March 23rd 1998: Gerarld Stano dies by electrocution.

Gerald Eugene Stano was actually born by the name of Paul Zeininger in Schenectady, New York 1951. His mother was unfortunately unable to look after him properly. At six months old his mother brought him to a local orphanage. He was severely malnourished and it is thought that he was being fed his own faeces to survive. Staff at the orphanage were horrified as they described that even at 6 months old, the baby was functioning at an animistic level and were reluctant to take the baby in as they feared he would never be adopted or fostered into a home in his current condition. It was decided that taking the baby away from the mother was a better choice. One of the women who worked in the orphanage as a nurse, Norma Stano, took pity on the infant and decided to adopt him, renaming him as the Gerald Eugene Stano that we've all come to know. 

While the Stanos provided a safe and loving home for Gerald his behavioural problems continued as he grew up. He was a below average student in school, earning Cs and Ds, with the exception of music which he excelled at. He had developmental problems also, which caused him to wet the bed up until the age of 10. As a child he was caught stealing money from his father and he claimed that he had planned to pay the members of the track and field team to allow him to finish first in a race, just so he would not be a complete failure. He was known to be a fibber as a child which only escalated as he grew older and led to compulsive lying as he matured. As he grew older his adoptive parents encouraged him to branch out and find his niche in the world, encouraging him to find jobs and things he's was interested in. Gerald however never really felt he was good enough at anything and he never had the motivation or confidence to try. He was 21 by the time he graduated from high school and years behind other people of his age. He decided that he did not want to attend college and instead opted to enroll in a computer course which he did complete. From there he obtained a job in a hospital but was fired when he was caught rifling through co-workers property and stealing. Gerald moved with his parents to Florida in where he continued to steal in jobs that he had and as a result would always be fired from them. 

Stano was picked up by police in April 1980 and was charged and found guilty of the murders of 9 murders for which he received 8 life sentences and 1 death sentence. 

The vast number of murders that Stano admitted to was 41 but this number is widely disputed due to the questioning that Stano received by Detective Sergeant Paul Crow. The methods of questioning were deemed as unreliable by the arresting officer in Stano's case Detective James Gadberry, he claimed that although Crow had elicited most of the murder confessions from Stano he queried how reliable these confessions might be due to the nature in which Crow would spoon feed Stano the information needed to obtain the confession. Stano would recall how the victims would look and the clothes that the would be wearing, this information would have been available to Stano through newspapers printed at the time. According to a signed affidavit from Gadberry, Stano would merely repeat back information that Crow had first said to Stano. Colleagues of Crow recall him actively rooting out murder cases which had gone cold in other jurisdictions in order to obtain a confession from Stano. Crow himself recalled how he had personally used information found in newspapers to obtain the confessions from Stano, including the murder for which he received the death sentence. Crow was removed from office by a grand jury under corruption charges in an unrelated case, which smeared further doubt on the validity of the Stano confessions. 

In December 1973 Cathy Lee Scharf was a 17 year old hitchhiking in Florida, it was for the murder of Cathy that Stano received his death sentence. The young girl is believed to have been picked up and stabbed. Her body was found in January 1974 by hunters in the North Merrit Island wildlife refuge. 

Stano did not confess to the murder of Cathy until 8 years after the murder. Along with the confession that Stano provided the police at the time (8 years after the murder) gave a scent dog an item of clothing belonging to Gerald Stano and the dog allegedly led them right to the scene where the body of Cathy Lee Scarf had been found, 8 years prior. Yep, 8 years later the scent of Gerald Stano was still lingering around the wild and vastly overgrown area of a wildlife reserve. 

It did come to light in 2007 when an FBI labratory report surfaced in which the examination of foreign pubic hairs found on the body of Cathy Lee Scarf that they did not match the DNA of Gerald Stano. Unfortunately for Stano, his public defender in the murder case did not present the evidence in court and these hairs were actually destroyed soon after the execution of Stano. 

Following a hung jury in the case of Cathy Lee Scarf, evidence from a jailhouse clerk Clarence Zacke was introduced, he claimed that Stano admitted to killing Cathy to him, claiming he had killed her slowly, torturing her for about an hour before he finally killed her. Clarence Zacke had a history of testifying and had previously gone on the stand in a case where Wilton Dedge was found guilty, serving 22 years behind bars before lawyers from The Innocence Project finally took his case and Zacke was discredited as a witness. 

Although Gerald Stano is listed as a serial killer, the case in the murder of Cathy Lee Scharf is certainly interesting because there was no physical evidence against Stano yet this was the case he received his death sentence. In today's world, I do not believe that Gerald Stano would have been found guilty for the lack of evidence and the very unreliable witnesses, combined with the compulsive liar that Gerald Stano was known to be. 

On March 23rd 1998, Gerald Stano was electrocuted and died in Florida State Prison, still claiming his innocence.