Gerald Stano
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
| Gerald Stano | |
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| Background information | |
| Birth name: | Gerald Eugene Stano (adopted at birth) |
| Born: | September 12, 1951 Schenectady, New York |
| Died: | March 23, 1998 (aged 46) |
| Cause of death: | Electric chair |
| Penalty: | Death |
| Killings | |
| Number of victims: | 41 |
| Span of killings: | late 1960s through 1980 |
| Country: | USA |
| State(s): | Florida, New Jersey |
| Date apprehended: | April 1, 1980 |
Gerald Eugene Stano (September 12, 1951 – March 23, 1998) was an alleged American serial killer.
He was born in Schenectady, New York. His given name at birth was Paul Zeininger. His natural mother neglected him to such an extent that when she finally gave him up for adoption when he was six months old, county doctors declared him unadoptable because he was functioning at what they described as "an animalistic level", even ingesting his own feces to survive. He was eventually adopted, however, by Norma Stano, a nurse, who renamed him Gerald Eugene Stano.
By all accounts, the Stanos were loving parents, but discipline problems nevertheless plagued their adopted son all his life. He earned C's and D's in all subjects in school (except music, which he excelled at); he lied compulsively and was once caught stealing money from his father's wallet to pay fellow members of the track & field team to finish behind him, so he would not be viewed as a complete failure. He graduated high school at the age of 21 and did not attend college.
Officially, Stano admitted that he began killing in the early 1970s, when he was in his 20s but also claimed to have begun killing in the late 1960s, at the age of 18. Several girls had gone missing in Stano's area of residence at that time, but since insufficient physical evidence was found when these claims were investigated almost 20 years later, Stano was never charged. He was most active in Florida and New Jersey. By his 29th birthday, he was in prison for murdering 41 women.
He was executed by electric chair in Florida on March 23rd, 1998. Stano's final statement claimed innocence and cast blame on the homicide detective who elicited most of his murder confessions, former Detective Sergeant Paul B. Crow, who was later Police Chief of Daytona Beach. In 1995, Crow was removed from office by a Grand Jury appointed by Governor Lawton Chiles citing corruption.
In 1993, the true crime book Blind Fury was published about Stano's life and crimes, ghostwritten by the mother of an Assistant State Attorney in Volusia County, Florida.
Controversy has long accompanied Gerald Stano's criminal history, with some believing that Stano was actually a 'serial confessor'; Stano's own arresting officer, Detective James Gadberry, challenged the decision to accept Stano's first confessions as valid and, in 1986, signed a legal affidavit stating unequivocably that Sergeant Paul Crow was responsible for "spoon feeding" Stano the intimate details of unsolved homicides, and that Stano merely parroted the information back to Crow. Numerous other veteran homicide officers also make detailed statements to the effect that, they too, witnessed Paul Crow 'helping' Stano to confess to crimes he hadn't committed.
Further controversy arose due to the fact that Stano, in spite of his 41 murder confessions, was brought to trial for just one homicide -- that of 17 year old Cathy Lee Scharf in Brevard County, Florida. A conspicuous lack of physical evidence corroborating Stano's own confessions made it virtually impossible for jurisdictions in Florida to prosecute, and Stano's previous convictions were exclusively the result of his own guilty pleas.
After an initial hung jury, Stano was convicted of Scharf's murder on the testimony of a jailhouse informant, Clarence Zacke, who was later discredited when another man, Wilton Dedge, was set free after serving 22 years on a rape conviction which hinged on identical testimony from Zacke.
During a secretly recorded conversation with a freelance reporter Arthur Nash in 1997, Clarence Zacke admitted that he'd lied regarding Stano and other defendants including Wilton Dedge. His testimony, Zacke confessed, had been fabricated with the assistance of two county prosecutors, who offered him incentives in exchange for testimony.
In late 2007, an FBI Lab Report surfaced which concluded that Stano could not have been the source of unidentified caucasian pubic hairs that were recoved from the body of Cathy Lee Scharf. The report was never presented as evidence by the Public Defender representing Stano. The source of the pubic hairs was not identified, and the hairs were destroyed shortly after Gerald Stano's execution in the Florida electric chair in 1998.
Gerald Stano is the subject of an upcoming book titled "No Trap So Deadly", currently in development by Peter Miller, President of PMA Literary & Film in New York City.
