I Would Find a Girl Walking (18 page)

“People treat you like you treat them,” Nancy had reassured her mother-in-law. “I know my way around.”

“DO IT IN THE DIRT”

It’s what a girl wears and carry’s [
sic
] herself, that “makes a girl an easy victim.” If she wears clothes that are tight, revealing, etc., and the way she carries herself—like, the way she talks, walks, etc.

—Gerald Stano to Kathy Kelly, January 28, 1986

 

 

 

 

G
erald Eugene Stano left several “Jane Does”—the female counterpoint to a “John Doe,” a term used mostly in police jargon to refer to an unidentified corpse—in the wake of his murderous rampage, young women who wouldn’t be missed, nor mourned, by anyone. Unlike the champion swimmer, the cheerleader, the preteen, the wife, or the churchgoing high school graduate, he chose mostly lost girls, those who were aimless and wandering. In other words, the most vulnerable. Not that any of his victims were safer than the others, really, given that Stano’s were crimes of opportunity. But the executioner of the nameless girls would never have to answer for their deaths to some higher court, except to some investigators.

The Jane Doe known simply as “I-95,” and only identified by the eerily prophetic slogan on her T-shirt (“Do It In The Dirt”), was one of these nameless girls, and her memory serves as a reminder of all the others now resting in unmarked graves.

She could have been any one of the girls who disappeared off the streets of Daytona Beach in the late 1970s. Nobody reported them missing, because no friends or family knew where they had ended up, and possibly nobody cared. These girls became mere statistics, each one an unsolved “Signal 5” in the parlance of the police dispatcher.

The dead girl had been found wearing shorts and a logo T-shirt. Identifying her was problematic for a team that encompassed the Florida State Highway Patrol Division, the Tallahassee Crime Lab, the Port Orange Police Department, the Volusia County Sheriff ’s Office, and the Daytona Beach Police Department, among others.

The body was first reported on the afternoon of November 5, 1980, by Edward Glenn Hayden to Corporal Donald Wolf of the Volusia County Sheriff ’s Office Patrol Division. Wolf notified Investigator Dave Hudson, who arrived at the death scene shortly after. As traffic whizzed by on busy Interstate 95, investigators gathered in the median to search for clues. Soon, the Florida Department of Law Enforcement Crime Lab also responded to the scene for processing.

Bob Kropp, an investigator with the Medical Examiner’s Office, examined the bones found at the scene and stated that they appeared to him to be female, although the examiner could not determine how long the body had been there. Volusia County deputies Loren Smith and Bruce Morrow also responded to the scene to ensure that the area was kept secure overnight.

On November 6, 1980, when Investigator Dave Hudson returned to the area, he learned that Deputy Smith had obtained some information overnight: Dennis Andrew Ellis, of Port Orange, had reported that approximately one year earlier, a woman’s purse had been found in the woods on the west side of the southbound lane of I-95 along with a man’s wallet. All of the property was first turned over to the Port Orange Police Department, then to Sheriff’s Investigator Bernard Buscher for follow-up. This would prove only the first in a series of frustrating detours for law enforcement officials.

Shortly after the discovery of the remains, the Florida Department of Law Enforcement Crime Scene Unit arrived and took photographs. Upon doing a complete scene search, Mike Rafferty, who was in charge of the crime-scene team made up of Pam Fowler and Leroy Norris Parker Jr., found an almost complete set of human bones. Some skin remained on the skeleton near the areas of the shoulder, back, and leg bones. Found approximately ten feet away were a green pair of slip-on clog type of shoes. Later found in the same general vicinity were red shorts with blue trim, possibly jogging type shorts, with a stretch waistband, and a red T-shirt with an iron-on patch on the front featuring a picture of a matador, a bull, and the inscription “Do It In The Dirt.” On the bottom left-hand corner of the T-shirt were the words “Rat’s Hole Copyright 1974.”

Investigator Hudson followed up on the slim lead, calling the Rat’s Hole in St. Petersburg, Florida, in an attempt to run down any possible lead in reference to the slogan. But the employee he reached stated that the T-shirt in question could have been sold anywhere in the United States by any T-shirt shop. The investigators had hit the proverbial wall.

Hudson also learned from Kropp, of the Medical Examiner’s Office, that he estimated the body to have been that of a white female, approximately five feet seven, twenty-five to thirty years of age. Investigator Dave Hudson started a card file with the names of all people reported involved in any suspicious activity in the area. The data was obtained by Corporal Wolf, who learned that a 1969 Plymouth Wagon had been seen in the area approximately three to four months earlier. This would prove another in a series of frustrating detours for law enforcement officials.

On November 7, 1980, Kropp reported to Investigator Hudson that the bones that had been found at the scene had been examined at the University of Florida Anthropology Lab and her age determined to be no more than nineteen years of age, as opposed to the original range of twenty-five to thirty estimated by the medical examiner investigator.

Several names were initially linked to the Jane Doe, a puzzle with a trail that led to more and more missing girls as the investigation progressed. Among the tips that Investigator Dave Hudson received on November 11 and 12, 1980, were the following:

Several months later, on March 12, 1981, Sergeant Paul Crow, of the Daytona Beach Police Department, interviewed Gerald Stano to determine if he knew anything about the unnamed victim who’d been found on I-95 in Volusia County on November 5, 1980.

Stano had told Crow that about two years prior, he had picked up a white female on Main Street in Daytona Beach, during the annual Bike Week invasion that occurred each March, when both permanent and itinerant vendors lined the beachside street selling souvenirs to the thousands of black-jacketed bikers who descend upon the city.

“Do you recall this incident?” Crow asked, taking Stano back to a previous admission that he had knowledge of the case.

“Yes, I do, sir,” Stano replied.

Crow then asked him if he remembered the girl in question and the location where he had picked her up. Stano referred to a bar on Main Street called Blackbeard’s. The year was in 1978 or ’79, he added. It was past 9 o’clock in the evening when he encountered the young woman.

“Was she hitchhiking, walking down the street, or what?” Crow inquired.

“No. She was, uh, inside the bar, and I sat across the street at a Laundromat, and she come walking out of the bar and approached the car and asked what I wanted, and I told her what I wanted, which was to have sex with her, and she climbed into the car willingly.”

This was Stano’s usual way of implying that the young woman in question was an agreeable participant to his advances.

“Where did you go then?” Crow proceeded.

“Well, we took a short, we, we, we took a short drive down Main Street, across the bridge to US-1, came down, down 92, and then down 92, or Volusia Avenue, whatever you want to call it, to I-95.”

“Did she ever ask you where you were going or why you were going that way?” Crow did not wait for an answer and pushed further. “Gerald, what you’re telling me then, did you end up on Interstate 4, Interstate 95, or where did you take her to?”

“No. We ended up on Interstate 95 going southbound towards the Taylor Road exit.”

This spot along the interstate was in the same area where Sheila DeKitler, one of the victims, reported to Investigator Hudson that she had been beaten and abandoned. Later, she said, a man picked her up, and she survived her injuries.

Then Crow asked Stano the most telling question.

“Gerald, how do you describe the clothes on this victim?”

“Uh, she had, she was wearing a dark shirt with, uh, in color, with some type of writing on it, and red shorts. And also very distinctly on her shirt I remember either on the front or the back was either the saying, ‘Do It in the Dirt’ or an emblem, or a picture of it, one of the three.” As it turned out, it was all three.

“Okay, did you ever find out her name or anything?” Crow asked, already guessing that the answer would be negative. Gerald Stano never opened the door to any kind of personal relationship with any of his victims. His small talk often focused on music, which was his personal passion.

“No, sir, I never did.”

“At what point did you kill the girl?”

“When we hit, uh, the Interstate down there in between I-95 and that little crossroad by Taylor Road, in between the median of I-95.”

“Gerald, do you recall how you killed her? Think hard now.” The detective knew well enough that this girl was just one among many others.

“I believe she was strangled.” Again, Stano used the passive tense, as if the act of murder were only a casual event not having anything to do with his own action.

“What brought this on?” Crow now pointed to the trigger effect.

“A hot and heavy conversation that was brought on between the two of us over some, uh, money that was being transacted from having sex with the girl.” Once more, the conversation was “brought on” and the money was “being transacted,” a casual, cold, and objective reference to murder.

“Okay. Then she was a prostitute?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Gerald, to the best of your recollection, you did choke her to death?” The investigator wanted to assign blame.

“Yes sir, to the best of my recollection,” Stano gave up somewhat reluctantly.

“Do you recall taking her clothes off or did you leave them on her?” No answer. “Gerald, think back, do you remember if you took all her clothes off?” Crow insisted, knowing that the girl’s shorts and T-shirt had been found at the crime scene, near but not on the body.

“I think it was removed, the blouse, her shirt, and left her shorts and shoes on. Because it was dark at the time.” And again, “it was removed.”

“Okay. And did you recognize her on Main Street before as a prostitute? Is that right?”

“Yes, sir, I did.”

“Have you seen her often walking up and down Main Street?”

“Yes, a number of times.”

“Okay. And how would you describe her physically?”

“Physically, uh, shoulder length hair, uh, built so-so, you know, no Marilyn Monroe.”

“Okay. Is there anything else you can tell me about this case that you recall now?”

“Just that she used to hang around Main Street and from what I can understand from a couple of other guys, I don’t know their names specifically, but I know she was a rip-off for a prostitute.”

For Stano, it was another confession, but for investigators, it was another frustration. Because of the body’s decomposition, there was no opportunity for fingerprints. Their only hope was that if a missing person was reported with her description, perhaps dental records could be compared. The Main Street Jane Doe was someone’s daughter, or sister, whose life on the streets ended violently—perhaps she had even received that dire warning from her parents when she left home in some faraway city.

Yet in Daytona Beach, she had blended in with the crowd, never making the kind of connection with anyone who would bother to report her missing.

My relationships with women I can say was not exactly the best. It was good up north, cause you have a different type of girl. Down south, they think you got money to burn on them. Besides, I was very picky at my girlfriends.

—Gerald Stano to Kathy Kelly, August 21, 1985

 

 

 

 

S
ixteen-year-old Linda Hamilton, the oldest of four children, left her home in Millbury, Massachusetts, on June 27, 1975, and her parents, Robert and Marion Hamilton, never saw her again.

Linda’s photo makes her look sweet, serene. Her striped shirt fit demurely around her neck. Her shoulder-length hair was parted in the middle per the style in 1975. But Linda was no stranger to trouble, as Volusia County Sheriff’s Office reports would indicate. She had been assigned to a juvenile court counselor in Worcester, Massachusetts, and her background was very familiar to one Millbury police sergeant. An “ideal child” until she was thirteen, Linda started running away then, usually to Rhode Island, her father would later tell lawmen.