Murder, Mystery & Makeup - Serial Killer or Serial Confessor? Gerald Stano

Episode Date: May 30, 2023

Hi friends! Today I wanted to talk about Gerald Stano, what a weird story! It's hard to find out what happened to Paul afterwards...all in all I think PAUL was the scary one in today's story. Love you so much and please be safe out there! Hope to be seeing you very soon x o Bailey Sarian Watch the original video here and don't forget to subscribe to my YouTube @BaileySarian! Tik Tok: https://bit.ly/3e3jL9v Instagram: http://bit.ly/2nbO4PR Facebook: http://bit.ly/2mdZtK6 Twitter: http://bit.ly/2yT4BLV Pinterest: http://bit.ly/2mVpXnY Youtube: http://bit.ly/1HGw3Og Snapchat: https://bit.ly/3cC0V9d Discord: https://discord.gg/BaileySarian

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Today we're going to be talking about Gerald Stano. Yes, his name is Gerald. Gerald, you know, anytime you look up a serial killer, it's always like the worst serial killer in history. I just have to say like, the overall story is gonna sound familiar because it's kind of similar to a lot of the people we've talked about here on my channel,

but he may not have even been a serial killer. I know, I mean, that's why I'm saying this is a crazy weird story. I don't know. So I guess it's up to you, you decide, but we'll get there. Okay, anyways, Gerald, who's Gerald? So Gerald actually wasn't even born Gerald. His birth name was Paul Zeinger. He was born September 12th, 1951.

Okay New York, you win. This word is a tongue tie for me. Schenectady, did I say it right New York? He was living with his birth mother in Schenectady, New York. Little Paul aka Gerald, he living with his birth mother in Schenectady, New York. Little Paul aka Gerald, he lived with his birth mother until he was six months old and then his birth mother decided that she couldn't take care of him and it would be best if she gave him up for adoption. So she did just that. She took him to a local orphanage. The staff workers at the orphanage were unsure if he could even be adopted. They noted that

he was extremely malnourished. He had been eating his own feces to survive and it was also said that he had been functioning at an animalistic level. To think of a six-month-old doing that, he had to be going through some kind, like a lot of abuse, right? The orphanage was like a little hesitant to take in this child because it seemed like he needed to go to a hospital and this woman needed to be arrested, but they decided to take in Paul, which honestly is a good thing because if he would have stayed with his birth mom, who knows what would have really went down.

A nurse working at the agency, her name was Norma Stano and her husband Eugene, they decided that they wanted to adopt a little Paul at the time. So they did and they renamed him Gerald Eugene Stano. It said that the Stano's were fantastic parents, very loving, they treated Gerald very kindly, but they knew that he had some issues,

but they gave him a loving home. The Stano's would say that Gerald was wetting his bed up until he was 10 years old. He would throw extreme temper tantrums when he didn't get his way, and he had little to no friends. Gerald didn't do well in school. He never got a grade higher than a C,

unless it was in his music class. He was really good at that, and he enjoyed it as well, but he was like a C or a D student. Gerald would pretty often, you know as a teenager, preteen as well, he would steal money from his father's wallet, and one day he got caught, and his father asked like, well what were you gonna do with this money? Gerald told his dad that he was going to pay off the members of the track team

so that they would finish behind him or last. And he, Gerald, wouldn't be seen as a complete failure, which is really sad. At the age of 15, Gerald was arrested because he set off the fire alarm at school. You know, that's illegal, you can't do that. And then he was arrested again, and this is a separate time because he was throwing rocks

at cars on a highway bridge. So he was always getting into like just trouble. So at the age of 15, the family decided to move to Pennsylvania. They moved to a town called Norristown. Gerald struggled in high school and he didn't end up graduating or getting his GED until the age of 21, you know,

which is fine. But I think it's safe to say that it's obvious Gerald is really just struggling, correct? Everyone's got a pro. Need tires? I've got a pro. Car making a weird sound? I've got a pro. So who's that pro? The pros at Tread Experts. From tires to auto repair tread experts is always there helping you with toyotares you can trust until may 31st save up to a hundred dollars in rebates on select toyotares like toyota open country family of tires find your pro at your local tread experts from tires to auto repair we're always there We're an express associate. Gerald ended up going to computer school and was then able to find work at a local hospital. That didn't last long though,

because Gerald was caught stealing again, but this time he was stealing money from his coworkers, like in the break room, going through their bags and stuff. In 1979, Gerald was dating a mentally handicapped woman. She ended up getting pregnant with Gerald's baby. Now this girl, her father was pissed. He was not happy about it. Allegedly he had gone to Gerald and threatened him

with a gun, like you need to take care of this baby. You need to make sure that she gets an abortion. Yeah, and he said he was going to kill Gerald if he didn't help her out to get an abortion. My liner wasn't supposed to be this big, but this is where I am now. Okay, so anywho, her father was threatening Gerald to either pay for an abortion or he was gonna kill him.

I think he just wanted to probably kill him in general because why were you having a sexual relationship with my daughter in the first place? And you can't really find that much information about it, like I couldn't figure out if it was consensual or not, like how or how that relationship really came to be. I'm sure it's out there, I just couldn't figure it out. Anyways, she got pregnant, so Gerald was forced to pay for her abortion,

so he did and the two of them were never allowed to see each other again. Now Gerald was just overall having a very hard time finding where he belonged and what he wanted to do with his life. And his parents were becoming very frustrated with him. He was still living at home and he wasn't like doing anything with his life.

They suggested that Gerald should move to Florida, that way he can take care of his grandmother and just maybe get a change of scenery. Maybe it would help him get inspired. Maybe he'll find friends, a job. Gerald agreed and said, okay, yeah, I'll go. So he moves to Florida. While living in Florida,

he was bouncing around from job to job. He was often getting fired for being late or not showing up, or he would be caught stealing again from coworkers. In the early 1970s in the coastal regions of Florida, Gerald was, he was 22 years old at this time, and he was described as being short and pudgy, and some would consider him unattractive, but to Gerald, by golly, Gerald was a confident man.

He would refer to himself as an Italian stallion. And at the age of 25, he began dating a hairstylist. And she went by the name Teresa. Many are unsure if that was her real name because there's like no record of her other than being Gerald's wife at one point. Many think that she, who knows what her name was, you know? But he met Teresa and they were dating, then they got married,

and she was able to get Gerald a job working at her father's gas station. So he spent some time working there, and six months into their marriage, Gerald would begin to physically abuse his wife. In 1976, she would file for divorce from Gerald. Gerald would end up moving back in with his parents. In 1980, a 20-year-old woman, she was leaving a bar and she was looking for a ride. Now, this is the 80s, so not everyone was hitchhiking, but I feel like based off of what I've heard, like people still hitchhiked. She's kind of like how people got around. Not everyone of course, but it was still a thing.

So this woman was hitchhiking home. Gerald was driving at that time, spots her, pulls over, and then asks if she needs a lift. Now it's unclear what exactly was going on, you know, in the vehicle or during the car ride, but it said that Gerald may have asked her for sexual favors in return for the ride that he was giving her, right? So he asked her this and rumor has it, she laughed at him.

This just triggered Gerald. When she laughed at him, he took out a knife that he had in his pocket and he stabbed her repeatedly. Gerald then said that she fell forward in her seat but her right arm was like still trying to move and reach for the door and then Gerald said that he pulled her back and then he continued stabbing her until she didn't move. He then looked for a quick place to dispose of her body and clean the car before his upholstery was ruined. This woman, her remains were not found for two weeks. On March 25th, 1980, Gerald,

he ends up picking up a sex worker and then he takes her to a local hotel room. They go back to the hotel room and they participate in sexual relations. She would later say that during this time that Gerald started to tell her, talk to her about how much he hated hookers. And he started to just become like really irritated,

angry and mad. She said that she was just trying to get paid and then she was gonna get out of there, you know. He's going on this rant about how much he doesn't like hookers, which Gerald, where are you buddy? You know, like, what do you, you just, okay, whatever. Anyways, so he's getting all worked up and angry. The woman says that he pulls out a knife

and he's threatening her. He's telling her, give me my money back or I'm gonna kill you. Now, of course this woman is feeling scared, so she gave him his money back. Plus she gave him an additional $30 that she had on her. Sadly though, Gerald still ended up deciding to attack her and he stabbed her.

He cut her with a bottle opener and then he used a pair of scissors and then he threw acid on her. And it was an acid that's used to sometimes remove stains from concrete or to clean brick work as well. So it's a very strong acid. Luckily for this woman, she was still able to escape from the room

and she started screaming for help as soon as she got out of there. Once she was free and just out of the room, she just was screaming her head off and just running as fast as she could, as I'm sure any of us would. So this woman, she actually was spotted by police and she told them what had happened,

that she had been attacked and that they needed to go and arrest the man who did it. She knew where he was. She was gonna go take them there, like hurry, you know? Her adrenaline probably was just pumping. Luckily, police were actually able to get to the hotel where Gerald was at and they arrested the man. So police, they asked Gerald questions about, of course,

what happened that night and then additional questions about some murders that had been happening in the area. Maybe he knew something. One of the local murders that was still unsolved was that of a college student, okay? She had gotten a swimming scholarship, well liked. She was a good person. Sadly though, she was murdered and her body was found,

but they didn't have any leads as to who could have done this. So police are thinking, you know, maybe Gerald here, he seems to kind of be angry. Maybe he knows something. So police then showed Gerald a picture of her, the woman, and without hesitation, it was said that Gerald was like, Oh yeah, I knew her. That's Mary Carol.

And he was using past tense, so this made police even more suspicious that this was the guy that they were looking for. Now the main officer on this case, his name was Paul. Oh my God, it wasn't his name first, Paul? I'm connecting some dots. Anyways, so the main officer on this case, his name was Paul Crow.

He was actually able to befriend Gerald. You know, the good old fashioned good cop, bad cop thing. Yeah, well, Paul would be the good cop, the friendly cop, the one trying to get Gerald to talk. And Gerald was really liking him. They would talk about anything and everything. Like they were becoming BFFs. Gerald thought that they were becoming BFFs. Gerald thought that they were becoming BFFs.

Gerald was forgetting that Paul was an officer and he was really just trying to get some info, you know? Like he was just doing his job. Gerald was just forgetting this, so he's just talking away to Paul. And over time, Paul was actually able to receive several confessions and intimate details about what Gerald had done by acting like his BFF. So in the case of this woman named Mary Carroll, Gerald said that he had picked her up one night, it was late, and she was on the boardwalk in Daytona, Florida. Mary had been

out with friends and was supposed to call her mother for a ride home. But instead, Gerald was like overhearing what she was saying and Gerald had approached her and offered her a ride. He told her that he was going in that direction. It was no problem. Don't hitchhike, it's dangerous. Come with me. He said that on the ride home, they had stopped for a beer. And he also stated that Mary started, quote, bitching.

She started bitching real bad. Because of this, he ended up hitting her and soon a struggle had ensued and Gerald pulled a knife from under his seat and began stabbing Mary. He stabbed her thigh so hard that it broke her femur. This detail was left out of the papers and when Gerald recounted this,

Paul, the detective investigator guy, the police officer, knew he was guilty. He was like, oh, that's a detail nobody knew. Another woman, her name was Cheryl, she had been picked up in front of a hotel by Gerald. She was wearing a two-piece blue polka-dotted swimsuit. She and her boyfriend had just gotten to like a really big fight, so she had stormed off on her own, and she decided I'm just gonna hitchhike home.

Gerald picked her up and the two of them drove around, and they ended up smoking weed together, and just talking about this young woman and her situation. Gerald then asked her if she wanted to have sex, and she said no. Once again, Gerald was very upset by this, so then he proceeded to strangle and stab her before disposing her body in like a swampy area.

Another victim was a woman named Kathy and she was only 17 years old. She had been picked up at a bar. So the two of them drove around for a while. They were drinking and then just chatting, whatever, you know, and then Gerald pretended that his car was having issues. So he pulled over and he's telling her like,

oh, something's wrong, let me check under the hood. And he somehow manages to get her to get out of the car. Once she gets out, that's when he shoots her several times. On September 6th, 1973, a woman named Barbara, who was also 17, she was pulled over on the side of the road because she was having car trouble or she was fixing her car, I'm not sure, but her hood was set to be up.

She's on the side of the road. Gerald is driving past her and he notices young woman and they have the same car. It was a 1973 Duster. And he thought, oh, what a great opportunity to strike up a conversation with her, you know? So he circles back around, offers her some help. She said that her car battery was dead.

So he's like, hey, no problem. I can actually jump your battery. So Gerald tells the woman, hey, just to make sure that like everything's good, you know, you don't wanna be stranded out here by yourself, let me drive the car for you and just make sure that the alternator was charged and it's running smoothly.

She's like, oh, okay, good idea. So Gerald and Barbara, they take off in her car. So they're driving around, it's been about 30 minutes before Barbara started to get uncomfortable as she started to ask Gerald questions, like where the eff are we going?

Can I please just take my car and go home? You know, just like, come on. So Gerald was said to be getting very frustrated and annoyed by her questions, so then he just decided to just hit her in the head as hard as he could. He then pulls over and he ties her up. She was then strangled to death in the back seat of her own car.

Gerald was confessing to a lot of murders. He went on to say that he strangled a 12 year old girl that he used to play with growing up and police are thinking, how has this guy like never been caught? Because he seems to be pretty sloppy, you know? But they're just happy I guess that he's there confessing. From 1973 until his capture in 1980,

Gerald claimed to kill 33 sex workers and hitchhikers around Daytona Beach, Florida. His victims ranged from the ages of 13 all the way up to the mid thirties. He would look for women all over central Florida, Daytona Beach, St. Petersburg, Tampa, Gainesville. He didn't mind driving if it meant he could find his next victim.

He would kill his victims in numerous ways, such as gunshots, strangulation, stabbing. What was most telling to psychiatrists was that none of Gerald's victims were ever sexually assaulted, raped, nothing, right? Which is very, very rare. It was evident to all that studied him that Gerald was killing strictly for the thrill of it

and not for the sexual desire at all. Which again, it was just, it's very unheard of. So the way that Gerald would describe it was that he would pick up a hitchhiker or a sex worker, and he would immediately talk them up, hoping to strike up a fling. If the woman turned him down nicely, Gerald would drop it after a while.

But if the woman was quote, bitchy, it would enrage him, and then he would kill the woman. If for any reason the woman had laughed at him, it would really trigger him and would lead to an even more brutal attack. Usually, it would lead to Gerald beating or punching his victim to death. So a police officer asked Gerald, you know, why'd you do it? You weren't raping these victims, you weren't sexually assaulting them.

So like, what was it? And Gerald said, quote, "'I just can't stand a bitchy chick,' end quote. Before his 29th birthday, according to Gerald, he had murdered up to 41 women. So Gerald ends up receiving the death penalty. He gets sentenced to the electric chair for killing 17 year old Kathy. Her body was found in like an isolated area and Gerald had confessed to killing her.

It was determined she was fatally stabbed sometime between December of 1973 and January of 1974. Now Gerald confessed that he choked the girl repeatedly and dumped her body in a drainage ditch before cleaning up and going roller skating. Wow, Gerald, wow. There was evidence found that linked Gerald to this crime. He was able to give an accurate height and weight description of this victim,

what kind of clothing and shoes she was wearing, which only made him more guilty. He was only found guilty of nine of the murders that he confessed to, and given the death sentence for one of them. Gerald attempted to appeal his conviction several times, but it didn't work out for him, and he was killed by the electric chair on March 23rd, 1998.

His last meal, well, do you wanna know? I always like to know. I don't know why, I just find it kind of fascinating. I'll just tell you really quick if you don't care, close your ears. His last meal was a steak, a baked potato with sour cream and bacon bits, salad with blue cheese dressing, lima beans and a half gallon of mint chocolate chip.

Ice cream. Mint chocolate chip ice cream, to me, always tastes like toothpaste, yeah? And then he also asked for two liter of Pepsi to drink. So he just like went all out. This may seem like the end of a horrible life for Gerald Stano, but nay nay, it is not. Plot twist, this is what got me.

There are a lot of inconsistencies with Gerald's story. Many think that Gerald was a serial confessor instead of a serial killer, that he liked the attention he was getting. Yeah, it was negative attention, but he hadn't experienced that level of attention from someone before. His mother, when he was young, abandoned him,

and he obviously was going through some shit with his birth mother, and he had problems growing up. He couldn't seem to have a relationship, right? He just, he wasn't getting attention like that before, and he liked it. His timeline wasn't adding up at all. There were a lot of bodies being found in the area where Gerald said he was,

but when looked into further, his timeline didn't add up to when like the bodies were being found and the bodies in the area, like it just, it wasn't making sense to people, to somebody. Then something happened. Remember that guy, Paul Crowe, I had mentioned, the officer, who was becoming buddy-buddy with Gerald, Gerald's BFF.

Well, it was said that Paul was responsible for spoon-feeding Gerald answers. It was said that Paul gathered a ton of unsolved cold cases in that area and started putting them all on Gerald, getting him to confess. Paul was being investigated in general. He was in trouble with something else. Somebody like, you know, ratted on him

and he was being like investigated and whatnot. So this is why people looked into Gerald's case. Somebody looked up the transcript of Paul and Gerald, their conversation, the questions and all that. So back at the transcripts, they see that Paul, the investigator was telling Gerald what he did. I'll read the transcript. So Paul asked Gerald, quote,

"'She just sat in the car while you got some beers.' And then Gerald said, yeah. And then Paul went on to say, "'Are you sure you didn't try to get in her pants, Gerald?' And then Gerald said, yeah. And then Paul said, "'You wanted to get a little bit and she didn't. Is that right?'

Gerald said, yeah, God damn it. Paul said, she didn't want to give it to you? Gerald, no, she didn't. Paul asked, She didn't want to give it to you? Gerald, no, she didn't. Paul asked, She could hit pretty hard, couldn't she Gerald? Gerald went on to say, You're God damn right, she could. Paul said,

So what did you do? Did you hit her? You got pretty mad, didn't you? And then Gerald said, Yeah, actually, I got so God damn mad, I stabbed her as hard as I could. And then Paul was like, Tell me, how did you stab her?

Do you get what I'm getting at? Like he's kind of leading, Paul was leading Gerald into the answers he wanted. Paul was feeding Gerald answers. And in 1995, Paul Crowe was actually removed from office by a grand jury for corruption. So then, in 2007, an FBI lab report surfaced, which concluded that some of the DNA evidence found at the crime scene,

couldn't have come from Gerald. There were unidentified Caucasian pubic hairs, that were recovered from the victim that did not belong to Gerald. The source of pubic hairs were not identified and the hairs were destroyed shortly after Gerald's execution in the electric chair in 1998. This report was never presented as evidence by the public defender who was actually representing Gerald.

Final words before being put to death was, quote, I am innocent, I am frightened, I was threatened and I was held month after month without any real legal representation. I confess to crimes I did not commit, end quote. Yes, bitch. The evidence that was not linked to Gerald was for the crime that he ended up getting killed for.

So that's fucked up. That sucks. I don't know what to say. I don't know what to say. He claimed that he killed up to 41 victims. And sadly, I don't know, we obviously will never know if this is true or not. I know that this police officer was obviously corrupt

and figured, you know, here's the perfect guy to blame all these murders on. He was going after sex workers, he was troubled, he was socially awkward, he was the perfect guy to pinpoint this on. Plus he was just confessing, so it was like, yeah, put all these murders on him. Many believe that maybe he didn't kill anyone at all

and it was just the corrupt police officers that got him to confess. And some believe that maybe he didn't kill anyone at all, and it was just the corrupt police officers that got him to confess. And some believe that he did kill, but maybe he didn't kill as many, and then some people don't even know who he is, so some people think nothing. And that, my friends, is a story about Gerald Stano. The story is kind of confusing

because there's a lot of missing info as well. And if you look him up, everyone just calls him a killer, whatever, and because the FBI evidence wasn't mentioned until 2008, I feel like, I don't know, maybe people just missed that part? Because he's still labeled as like the worst serial killer, but to be honest, there's really no proof. Gerald was confessing to all these crimes,

but it's rumored or believed that he was reading newspapers about these missing women, or these victims that were going missing, right? So he knew what they looked like, he knew their names, he knew what they were wearing in the pictures in the newspapers, and I think a lot of us may not understand why he was confessing, because why would you do that, you know?

But he obviously wasn't well in the head, so with this story, he might not have killed anyone. He may have just been a storyteller. If that's true, that's really, really, really awful. I don't know what to believe. I'm very torn on this one, because by the way he would describe certain murders or whatever, it does sound very convincing,

but again, this could just be all fantasy of it. I don't know you guys, I don't know. What do you think? I think that Paul piece of shit dude should have been in the electric chair. Sorry, I know that's not nice. I'm not really for the death penalty in general. That cop was really corrupt and he got in trouble

for lots of other things that he had done. It's just so, ugh. But if it is true and Gerald was telling the truth, maybe the Paul guy just pinpointed like, got a little bit more murders on him, but Gerald did, I don't know. I hope you guys have a wonderful day today. You make good choices.

Please be safe out there. And I'll be seeing you guys later. Bye.