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.
The two agreed on a price and went ahead to her hotel room where the man then refused to pay. They began arguing and he stabbed her right thigh. The woman required 27 stitches to close up the wound.
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.
The detective looked over Stano's rap sheet, which included a number of offenses for which he was never convicted. Gadberry also noticed that the man was suspected in the assaults of several other local prostitutes. Armed with this information, he took a mugshot photo of Gerald to the woman who had been assaulted that morning and she positively identified him as her attacker.
The detective took his findings to Paul Crow, who showed immediate interest in the assault suspect as a potential suspect in Mary Carol Maher's murder. So, when Gerald Stano was brought in for questioning regarding the prostitute assault on April 1, 1980, both detectives participated in the interrogation. It was soon clear that Stano exhibited a clear tell when he was lying, and the detectives exploited this knowledge.