He may have begun killing when he was 18 and still attending high school in the late 1960s. Several girls did, in fact, go missing in the area where Gerald lived at that time, but there was insufficient evidence available when the charges were investigated nearly 20 years later to pursue a case against him. By the time he was 29 years old, Stano had been imprisoned for murdering 41 women. He was only charged and convicted for one murder, that of 17-year-old Cathy Lee Scharf in Florida.
Cathy Scharf was hitchhiking from Port Orange, Florida in December of 1973, when she was picked up by her attacker. She was found on January 19, 1974. Her body was in a ditch in a remote area near Titusville; she had been stabbed to death.
Janine Ligotino (19) and Ann Arceneaux (17) were discovered in 1973 near Gainsville, Florida. Barbara Ann Baur (17) was found in 1974 near Starke, Florida, and an unidentified woman was found the same year in Altamonte Springs.
The remains of 16-year-old Linda Hamilton were found on July 22, 1975. She had been visiting from Massachusetts and was last seen walking down Atlantic Avenue. Her body was found dumped near an old Indian burial ground.
Susan Bickrest, a 24-year-old woman from Daytona Beach was found floating in Spruce Spring Creek in December of 1975.
Nancy Heard, a 24-year-old hitchhiker, was last seen looking for a ride on Atlantic Avenue. Her body, posed and covered with tree branches, was discovered just north of Ormond Beach on Bulow Creek Road in January of 1976.
Another of the women he confessed to killing was Ramona Neal. The 18-year-old woman was visiting from Georgia. Her body was discovered in Tomoka State Park in May 1976, where she'd been lying for over four months. She had been covered with tree branches.
November 1977, a 23-year-old woman named Mary Muldoon of Ormond Beach was discovered in a ditch.
35-year-old Sandra DuBose was discovered on a deserted road near Daytona Beach in 1978 and Dorothy Williams (17) was found in a drainage ditch off of Atlantic Avenue the following year.
Detective Sergeant Paul Crow was called in on February 17, 1980, to an area behind Daytona Beach Airport where a couple of students discovered the remains of a young woman. The body had been obviously posed on her back with her arms at her side, head turned upward. She was fully clothed and there were no immediate indicators of a sexual assault. The body was additionally covered with branches and had been there for about two weeks. Also present were several stab wounds and puncture marks in her back, chest, and legs. The victim was eventually identified as Mary Carol Maher, a 20-year-old local college student.
On April 15, 1980, a human skull was discovered in Holly Hill, near Daytona Beach. More bones and some pieces of clothing were uncovered by investigators later on. The victim was Toni Van Haddocks and she had died from multiple stab wounds to the head. Toni was 26 years old and had been reported missing on February 15th. This young woman was also a prostitute.
About 100 miles west of Daytona, in Bradford, a woman was found, hidden under a pile of branches, in a swampy area. The woman had been last seen in Daytona Beach, near Atlantic Avenue.
In Titusville, a small town 50 miles south of Brevard County, the body of a woman was found posed and covered in brush. The last place anyone remembered seeing her was hitchhiking on Atlantic Avenue in Daytona Beach.
In the early 1970s, there were two murders fitting the familiar details in New Jersey. In the mid-1970s, there were also several unsolved homicides in Stuart, Florida, that seemed to fit the bill. In all of the above cases, the victims were young women who were posed and covered with brush or tree branches.
Bonnie Hughes (34), Diana Valleck (18), Emily Branch (21), Christina Godson (17), Phoebe Winston (23), Joan Foster (18), and Susan Basile (12).