On September 12, 1951, Paul Zeininger was born in Schenectady, New York, the last of five children. Three of the children born before him had already been given up for adoption. The fourth was a baby girl who had suffered severe brain damage and was the only one their mother would choose to keep. Ms Zeininger was so neglectful that when he was six months old and she gave him up, the doctors declared the baby unadoptable. He was functioning on such an animalistic level that he was injecting his own feces to survive. He was eventually taken in by a couple with the last name of Stano.
The couple had been unable to have their own children and were desperate to adopt a baby boy. Eugene was a corporate manager and Norma was a county social worker. The deplorable condition of baby Paul pulled at Norma's heart strings, especially when the Stanos were told that the agency was having a difficult time placing such a neglected and malnourished child. The couple would not be denied their opportunity to provide a good home for this poor child. They adopted him and renamed him Gerald Eugene.
Even though it appeared that Gerald's home with the Stanos was loving, the boy had behavioral and disciplinary issues throughout his young life. He suffered through enuresis until the age of 10. He was always emotionally distant and withdrawn. Gerald had trouble dealing with his peers and became a loner. He was targeted by the usual bullies and had no luck with the young ladies, who frequently told jokes about him.
Music was the only subject in which he excelled at school. Gerald was a compulsive liar who was consumed with exaggerating his performance in activities to make himself appear less inadequate than he felt. In the 1960s, he was arrested after sounding a false alarm and a second time for throwing rocks at cars on the highway from an overpass. His parents were told that he would be sent to juvenile detention if he stepped out of line again.
Gerald was then enrolled in a military school, where his behavior seemed only to continue down the usual path. Even after the family moved to Pennsylvania, his behavior accelerated. He stole from other students and skipped school perpetually. He even stole money from his father to pay track team members to lag behind him so Gerald wouldn't finish last. He did not graduate high school until he was 21 years old.
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To everyone's surprise, Stano moved out on his own and enrolled in a computer school shortly following graduation. He graduated the program with flying colors and then began work at a local hospital. Weeks after being hired, however, he was back to his old ways and got caught stealing from the purses of fellow employees. He was fired and then started a patten of bouncing around from one job to the next before moving back in with his parents. 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. 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. Bonnie Hughes (34), Diana Valleck (18), Emily Branch (21), Christina Godson (17), Phoebe Winston (23), Joan Foster (18), and Susan Basile (12). A prostitute came into the Daytona Beach police station claiming that she had been assaulted by a john. Detective Jim Gadberry took down the statement of the woman, who claimed she'd been walking down Atlantic Avenue when stopped by a white man in a red Gremlin with tinted windows. She said the same car had been parked at an apartment building shortly before he pulled up to hire her. The man she described was average height and slightly overweight with glasses and a moustache. Detective Gadberry proceeded to the apartment complex and, unable to locate the car described, he began to drive the neighborhood. Gadberry located a red 1977 Gremlin within a mile of the apartments nd took down the license plate number. The vehicle was registered to Gerald Eugene Stano. Throughout the process of charging and prosecuting Gerald Eugene Stano, several people connected to law enforcement supposedly questioned the legality of Stano's confession and his level of culpability in any of the murders. Some came to believe that Gerald was a serial confessor and not the killer he'd been made out to be. Born on 8 October 1948 in Tolmia, Colombia, Pedro Alonso Lopez has been accused of murdering over 300 girls. He became known as the Monster of the Andes after leading police to 53 victims' graves in Ecuador in 1980. By 1983, he had been found guilty of killing 110 Ecuadoran girls between the ages of 9 and 12. Lopez then confessed to an additional 240 murders, all young girls, in Peru and Colombia. Pedro Alonso Lopez was born to a penniless prostitute in Tolmia, Colombia. He and his 12 brothers and sisters had a less-than-satisfactory childhood. Mom was overbearing and dominant, and ruled her children with a dictatorial presence. By the time he was released from prison in 1978, his impulses and fantasies had complete reign over Pedro's actions. He began to travel around Peru, hunting young girls from native tribes all over the region. It has never been verified that Lopez was actually responsible for the 100 murders he claims for this period of time, but later discoveries make it likely that his accounting is accurate. Within mere days of Pedro's unbelievable confession to 300+ murders, police were on a mission to prove his claims. He led authorities to an area near Ambato, where 53 girls' bodies were uncovered. All of the girls were between the ages of eight and twelve years. Pedro easily fits into the Organized Offender category. His narcissism is evident from his own words: "I am the man of the century. No one will ever forget me" (from prison interview with Ron Laytner). Aside from his obvious classic sociopathic characteristics, his methods betray a highly organized pattern of offense. |
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