily, the girl managed to jump out of the vehicle and run down the street. The man quickly sped off, but stopped at a nearby corner and picked up the girl’s friend, a 23-year-old prostitute named Kelly Marie Hammond. Later that same night, investigators found Hammond’s naked body near the intersection of Sampson Avenue and Delilah Street. The victim had been strangled and her body was still warm. Police had just missed the killer they so desperately sought. The woman who escaped the killer’s clutches was able to help investigators create a composite sketch of the suspect and his vehicle. Police quickly released details of the van and the driver to the newspapers and television.
On 13 September 1991, a construction worker found the body of 30-year-old Catherine McDonald, a known drug user and prostitute, near a building site in Tiscany Hills. Police first thought the murder might be unrelated to the others. The victim was African-American, whereas all the previous victims had been Caucasian. However, on closer inspection they noticed that the victim’s right breast had been removed. But, unlike Cheryl Coker’s mutilation, it was not lying next to the victim’s corpse. Apparently the killer had taken it with him. Investigators surmised that the killer had heard the recent broadcasts stating that the killer was probably a white male who preyed exclusively on white women. The murder of a black woman was to show the media he had no fear.
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