I Would Find a Girl Walking (15 page)

“I asked her if she wanted to go for a ride and she climbed in you know and just talked for a little bit,” Stano told Crow during the initial interview, seeming to relish this version of the story, “and ahh we got back out there on the road and . . . she started to get a little on the . . . on the crabby side and ahh I just went ahead and hit hit her in the face with my right hand it carries a school ring . . . ahh I hit her and that shut her up for a little while but I got out on 95 and she started bitching and raising hell and I just pulled over and I just strangled her right there and then and put her out on the side.”

“What was she wearing that night, Gerald?” Crow asked, in an effort to further ascertain that the victim was indeed Susan Bickrest.

“Blue jeans and . . . like a brown leather type jacket and some type of sandals but with an inclined heel on them.”

Crow then asked Stano where he had taken Susan Bickrest after he strangled her.

“To a little marsh area, where ahh . . . the cat-of-nine-tails grow, something like that, where there was a little bit of water. And I laid her down there.”

The sergeant inquired if Stano had deposited the limp body in the water.

“Not exactly in the water. There was like a little bit of ahh . . . what you call it? A sandy area, a beach area like a little miniature beach. I put her down.”

“Gerald, I’m confused about this,” Crow said. “You didn’t put her on the beach and put her in the water?”

“Somewhere around the water’s edge,” was Stano’s reply.

Crow then decided to backtrack a bit and confirmed the route that Stano took to the water, then he asked, “And at what point in time was the first violent act that took place between you two?” Crow wanted to know where Stano was driving when he first punched Susan Bickrest in the face.

It did not come as a surprise to the detective that Stano remembered where he was and what he did vividly.

“Out around Mason and Clyde Morris. I hit her in the face and then she started to get a little bitchy.”

“Was that because she wanted to know where you were going?”

“She wondered what was going on, she ahh . . . had a funny feeling I guess that something was not ahh . . . kosher, you know that it wasn’t mixing right and that something was gonna happen.”

The sergeant then asked Stano what the victim’s condition was at this point.

“She’s a little on the stunned side, I believe she was from . . . when I hit her. I might have dazed her a little bit because she didn’t say anything, she hadn’t said anything for a long period of time. I may have stunned her a little bit.”

“Did she make any effort to get out of the car?” Crow asked.

“She tried to at one point when I . . . I had to stop for a rest stop right quick and she tried to get out of the car once, but I pushed . . . I pushed her back in the car and pushed the door locks down. I had door locks that if you got your hands a little sweaty or something you couldn’t get them to anti-theft lock.”

“So after you left from your rest stop, where did you go then?” asked the sergeant.

“Went to ah . . . the Taylor Road Area.”

“You pulled off the road somewhere in that area?”

“Somewhere in that vicinity I had pulled off the road and . . . there is a little body of water around there.”

Crow wanted to zero in on the exact area. “Is it real dark around that area? There are no lights, is that correct?”

“Yeah. No lights around there.”

“And again you strangled her, you say?”

“Yes.”

“And you picked her up from the car and dragged her? Or did you carry her?”

“No, I carried her, she wasn’t that heavy, I just picked her up and carried her.”

“And you laid her either by some water or in some water as you said before, or close to a pond or something?”

“Yeah, it looked like a pond. I thought it looked like a pond. I put her down at the water’s edge.”

 

 

On March 11, 1983, Gerald Stano entered a plea of guilty to the first-degree murder of Susan Bickrest and proceeded to the penalty phase, where he personally waived an advisory jury.

“On June 13, 1983, this court entered the written findings of fact in support of the sentence of death. Four aggravating circumstances exist: the defendant had previously been convicted of six counts of first degree murder.

“The murder was committed while the defendant was engaged in kidnapping. The murder was especially heinous, atrocious or cruel. The murder was committed in a manner that was cold, calculated, or premeditated. The kidnapping was established by Stano’s admissions that she tried to escape and he pushed her back in and pushed down the special car locks that sweaty hands could not open. The court found that the confinement was not merely incidental to the murder. The state established that Stano abducted the victim and transported her over seventeen miles.

“Strangulation and pre-death blows, as well as Miss Bickrest’s knowledge of her impending death support the heinousness and cruelty of the murder. The location of the murder and lack of moral or legal justification indicated to the judge that murder was cold, calculated and premeditated.”

The medical examiner, Dr. Arthur Schwartz, described Susan’s death as “prolonged,” and the court sentenced Stano to death for the murder of Susan Bickrest.

It ended up with me killing the young lady.

—Gerald Stano, police interview, May 9, 1980

 

 

 

 

P
aul McCartney wrote the song “Blackbird” as an homage to black women (“bird” being British slang for
girl
), in light of the mounting racial and social unrest of the late 1960s. The song could well describe—posthumously and tragically—Toni Van Haddocks.

On February 20, 1980, Detective Larry Lewis of the Daytona Beach Police Department phoned me at work to tell me about his ongoing investigation of a missing person. He asked me if we would publish a story and the missing girl’s photo in the
Evening News
as quickly as possible.

The detective told me that he was giving me all the necessary information on the missing victim, Toni Van Haddocks, including one thing that would make her highly identifiable. She wore a cast on her left arm. I obtained a booking mug shot of her at the police department from a prior arrest for solicitation.

Detective Lewis informed me that a man named Bobby Jackson had come into the police station on February 18, 1980, to report that he had dropped off his twenty-eight-year-old girlfriend of six years at the 7-Eleven store at North Ridgewood Avenue at approximately 9:00 p.m. on February 15, 1980, and had not heard from her since.

Meanwhile, the victim’s mother, Jackie Haddocks, a city employee, called to inform me that her daughter had returned home. Investigators had told her they had furnished information about her missing daughter to the
Daytona Beach News-Journal
and requested a story be done, so she tried to circumvent them by calling me.

On the morning of February 21, 1980, Detective Lewis contacted me at work again, wanting to know why the story had not appeared in the paper. I told him about the phone call I had received from the victim’s mother, who requested that I cancel the story in light of her daughter’s return.

Detective Lewis persisted. He phoned Mrs. Haddocks and inquired as to the whereabouts of her daughter Toni. Mrs. Haddocks replied that she actually had not seen the young woman, but one of her friends had. The detective then inquired as to the identity of the friend who had supposedly seen Toni, but Mrs. Haddocks refused to give him a name.

Lewis told Mrs. Haddocks that he was conducting an official investigation and needed to know the name of the person who’d reported seeing the victim. Mrs. Haddocks still refused to give out the name and further stated that she wished to have all reports involving her daughter canceled. Lewis told her that no reports would be canceled until he spoke to the victim in person.

The detective also informed me that Toni’s boyfriend, Bobby Jackson, had told him that Toni would occasionally take johns to the area of Hazel Street and the railroad tracks. I began to wonder if perhaps her daughter’s prostitution was the reason why Jackie Haddocks wanted all the reports surrounding Toni’s disappearance canceled.
²⁶

A few weeks later, on April 15, 1980, a little boy named Brian Wolff was walking on the grounds close to his home in Holly Hill, a suburb of Daytona Beach, and found a decomposed cranium in a wooded area. The area was covered with pine trees and palmetto bushes. The child, curious as kids tend to be, took his find home in a bag, and his parents immediately notified the sheriff’s office. From April 16 through April 22, personnel from the sheriff’s office and the Florida Department of Law Enforcement, including Catherine Bisset, of the Sanford Regional Laboratory; Paul Brackman, of the Florida Department of Law Enforcement; and investigator Steve Lehman, of the Volusia County Sheriff’s Office, conducted a search of about nine acres. Bones, clothing, and other materials were recovered.

Many of the bones were completely skeletonized, although those protected by clothing—such as a pair of woman’s pants and underpants that were also recovered from the scene—were still in the process of decomposition. These were mainly the pelvis, including the sacrum, both femora, and the articulated thoracic and lumbar vertebrae with many ribs. Ligaments and other soft tissue were present, and there was a foul odor.

The examiners identified the victim as a black female, age twenty-six, about five feet five. The skull showed extensive damage, perpetrated with extreme savagery:

The examiners reported their findings to the Volusia County Sheriff’s Office, which in turn notified the Daytona Beach Police Department. After the first few weeks, the murder disappeared from the headlines, and investigators found the trail to Toni Van Haddocks’s killer very cold.

 

 

In 1980, Detective Sergeant Paul Crow went to interview Gerald Stano at the Volusia County Jail, where Stano was being held without bond after his savage attack on Donna Marie Hensley, the prostitute whom he’d picked up on the Boardwalk, taken to her motel room, relentlessly attacked with sharp household instruments, then attempted to douse with muriatic acid.

Given how the repeated wounds, puncture marks, and lacerations on Toni Van Haddocks’s remains resembled the attack on Hensley, Crow had a suspicion that Stano might also have committed Haddocks’s murder. After reading Stano his rights, and obtaining his assurance, on tape and later in a written statement, that he had not been subjected to any threats or duress during the course of the interview, nor had he received any promises of reward or immunity, the sergeant then turned on his tape recorder.

“Gerald, what I’m here to talk to you about is a homicide case involving a black female by the name of Toni Van Haddocks.” Stano nodded. “I have reason to believe that on February the 15th, 1980, that you did come in contact with this girl. Is that correct?”

“Yes.”

“When you saw the girl, did you stop and pick her up?”

Another nod. “Yes, sir.”

Crow wanted to know the time and the location when Stano first saw the young woman. Stano stated it was a weekend night, around 10:00 or 11:00 p.m., in an area between the 7-Eleven and the Shingle Shack, a local bar.

“When you saw this girl, Gerald, what did you think she was doing for a living?” asked the sergeant. At this point, Crow was wondering if it was the victim’s occupation as a prostitute that set Stano off, the same way Donna Marie Hensley had set him off, so he went after the trigger that made Stano snap.

“I thought she was a prostitute.” Stano could not help a slight sneer.

“What was your intention when you saw this girl?”

Stano shrugged his shoulders. “Oh, fixing to get myself a little, a little action on the side, piece of tail, as you’d call it.”

“Gerald, when you saw the girl, did you stop and pick her up?”

“Yes, I did.”

“Did she get in your car?”

“Yes, she got in the car.”

“Describe this girl to me.”

“She was about 5’ 7”, 5’ 8”, about 115 pounds, no more. Dark, dark complexion . . . uh . . . black, of course. Short dark hair, pushed-in nose. She had a cast on her left arm, was wearing slacks at the time with a blouse and a jacket or something covering her shoulders.”

“Okay. You’re telling me that she got in the car for the purpose of prostitution, that you were letting her believe that you would pay her, is that correct, for whichever sex acts she wished to prescribe. Did she quote you a price?”

“No, she was waiting for me to say a price.”

“Did you?”

“Yes. I said thirty dollars for it.”

“What did she say?”

“She said, ‘Fine, let’s go baby.’ ”

“Where did you go at this time?”

Stano proceeded to give Crow a step-by-step, detailed account of the route he took, while the sergeant concealed his bewilderment at Stano’s photographic memory for streets and names and twists and turns, on the road and inside his own mind.

Then, Stano said, he “proceeded to have sex with the young lady at that time.”

Crow could almost anticipate, from Stano’s violent reactions after he had sex with Donna Marie Hensley, how his behavior might have escalated with Toni Van Haddocks.

“After the sex was completed, when did the price come up for the act?” Crow asked.