Episode Details

During the 1970s and early 1980s, young women were disappearing across Florida and other parts of the country. One of the men eventually connected to that trail of violence was Gerald Eugene Stano, a short-order cook who would become one of Florida’s most notorious serial killers.

Stano was convicted of multiple murders and ultimately confessed to 41 killings, although investigators believed the true number could have been even higher. Because some of his confessions were difficult to verify, the exact number of his victims remains uncertain.

His victims were often young women whom he encountered while driving, hitchhiking, or socializing around bars and roadside locations. Many were stabbed, strangled, or otherwise attacked before their bodies were dumped in isolated areas.

What made Stano especially disturbing was the sheer volume of his confessions.

Detectives repeatedly interviewed him about unsolved murders, and he supplied details about case after case. But over time, questions emerged about whether every confession was genuine or whether some might have been exaggerated, suggested, or falsely claimed. That uncertainty has followed his case ever since.

One thing, however, is beyond dispute: Gerald Stano was a convicted murderer.

He was sentenced to death for the 1973 murder of 17-year-old Cathy Lee Scharf, and on March 23, 1998, Florida executed him in the electric chair.

Decades later, investigators are still connecting victims to Stano. In 2024, genetic genealogy identified Pamela Kay Wittman, whose body had been found near Interstate 95 in 1980, and authorities determined that she too had been murdered by Stano.

This is the true crime story of Gerald Stano—a convicted serial killer, a man who confessed to dozens of murders, and a case that still leaves investigators asking where the truth ends and the confessions begin.

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