“When did he tell you this?” he narrowed in.
“When we were getting back into the car,” Stano answered.
“Was she present when he was saying that?” Elwell wanted to know if Barbara could hear the lurid exchange.
“Yes,” Stano stated.
“Did he say it loud enough so she could hear it?” the attorney now pinpointed.
“I don’t think she heard it.”
“What is the next thing that happens?” Elwell proceeded with his initial line of questioning.
“Then we went down, we drove, me being green to the state of Florida, around this part of town. It is called the National Gardens. I hadn’t been there in a while, around the National Gardens area. I was just following Sammy to where he was driving. And we just drove and drove.” There was no mention of what Barbara Bauer was doing during the long drive, so the attorney now wanted to know: “How long did you drive before you eventually stopped?”
“Roughly about an hour or an hour and a half,” Stano replied.
Elwell now had to ask: “What was the girl doing at this time?”
“Crying and shaking like a leaf,” Stano said, casually minimizing the terror Barbara Bauer must have felt as she waited her fate at the hands of the angry stranger.
“Were you saying anything to her?”
“Just telling her to shut up,” he answered in the same tone.
“Did she tell you anything about herself, or where she lived or plead with you to let her out?” Investigators and criminal lawyers strongly believe that the more contact a victim establishes with her killer, the better her chance of survival. But this would not serve Barbara Bauer during her final hours.
“She did ask a couple of times,” Stano said, impervious. “She said, ‘Look, just let me out of the car and I will hitchhike back or something or I will walk back, you know just please don’t hurt me. Let me out.’”
“Was there ever a time that she could have gotten out of the car while you were driving it?”
“Yes,” Stano nodded.
“Without injury to herself?”
He now shook his head. “No, not without injury.”
“How fast were you traveling from the time she got into the car?”
“Roughly about 55 to 65.” Barbara Bauer undoubtedly was weighing the risks of trying to jump from a fast-moving vehicle or taking her chances and staying put.
“Did you eventually go to a spot or a place?” Elwell said, pushing to resolve how the drive ended.
“We ended up at a dump site. I call it a dump site, where you see a couple of people with pick-up trucks back their trucks with their trash and everything and just start sweeping and pushing it out.”
“Did you stop anywhere before you got to this dump to tie her up or to do anything with her?” Elwell realized that the girl had been in this dire predicament for quite some time.
“Before we got there, we stopped, and I hit her again,” Stano replied with perfect ease.
“Where did you stop?”
“Some road, I don’t know which road it was.”
“How did you hit her?”
“The back of my hand but a little harder this time.” Stano did not explain why he did this and Elwell did not ask. The attorney was more interested in the girl’s reactions and if they would ever elicit any human emotions from her tormentor.
“And what did that do to her?” he asked.
“That kinda brought more tears to her eyes, she kinda froze in her tracks, she didn’t know what to expect. Then Sammy came up with some rope.”
“Where did he get the rope?”
“Out of his trunk. It looked like some nylon, like you use for Venetian blinds, something to that effect.”
“Was it thick rope or thin rope?”
“Mediocre.” By that Stano meant that the rope was of medium thickness.
“What color?”
“White.”
“What did he say to you when he came up with the rope?” Elwell was still unclear about Henderson’s participation in the crime.
“He said, ‘Do you want to use this?’ I said, ‘Yes, that will do good.’”
“Had he seen you hit her?”
“Yes.”
“How did he do that?”
“It was when he was coming back that I hit her. He saw it.”
“Whose decision was it to stop this time?”
“Mine.”
“I stopped the car, and then tied her hands and feet together with either rope or something like that,” Stano later said. “I think I choked her till she passed out I thought, and I carried her from the car. I’m not sure if I had sex with her before this happened. Maybe, maybe not.”
21
Elwell opened his tape recorder, took out the tape that was now full, inserted another tape, and pressed “record.” The other assistant state attorney followed suit.
“Mr. Stano, while we were changing the tape, did anybody ask you any questions about this homicide?”
“No.”
“Is it not correct that all we did was change the tapes on both tape recorders?”
“Yes.”
Elwell now proceeded. “I believe that my question, my last question, was about the type of rope that was used to tie up the young lady. You were telling me that it was white, similar to a Venetian blinds cord.”
“Yes, something like a Venetian blinds cord. Something you use to bore a bolt with. Not that thick consistency, a thinner type of rope.”
“How long was the piece of rope you used?”
“They were about four feet in length.”
“Where was she when you tied her up?” Elwell was still more concerned with Barbara.
“She was in the Duster at that time, in her car.”
“How did you tie her up?”
“I put her hands together and tied her feet together.”
“Did you tie her hands in front of her or in back of her?”
“In front of her.”
“And her feet, did you bind her legs together or her feet?”
“Yes, around the ankles.”
“Was she doing or saying anything at this time?”
“She was struggling at this time.”
“Tell me what you mean by struggling.” Elwell wanted to get a mental picture of the abuse, as well as Barbara Bauer’s mental state at the time.
“She was trying to kick at that time and hit with the hands that were tied together. But Sammy held her hands while I was tying up her feet.”
“Did you use a single piece of rope or did you use more than one?”
“Two pieces. One for the feet and one for the hands.”
“And Sammy was helping you with this?”
“He was holding her hands because at that time she was trying to beat me on the back, trying to hit with both hands coming down like this,” he said, mimicking the girl’s motions to illustrate his point.
“When you were hitting her and when you were tying her up, what was on your mind?” Elwell wanted to know.
“Just shake her up a little bit,” Stano replied casually. “Just have some sex with her and just turn her loose and send her in her car, and Sammy and I would get in his car and go. But it didn’t end up like that.”
“Did Sammy talk with you while you were tying the girl up?”
“No.”
“Was she screaming?”
“Yes.”
“Did you in any way try to prevent her from screaming?”
“Yes I did. I believe I knocked her out. I hit her hard enough to knock her out.”
“Where was she seated or lying when you struck her?”
“She was in her Duster at that time when she was knocked out. She was put in the back seat of Sammy’s convertible and he put the top up.” Stano was using the passive tense again, as if he was not responsible for his own actions.
“Was she tied, hands and feet, when you struck her and knocked her out?”
“Yes.”
“How did you strike her? Which hand did you use?”
“With my right hand.” Stano lifted his arm to show. “It’s got a class ring on the ring finger.”
“Was it a full blow? Where did you strike her?”
“In the temple.”
Elwell now wanted to get back to the presumed accomplice.
“When you struck her, was Sammy present?” he asked.
“Yes,” Stano replied.
“And was he doing anything while you were striking her?”
“He was busy bringing his windows up on his car.”
“Did he pull her behind you, in front of you, or to your side?” The attorney wanted to know the position of the second car.
“In front of me at that time.”
“About what time was it?”
“It was dark, somewhere around eight or nine o’clock. Between the hours of seven and nine.”
Now Elwell wanted to zero in on how many times, and how, Stano had hit Barbara Bauer, knocking her into unconsciousness.
Stano replied, casually again, that he had hit her “a couple of times,” recalling he was wearing the same ring he had on now, a gold-plated class ring. Stano added that he and Sammy carried the unconscious Bauer to the back of Sammy’s car, and the attorney then asked how the girl was dressed.
“She had on a pair of shorts,” Stano described, again, in detail. “Cutoff shorts with a dungaree cut-off, jeans cut off, and a shirt with some writing in front, like one of these colleges, like a Ohio State shirt.”
When Elwell asked if there was a number on the shirt, Stano said yes. It had already been established that the number was twenty-one.
The two then drove on for some time again, with Barbara Bauer in the backseat of Sammy’s car, Stano said, until they reached the dump site.
“And I reached into the car and she was screaming at this time. I was reaching for her with both hands, but I strangled her in the backseat of the car,” he stated.
“Why did you reach in there and strangle her?” Elwell tried to establish motive. With Stano, there usually was none. It was just a matter of silencing and controlling a prey.
“I was reaching up to pick her up and she started to scream and I didn’t want anything to be heard so . . . I reached in and just choked her.”
“Show us how you did that,” prodded the attorney.
“Like that.” Stano put his hands together around the width of an imaginary human neck.
“You put both hands on her neck.”
“Right.”
“And . . .”
“Come round your Adam’s apple.”
“And she stopped breathing at the time.”
Another young life snuffed out by Gerald Stano, just like that.
Then Stano and his presumed accomplice took the body out of the car and disposed of it. “On the road, on the side in the grass area,” he explained.
Elwell then inquired about the manner of placement of the body on the ground, to determine if it was like that of his previous victims.
“She was laid on her side,” Stano answered, again in the passive tense. “It was like that in all the cases I have here. Their heads are like facing north for some reason.”
“Did you do that intentionally?” Elwell asked.
“No, it just seems that the first victim, the way I lay the body down, the body just faces the north direction,” Stano said, as if the bodies were still there, where he had dumped them.
The attorney then wanted to know in which direction Stano and Henderson traveled after they disposed of Barbara Bauer and drove off.
“We backtracked out and got on the Interstate 75.” Stano later described it: “When I left her, I believe I covered her like the others were, I’m not sure though. I then thought, I have to leave Florida, and get back to Pennsylvania. My car had slipped my mind till I got to Georgia. I got as far as Valdosta, Georgia, and left her car in a motel parking lot. I went back to the interstate and thumbed a ride back to Florida, and got in my car and left for Pennsylvania.”
22
Stano had disposed of Barbara’s handbag, he said, without even peeking inside. He had enough cash with him at the time. What he did take was the red fabric that was in the back of her car.
“I was going to have my girlfriend try to match the material that I had up north,” he explained.
“For what?” Elwell asked.
“To see if she could make matching vests because vests were big back then up north.”
No matter that this was fabric just bought by a teenage cheerleader whose life abruptly ended after having the misfortune of developing car trouble. Just like that, it became a trophy—an article of clothing for himself, taken from a dead girl.
Elwell then asked Stano where he and Henderson were planning to go.
“Well, what having consumed a good amount of beer I was fixing to go north.”
When asked, he said he had had about three-quarters of a case of beer.
Stano added that the two were headed for Georgia. And when Elwell asked if he was working at the time, he answered: “Yes, I was working—I wasn’t working. In 1973 I was . . . I had been fired from the Burroughs Corporation and was getting ready to go into the service.”
Something about this did not compute with the attorney, who then asked, “Did Sammy have a job?”
“With his parents,” said Stano, meaning at the motel.
He added that they then stopped at another motel along the way to get rid of Barbara’s car. This was around Valdosta, Georgia, Stano said. The motel’s name started with an
A
, “either Aladdin or Alaskan,” he added. By then, the investigators knew it was actually the Azalea Motel in Valdosta.
There, he said, they parked both cars, Stano leaving the Duster that Barbara Bauer had been driving when she was abducted, and Sammy his Pontiac, in which he had been following Stano.
From Valdosta, Stano said, he had driven Sammy’s car to the Henderson family motel the following day. The day after, Stano, by his own admission, returned to Pennsylvania.
23
“When was the last time you spoke to Sammy or saw Sammy after you left to go home to Pennsylvania?” asked Elwell.
“The last time I spoke to him, was when I was in my car, it was all filled up with gas. I was pulling out of the parking lot, I kissed his mother good-bye and shook his dad’s hand good-bye, acknowledged with a wave to Sammy and headed up A-1 North.”